prelude to rage against the machine

Morning. (even though I've been up since 8.30)

I am in a foul mood today as I got all of 3 hours sleep last night before somebody's very piercing burglar alarm went off, then another 4-5 hours or so before I had to get up to get ready for lectures, and prepare for the day.

So far it has been an exercise in preparing lots and achieving little - the final analysis coursework of the year was given out today (!!!) but it should be okay cos it's on a Debussy prelude and I would like to think I have a small advantage, given I'm a pianist and I've studied about 20 of the damn things. It's also a very short piece, but quite unlike anything else we've ever studied this year. Instead of sonata form sections dictated by key area, Debussy uses tonal 'domains' instead, which can be anything from diatonicism to chromaticism, pentatonicism, and even modal writing. (discerning Ionian mode from diatonic major and Aeolian mode from diatonic minor will take a lot of careful consideration, in particular...the two are 99% identical, if I might use such a sloppy phrase)

I should actually be in my 11-1 lecture now, but I have chosen to bunk it as the content for today is student presentations part 2 (my presentation was last Wednesday, and while it wasn't awful, it wasn't exactly brilliant, celestial sitting-on-the-clouds-and-beaming goodness either) and I, like the girl sitting next to me in analysis, considered that my time would be better spent attempting to get to grips with the gargantuan 4,000 word essay and other coursework bits than sit on my butt for another 2 hours. Besides which I feel half dead at the moment, and I'd probably have fallen asleep in the student presentations, which wouldn't have been good, considering they're all filmed for external marking.

Work status: All composition finished; (7 technical exercises + 2 big works) 1 orchestration remaining; (6 completed out of 7) 1,000 words written out of 4,000 (25%)

"It's not a fantasy, it's just the real thing, but sometimes a fantasy is all you need" (anon)