ECM+comp 4100 piece = MC2(squared)

On the 17th of November six of the ECM members who were in the city on the Generation 2010 tour were kind enough to read through our pieces for us. It was nothing short of incredible to hear my piece played live by such high calibre musicians. And they were sight-reading! That blew me away.

Overall, I was fairly pleased with how it went. Everything came across the way that I'd hoped it would. The only thing that I would change is the piano part at the very end where the pianist is to sweep the strings inside the piano with their hand. This lacked the punch that I was going for and made the ending fairly anti-climactic. That said I could also make a note in the score asking the pianist to dig into the strings to get a really raucous sound but I'm not sure what exactly I'll do.

Despite this one little hitch (which was totally a compositional issue, not a performance one) the reading of my piece went excellently. What a treat!

Captain's Log November 14th, 2010

Well, it's been quite the while since my last post and a lot has happened between then and now.

When I last posted I was just launching into the B section of my piece. This consisted of a pedal G# in the piano and some pseudo-pointillistic flute licks. These were combined with sweeping upward arpeggios in the piano hinting at the windy sort of atmosphere to come which was essentially the goal of my B section.

Following this I brought back the A section material in a contrapuntal texture with the flute, viola and horn with the percussion commenting here and there. Though this was a return of the A material, I did my best to vary it even further than before. One of the ways that I did this was I derived a couple of chords from the A section pc set and planed those chords on a newly composed melody. I also played fragments of the A theme creating melodies from the fragments beginning on different pitches.

From there I created my C section which was where I created the chaotic, windy atmosphere. I wanted this section to be in very strict time in order to contrast the lack thereof in the rest of the piece. Thus the chaos brings order. This section is composed of steady, quiet bass drum hits underneath a texture of sweeping upward runs beginning in the piano but quickly joined by all of the other instruments one by one. As the chaos and dissonance grows the rhythm falls apart until the various voices drop out one by one leaving just the bass drum signifying the "slow heart".

Overall, I'm fairly happy with the piece and am very much looking forward to hearing it in real life and not through the MIDI playback on sibelius.

Two in one

I've presented my piece twice since my last blog post and have recieved some very good helpful feedback during the two sessions. The presentation before last involved some technical points such as placement of the 8va symbol and the like. Aside from that the comments mostly centered around the use of dynamics and articulations, specifically as a means of varying material. During the following week I added these in and have been quite pleased with the results. I also added more material to the piece that week. I was thinking of this new material as a sort of B section for the piece however, Justin brought up the point that the two sections sound quite similar and that at the end of the "B" section it sounded like a point of transition. I agree with this idea and now plan to build a new, more contrasting B section from here. Also, at the beginning, it was suggested that I play around with the timbre of the repeat of the opening quintuplet figure. I have a couple of ideas concerning this and we will see how that goes.

An Experiment

I presented my piece to the class on Monday and it was fairly well received; bearing in mind, of course, that it was very much in the infancy stages. I've decided to step outside my comfort zone with this piece and compose it aprogrammatically. Generally, when I compose a piece I have an image in mind that helps me to shape the piece in form and content. This time I've decided to just dive in without an image in mind and it's proving to be very difficult. I feel like it lacks direction.

The comments that I recieved were that I should vary the material sooner using inversions, octave displacement and the like. It was also recommended that I make the opening rhythm easier to read by turning the quintuplet figure into a pickup and to also use the triangle to punctuate the rhythm and show the downbeat. This turned into an idea to use the triangle to play with the downbeat and fool the listener. The idea of using timbre changes as another means of variation was also suggested.

I'm trying to base this piece more so on rhythm and color than actual pitch or harmony as another step outside my element. It's hard going but I feel like it's good experience.

Composition 4100: take two

Having not been able to attend the second class of the semester I was unable to hear some of the music of my peers. Which is somewhat disappointing as I'm interested to hear how things are going. Hopefully we can come to some kind of agreement on a third session time that works for all.

I have an idea for my first composition of the term which is to compose a 12-tone piece using intervallic themes for the pitch class sets. That's about as developed as my idea is at this point but I hope to have something to present on Monday. I have yet to figure out exactly how to treat such an odd assortment of instruments, but I feel confident that if I can write music that works for this instrumentation then even just by virtue of the oddity of the ensemble, the piece will be unique. It certainly is exciting to write for such a rare group of instruments, and such a prestigious group of players.

Captain's Log: January 11, 2010

The new project before me is to compose a set of three short pieces for piano. Having never done any solo piano writing and very little piano writing in general I'm having a bit of a hard time coming up with ideas. I think if I look to some actual piano scores I could get an idea or two on figures and the like. I've been doing some tinkering and I have a couple of interesting things to play with but I haven't written anything down yet. We'll see what sort of things I can come up with.

'Bout as lat as one can be.

So it's been awhile since the concert but overall I was very pleased with how it all went. I feel like everyone's compositions were far more mature than the mid-term ones. I couldn't have asked for a better performance from my performers. At our first real practice I was a bit sketched out by the middle section as it's certainly the most difficult but that sketchiness dissolved very quickly as we had more practices. I'm a lot more satisfied with this composition than my last. I feel like it's more complete and the last part sounds less cop-out-ish than in the last of my three character pieces. Which is kinda strange because I whipped this piece up much faster than the last. Or maybe that's the reason. Either way, I'm very happy with how it all turned out.