I blogged the original piece of music on my last post. At the time (May 2005) I was managing to write down a lot of music in this way (I've been trying to do it since I was about 13) and each time I would write some notes on how the music had come through.
So for this piece, this is what I had written:
"21st May 2005. Today's piece of music was very interesting (a) because I could identify the 'trigger' that preceded it, and (b) for the way in which it came through.
The trigger - I woke at about 7am this morning, and could hear a distant cuckoo, the first of the year. It sang for a long time. I began to realise I had a piece of music coming through shortly afterwards, just 8 bars in 6/8 time. Six bars is a lot to remember so at about 7.45 I got up, went to the keyboard and wrote the music down.
The Left and Right hand parts came through simultaneously. This was unusual, but I was able to write it down. In all I did 16 bars, and then recorded this on my keyboard's 'record' facility.
When I played it back, although part of me was hearing the keyboard (I work with headphones on to avoid disturbing Mr Penry) my 'inner ear' heard another line of music, this time played by a flute, over the top. I realised when I heard it why the cuckoo had been a trigger.
Writing the flute part was a bit tricky, trying to separate it from everything else I could now hear, both in my head and on the keyboard!
In all I was finished by 9am. A lot of that time was taken up with learning to play the keyboard part well enough to record it. (Half the problem was the scrappy way I'd written the music down in the first place!)"
So now I had come up with this:
Hope you enjoy it! There's one more track to come!