About that Little Waltz
/Well, here’s a plot twist and a lesson.
But first, a side quest.
I’ve been reading back through some twenty years of blog posts over on my personal blog (dalelyles.com), and I’ve gotten to the time in 2007 that we were workshopping William Blake’s Inn for the “backer’s audition.” I was still orchestrating the bigger pieces, and since we had decided that the roaming troupe of Sunflowers we had invented should have a big ballet waltz, I was having to compose that as well.
SIDENOTE: You will recall the Sunflowers from pp.61 et seq. of the book.
For a quick look at what my process was like back in the day, check out this post, where I talk about what needed to come next in the grand ballet, and the sound file shows what I had written clearly just petering out. Then check out what the final product sounded like.
But also read what I wrote the next day. I was surprised to find that I was formulating the structure of Lichtenbergianism an easy ten years before the book was published.
So here I am decades later, trying in my old age to learn a new music program that is fighting back at every step, demanding I learn its ways rather than it bending itself to my will. Oh well. Good thing I have the Lichtenbergian Precepts to guide me, right?
You will recall that I had begun a Little Waltz that I had named “Meditatively,” then proceeded to write music that was not at all meditative, Last week I even declined to post what I had written, promising to do so when I was happier with it. I’m not happier with it. I tinkered with one section to see if I could get it to sound less like flamenco, but it just wasn’t working.
So — and here’s the lesson — like any good Lichtenbergian would do, I renamed “Meditatively” to “Driven,” saved it, and then ABANDONED it so that I could do a little TASK AVOIDANCE by working on something else.
That something else turned out to be an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT called “Delicately,” and it’s not finished — but I like what I’m hearing, even the parts that cry out for a music theory teacher to punish me for. (One way for me to write this kind of thing is to pay careful attention to the bass line; I like to think of this kind of line as a path of stepping stones leading the listener down a path that reveals unexpected turns.)
Did I write what you hear straight through? Not at all. SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION: I’ve inserted measures, repeated measures, even changed the key signature of the piece once I realized I wasn’t writing in the key I thought I was. And it’s still subject to change; those little twists in the path near the end of the mp3 might get straightened out. (Ha, as if I’m not going to lead you even further astray…)
So here, as of June 22, 2025, is the ABORTIVE ATTEMPT for Little Waltz, “Delicately.”
Look at all those Precepts just swirling around this one feeble attempt to force my brain to learn a new way to make music: TASK AVOIDANCE, ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS, GESTALT, SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION, and ABANDONMENT. I feel like a Jedi master.
And because I know you’re morbidly curious about “Driven,” here:
And for those who haven’t read the book, here’s what SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION can do for you, from how it started:
Laura lambert presents her idea of a traveling troupe of sunflowers
…to how it ended up:
“Two sunflowers” in performance, 2007
