I’m now building the Eiffel Tower Virtual Instrument. That is to say I am now going through the 2800 samples culled from the original 10,000 and organizing them into a coherent playing system. All bell-type sounds are being grouped together, all drum-like sounds, marimba-like sounds, etc. It is meticulous and labor intensive work. It’s not unlike building a piano before you get to play it.
Johnathan Perl from the Sonic Arts Center at the City University of NY came by last week to help streamline and optimize my process. I’m moving faster now, but it’s still slow going. I expect this phase to take another couple months before I can start composing.
Which brings me to the realization that I won’t be done in time to even consider a live event in 2014. I should be able to finish the album this year, so planning for a live concert will have to wait until that happens. Some of the excitement for the whole project was for this to happen during the Eiffel Tower’s 125th anniversary year, but since the original scheduling didn’t work out for me to go in the summer of 2012, my timeline is off by a year, and I’m not going to compromise the composing, the most important part of the project.
There are still mountains to climb, but with the proper time and attention to build this foundation for a solid artistic endeavor, make no mistake: When Tower Music comes it will be amazing.
