Last Recital

Well... it seems as though it's all over!

Last night our Composition Seminar class had our final recital. It was so nice! Great turn out, pieces sounded great, and it was a lovely way to end the term!

I'm sad to see this course go. It was such a good experience. Everyone was so supportive of each other but always up for giving advice. I wrote in my first or second post that I thought the class had such a great balance of positive feedback and constructive criticism. I still stand by that.

This project created so many different pieces. From metal to dubstep, it seemed a little bit of everything was found. With such a small class size, it was so nice to have that wide of a variety!

Thanks for a great term guys! See you in the new year! :)

Final Week, Final Piece, Finals, Finally!

I can't believe how quickly everyone's pieces came together this go around!

When we opted to take a little longer 'composing wise' with the first assignment, I was nervous that it would come back to bite us. People just whipped these pieces up like it was no big thing! That said, they are significantly shorter than our first project and we have substantially more liberty compositionally because we are not bound by a predetermined chord progression. BUT STILL! A approx. 4:00" piece in approx. a week is pretty good! Way to go guys!

Right now, I'm just doing some final edits of my score in prep for the recital on Wednesday. Our 'fair copies' are due Thursday anyway, so I'm hoping to just get it out of the way so Thursday will be low, low pressure.

I'm really looking forward to the recital. What a great way to end the term! Good luck!

Recontextualization

I've started the next assignment!

I think I started and stopped and started and stopped this project that many times... My initial idea (writing for vocal quartet) has been abandoned (it will be revisited!) and I'm now writing for piano, violin, cello, and alto flute!

The concept I've chosen is to 'recontextualize' a musical concept. To read further on this, check out Dr. Ross's blog:

http://clarkross.blogspot.ca/2012/10/project-2-fall-2012-options.html

I think it's a pretty neat idea! It can be anything from mixing a 12 bar blues with classical writing, to pop 4-chord-songs averted, etc. etc! From what we discussed in class, the possibilities here and endless. So! I've only gotten about a minute into the piece but here's my concept:

I'm taking the opening motive of "Smoke on the Water"and putting it in an art music context.

For those of you who don't know "Smoke on the Water", spend about 5 minutes in the guitar section of Long and McQuade or feel free to check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_4FNoto4

So far, my piece opens with the piano playing the motive. What I've done is displaced the second note of the motive by an 8ve and it actually masks the renowned Deep Purple quote pretty well . From there, the piece uses primarily an octatonic scale (so far anyway...) and intergrates the motive in subtle ways including varying the rhythm, retrograding, etc.

It's still got a long way to go and I'm sure a lot of the ideas will change, but with only a couple weeks to write this one, I've gotta put the pedal to the metal and get this plane in the air.

...sure hope we don't have a crash landing here.

Edits

Ah... editing.

I sometimes wish there was a place like the Writing Centre on campus for someone to proof read my pieces like the would my papers! How awesome would that be!?

We tried peer editing in class to try and achieve this and I found it quite beneficial. I've done this in other classes and find it helpful and actually a good learning experience because you get to look at other peoples' music in such detail. I had some odd note spellings and rests that were needlessly complicated (I guess where I had made changes to the bar and Sibelius worked with what I had already inputted... if inputted is a word...) that were so clear to other people and so hidden to me! It was great! Like a musical scavenger hunt (haha).

I also found that having a hard copy of the score made it a lot easier to see my mistakes. I actually find the same thing when writing papers; once I print them off, I can clearly see errors that were seemingly non-existent on my computer screen.

Well... I had initially planned on posting some score excerpts on my blog entries, but here we are... at the end of project one and not a score has been seen! If you'd like to see one, you know where to find me!

Concert Review

I have to be honest with you... I've never really believed in the mantra "hard work always pays off". I've seen many situations where that simply isn't the case. I believe that hard work can certainly build character; however, the belief that 'hard work' will guarantee one's desired outcome has never really rang true for me. Thankfully, right now in Composition Seminar this mantra has never sang louder!

Evident by the bags under people's eyes and coffee in their hands, our class has no doubt invested a great deal of time and effort in this composition project. When we discussed in class about possibly pushing the deadline for this assignment, Dr. Ross advised that the rush up to a concert is something he has seen many times before. In most cases, the concerts have gone off with resounding success. From where I was sitting, I was extremely nervous that I would not fall under the umbrella of "most cases" and my pieces (both the one I had written/was playing and the one I was playing for Andrew) would be a large and booming flop. Although there was certainly some sections that I would like to re-record, overall I was surprisingly pleased with how the pieces came together! Now that is something I never thought I would say this time last week!

I thought everyone did a great job with their pieces. I mean this with respect to both composition and performance. I especially liked hearing how people's third movements developed since we did not get a lot of time to explore the last movement in class. I thought the concert was a great experience and was such a great way to spend lunchtime on Thursday!

Now... to do some score editing so someone else would be able to play my piece!

Practice, practice, practice!

We've finally gotten together as a group to play through my piece!

I figured going into our first practice that, where it was the first rehearsal and all, things would be a bit rocky... sure I knew my part the least out of the three of us and I wrote the piece!

My first experience writing for and playing with a piano trio could not have been more positive. My players were amazing to work with; adaptable, musical, punctual, sweet etc. ETC. ETC! The compliments I could give are never ending! They were a total delight and absolute treat!

One thing I found great was that as we were playing, there were times when I noticed things that I had written and wanted to change. Even though the violin and cello were playing it exactly as I had notated, I wanted to change it to something slightly different. Neither of the players were upset by this and were totally willing to do whatever I asked. I can't emphasize what a positive experience this was!

A huge thank you to Dominic and Rachel for taking the time to learn and play my piece. At this time of the year, I know how crazy-hectic everyone's courses and workloads are, and it means the world that you put in the time and effort to play my piece with me. THANK YOU!

Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming...

I sometimes find that finishing a piece is even harder than starting. Luckily, for this set of pieces, once I had a concept for my past piece, it really took off from under me. I may need to backtrack a little here...

To start, I wanted to write a piece that balanced wonky tonalities with a folk-ish melody to start my three pieces for piano trio. Once that was done, I was inspired by Lutoslawski's scores to writing a piece that was intriguing to the eye and knew that I wanted to have this as a slower piece that focuses on the chords (from my original chord progression) and the sonorities that form from mixing the three instrument voicings. So that was all fine and well. Don't get me wrong- this certainly took some time, but overall it came together and I was pleased with the piece. Now what? Beats me I'll tell ya that much. When it came time to start writing my third and final piece of the set, I didn't quite know where to start. I would write something... and erase it. I would write something... and erase it. I would write something... and you get the idea.

Sometimes I've found that if you have a title in mind, it can help you take your piece where it instinctively wants to go; however, this also would not be of much benefit for me since I didn't have a title for my collection of pieces or a title for any movement. So I'm back to square one. I decided though that I would explore this 'naming' avenue first and maybe get inspired along the way.

To my surprise, this method actually worked! My train of thought actually went pretty fast here... I started with the first but couldn't think of anything immediately so went to the second. The second one had some homophonic movement like a chorale and some individual movement that was somewhat chant like. Chorale and chant... Church. But the sonorities weren't traditional. Everyday chant for the modern man. Translated to latin as it would have been and boom. Title created. Back track to the first piece. Something to go with chant. Chant happens on Sunday. Sunday? SUNDAY! Title for the set. My god! This is great! So back to the first piece... Hmm... What do I do on Sunday? I grocery shop on Sunday. "Off to the Market" it is. So now I've got a piece about a Sunday. The last piece from there was easy coming. It had to be something about dreams and sleeping and the mind rushing trying to fall asleep.

I was inspired by Tintinnabuli, a compositional style coined by Avro Pärt. To read a little more on this method, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabuli (yes, I know Wikipedia isn't a scholarly source, but it give a good description of this technique that is extremely accessible to readers).

From there, I created a somewhat minimalist style piece with repetition of certain pitch classes, moving rhythms, different accentuations, all with the underlying concept of Tintinnabuli and of course, chords from my original progression.

Funny how sometimes, music comes together in a way that you least expect.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/go+off+tangent

I had someone ask me a couple days ago who my favourite composer is. I honestly didn't know how to answer the question. I mean... To me, Bach set up fundamental compositional techniques for the C.P.P. that are now taught in hundreds (if not thousands) of entry level music theory classes... but I wouldn't call Bach my favourite composer. And to me, Beethoven was a crucial figure in the transition from classical to romantic... but again, not my favourite composer. I love Brahms' piano works, but to be my favourite? I don't think so... And I love newer music. And what about Ives? Stravinsky? Pärt? Barber? I just don't know! I feel as though I could have answered this question with great ease before entering the School of Music, but my time here has significantly changed this answer. By the looks of things, I no longer even have an answer at all!

So I did what anyone would do when they don't know an answer to a question: Googled it. Of course, I can't google, "Who is Vanessa's favourite composer?" but I can see what other people have to say about the subject. Surprisingly (I thought people would be forcing their opinions down my throat), I found that many other people struggled with an answer as well.

I stumbled upon Eric Whitacre's (see, another one I really like...) blog and I thought he had an interesting post.

http://ericwhitacre.com/blog/music-composition-for-dummies

While some people would take the compliment and run, he basically said, "let's get real here b'ys..." which I thought was great. Maybe deep down he really thinks he should be on the list, who knows, but I liked the way he approached the subject. His list of favourite composers would have a hundred names on it... and if that's good enough for Whitacre, that's good enough for me!

The reason why I thought this was somewhat relevant for my composition blog (now mind you, follow the title link) is because often, I find myself looking at other composer's works as a kind of precedence or possible building block for my own ideas. I'm sure many people would find flaw in this and say we should try and 'create our own wheel' but sometimes, you just need a little inspiration. But who should you be inspired by? What I have found in the past is that I'm often inspired not by my favourite composer, but rather by a composer who I happen to be listening to a lot of lately. I think this is why when I finally responded to "Who is your favourite composer?" my answer was not absolute, but rather a short list of composers who a was "on a bit of a kick."

Star Gazing

Our class is full of super stars!

When Composition Project 1 was initially assigned I thought it would be somewhat similar to shopping at the mall in Grand Falls-Windsor, NL (my hometown); sure, there are are few (~3...woohoo!) different clothing stores, but realistically, everyone's still going to show up to the junior high dance in the same outfit. This analogy may be a bit of a stretch... but let me explain.

Even though we were given relatively open guidelines for creating our chord progressions/pieces with millions (or probably more) possibilities, I figured that because we are all following the same assignment restrictions and getting the same guidance in class, there would be some inherent similarities. Don't get me wrong here, there are some similarities, but on the whole, it's like comparing apples to steaks!

After people would play their in-progress works, I was floored by how different their pieces were from mine and from each others. I always felt like I was saying "Man... I really like that!" or "That was awesome!" or "That's sick b'y!". I tried to switch it up here so I wasn't monotonous.

That said, one of the things I found extremely beneficial (and remarkable actually...) was the balance the class has already found with complements, comments, and constructive criticism. If everything was all-fabulous-all-the-time we would already be *insert relevant composer name here*. The thing is, we're students. At MOST we've taken maybe two composition courses in the past at Memorial. Of course, people compose outside of a classroom setting, but the bottom line is there is always something for us to work on. I guess that could also be said for *insert relevant composer name here* but here, in our small little class of 7 people, we have had different experiences and have different ideas that the composer may just not have thought about before. I'm sure some suggestions will be made that the composer will not change in their piece; however, as I emphasized in my last post, I really feel like composing is about the process. Deciding not to change something is just as important as deciding to  change something.

Anyway, I haven't really delved in to many specific details about my piece or my classmates' in this blog entry. Just some general comments for now I guess! And a reference to GF-W... which I'll make at any given opportunity.

Creating the Wheel

The outline and guidance on Dr. Ross's hand out about how we should go about Composition Project 1 is very interesting.

"Week 1 will be spent creating a chord progression"

To me, a full week for a chord progression seemed like a lot of time. I mean, sure... we had to create our OWN (not the Oprah Winfrey Network... she's got that covered) chords that weren't functional in tonality, but still. A week seemed a little excessive. What I found to my surprise, however, is that a week is a great amount of time for creating such a progression. These chords are what your piece is based on. It doesn't get much more fundamentally important than that. When I began writing, I knew I wanted around 14 chords (not only because we were told 12-16 and that was a happy medium in the middle, but I thought it was a good number to achieve a "golden ratio" that had grown for just the right amount of time).

I found three distinct difficulties when trying to compose my chords:

1. Starting
2. Creating the climax
3. Coming down from the climax

...so essentially the entire process of writing the chords start to finish.

Once I got past the initial "Start" point of composing the chords, I found that after writing a couple you had a sense of what kind of atmosphere you were really going for here. If you listen to the different progressions even within our small class, you'll hear very different characters emerging. After the first couple chords, I found Chords 3-7 fell in to place with relative ease.

Around Chord 8, I was approaching where the climax should be, and found several "tension adding compositional techniques" beneficial. Some I found helpful were: simply adding more notes in the chords; adding m/M2 and m/M7 intervals around notes you already have in the chord; writing polychords (I found this surprisingly great!); and expanding the range of the outside voices.

Finally (mind you, this was after a couple days of tweeking the chords I already had... my indecisiveness is sure to shine through this Blog- no, not just this post... likely the entire blogspot), I tried to bring the piece down to a tension level of about 2/10. Even up to the point of playing them in class I wasn't sold on the end of the progression, but have since worked on it and am relatively pleased.

The reason why I say I agree with a week being a good amount of time for creating the chord progression is because the whole process really should take about that long. I wrote around 9 chords in one night and the other 5 the next day. However, it took more than a day and a half for me to reach the chords I have now. To me, you really want to set yourself up for success here. To ensure that when you go on to write the piece you are satisfied, you want to go back and play your chords, adjust a few things, and play them for your peers to get some feedback. Even if on Day 1 you write a complete chord progression and after seven days of playing, adjusting, and getting opinions, you wind up with the exact progression you had started with on Day 1, that process of developing the colours and securing your faith in the chords is essential.

At least that's my opinion anyway. Like I said, by nature I'm pretty indecisive, so if I'm making a decision, I want to be pretty sure about it!

And now... on to picking instrumentation!