In 2018, John Schneider fulfilled one of my lifelong wishes by inviting me to write a piece for the Harry Partch instruments. I researched the instruments, sampled them off the internet, and made a Kontakt file to play them on via MIDI. I was determined to write a piece that didn't sound like Partch's music. This was a mistake. Partch's music sounds the way it does because he built the instruments for just what he wanted. I think harmonically, and I started out writing chord progressions. But while the Chromelodeon and Adapted Viola can play all forty-three pitches of Partch's scale, most of the other instruments can't, and they all have different subsets of pitches. That was limiting. Still, after a year's gap due to discouragement, I kept on. "Amateur California Prune-Picker" is a quote from Partch's Genesis of a Music, and I used it because that's what writing for these instruments made me feel like. Still, my payoff was that after the premiere, several people mentioned that the piece sounded more like me than like Partch. If I ever get the chance to write for Harry's orchestra again, though, I'm going to make it sound as much like Harry as I can.

- Kyle Gann

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