End of May

And May itself is coming to a close very soon. Slightly less than a week actually.

Since the last time I wrote anything here, work has increased its pace once again. It's not so much as doing something completely new, but more along the lines of refactoring/rewriting the systems given what we have learnt from our previous deployment. Had the external pressures not exist, we probably wouldn't be doing this at the rate we are currently going, but knowing what I know now compared to when we first started, I think that it is a good thing that we are doing the rewrite now.

Software, after all, needs a clean slate to work with ever so often just to ensure that the bit-rot from the crufted thinking gets removed through the process of rethinking and re-evaluating the design decisions that are made. The only reason why this isn't done as often is due to the generally monolithic nature in which software tends to be written; modularity with strongly clarifying APIs are a good way of ensuring that the modules themselves can be incrementally updated/rewritten to improve on performance without having to stall the entire system for long periods of time.

Work aside, I have finally written my first piece of non-exercise music. Entitled 暑假, it's my first attempt at writing something that is more than a few measures long. The link I place there is the direct link to the lead sheet complete with chords. For reference, all the stuff I compose can always be found from this page on my domain.

I think that I have grasped the basic concept of melody and harmony, at least pertaining to the much simpler folk-styled Chinese Orchestra music. The next step is to arrange the piece to add voices and what-not so that the orchestra itself can play. I think that I may need to read up a bit more before I can actually continue. Progress is slow at times, and the nature of composition is such that it takes time to actually think through things. Time is literally a limiting factor for composition compared to say writing, which is what I tend to do more of in comparison. In writing, time passes at the rate in which the mind chooses to let it pass, but for music composition, time passes at precisely the rate it is notated---it is, after all, an expression of sound in the time domain.

Maybe when I get more conversant with the notation form that I can simply write without having to have it played out loud, the same way I can write prose or poems simply by typing out the words without having to read them out loud to see if they make sense grammatically/idiomatically.

Well that's about it for now I suppose.