Hi Fliss,
That's a pretty good assortment of instruments you played. I'm sorry your condition has interfered with your ability to play them now. I'll check out Coleman's poem. Thanks for letting me know about it.
I like all seven of the movements of The Planets. I have played snare drum, xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes, and other percussion instruments in that piece. Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus are the most exciting and have the most fun and challenging parts for those instruments. But I also love Saturn for its suspensefully melancholy feeling in the first half followed by an ecstatic and blissful sort of calm in the second half.
I used the Finale music-writing program for many years. But I prefer writing by hand. The program took a lot of time to learn and it was way too time-consuming to write music with (in the time it took me to notate a single measure, I could have written literally one or two whole pages by hand on music paper!) so, eventually, I got tired of it. Also, I haven’t upgraded my software, so can’t open any of my many music files. I might have to bite the bullet and pay to upgrade.
I didn’t know about Flat. Thanks for mentioning it. It’s great that you write lyrics! If you start that music-themed thread, I may participate.
Mercury
I have a tail. It’s like a comet’s. Oh,
you didn’t know? It’s made of sodium.
Sol’s light and micrometeoroids succumb
to my allure. They bump me and I blow
those salty atoms from my shattered rocks
into my exosphere—as incorporeal
as the auroras high above your boreal
forests—or into space in coats and socks
(it’s cold out there!) But sodium feels friendless,
so many elements make up my tail
which, though it’s rather nebulous and pale,
is a hundred times Earth’s width—practically endless.
Look up and see its splendor, orange-yellow.
With long exposures free of buildings, trees,
and hills around, my striking trail will please
your camera. I’m a photogenic fellow!
Both Venus and your moon have tails—that’s right—
but not as grand or lovely as is mine!
Planets with tails of sodium that shine?
What other oddities lurk in the night?