Finished (for now)

My final cliché piece is essentially finished. It works well in the structure I have it in for now, though the class collectively felt that one particular idea could have been developed more. I agree completely, as about halfway through the piece there is an abrupt tempo change and a harmonic shift that lifts the piece to a climactic level, only to fall back to the original theme 8 bars later. I like the idea of having a very short and completely contrasting idea, but the piano figure I came up with begs to be developed more. I will leave it for now as the concert is days away, but I have grown fond of this piece and I intend on working with the ideas some more later on.

I started this piece with the intentions of pushing myself in a different direction, and although I acheived this in some ways, it still contains some tendencies that I would like to get away from. The first minute or so is based on a repeating phrase based around a 4-chord progression, and the rest of the piece is very closely related to this material. My musicial ideas are most often loop-based, in that the end of an idea flows right back into the beginning of it as it repeats x number of times before I decide to take it somewhere else.. This is perhaps due to my influences from minimalism, or loop-based electronic music - two genres I listen to regularly. I feel I am strong at this approach to composition, because I am used to keeping loop-based things intersting through rhythmic variation, addition of new melodies/textures, etc... but it almost always happens when I'm writing without me even trying. I hear some compositions that have no trace of repetition, they are constantly growing and changing direction, yet they still maintain that sense of unity that is so easily created when I loop an idea over and over. I don't know if I'm taking the easy way out by writing such repetative music, but either way, next time I want to try to achieve a coherent structure that isn't so dependant on repetition.

Clavé

So, a lot has happened since my last blog. I spent countless hours toying around with new areas for my wonky waltz to go, only to get extremely frustrated and scrap the whole thing. I definitely liked some of what I had going with it, but the obnoxious/silly vibe was exhausting my patience. I felt like I was falling into a lot of things I always do compositionally, and I decided I wanted to push myself in a different direction.

I am very rhythmic-minded, in that I am stimulated by rhymically-driven music, and my writing is usually driven by rhythm. With this I decided to take the typical Clave rhythm and use is as the basis for my cliché piece. Since it is often heard amongst several percussive instruments playing energetic latin-based music, I thought it would be interesting to incorporate it into a softer and more subdued piece of music. What has evolved so far is a simple, pleasant piece of music that I find very easy to digest. It is a bit more repetative than I would like at this point (one of the things I always fall into), but I'm happy with the overall scope of what it seems to be settling into. The melodic lines and rhythmic interplay between piano, violin, cello, and a variety of percussion instruments sounds great to me through the MIDI playback.. let's hope it carries over to THE REAL WORLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

wonky waltz

For my composition that incorporates a musical cliché, I decided to use a i-V progression in a waltz feel as my cliché. My goal was to make it obnoxious and silly within the familiar i-V territory, while still being clever and creative both harmonically and rhythmically so that it doesn't become too cliché. As of now I have an introduction that flows and builds quite nicely into the A section of the piece, and a couple of short ideas of where to go next. Although I incorporate some unexpected harmonies in my first few ideas (I+, V+, use of a whole-tone scale), I was looking for ways to go further away from the cliché as the piece went on. Some suggestions last class helped a great deal in this regard.
Rhythmically, some ideas presented to me were: use of hemiola, dropping/adding beats (11/16 as opposed to 3/4, for example). I think these will be essential in taking the music to new, interesting territory. The constricted rhythmic feel of a waltz can get old pretty fast, so I imagined opening up in the next section... perhaps playing around with longer chord progressions as opposed to just alternating between 2 chords, or using a more sustain-heavy texture to get away from the staccato I presented in the early material... basically just getting into less familiar and cliché material, and different rhythmic approaches will undoubtedly help me achieve this more effectively.

Instrumentation is also something I need to reconsider.. piano+oboe+violin could create some balance problems, so I'm thinking about going either with a piano trio, or maybe piano+2 woodwinds, or piano+2 brass, or piano+woodwind+brass... I CAN'T DECIDE

III

This week I played a revised version of my third character piece. I would describe the piece as frantic.. noodly.. driving.. and quite silly at times. It makes me laugh, so I think that's a good thing.

It was mentioned before that the piece worked as a short work, but could stand to be even twice as long. I added some repeats/variations, and extended some sections, and it definitely works even better now. It is still less than two minutes so it doesn't lose the concise quality I was going for.

There is a repetative ascending 4-note figure that occurs a lot throughout the piece. It is used as an accompanying figure and also as a transitional figure, though in a couple of transitions it sounded kind of awkward and I knew it was also a bit tricky to get to the next part technically. Simon suggested something that I think should have been obvious to me, and that was to extend the 4 notes to keep ascending and take off at some point, rather than repeating. I immediately incorporated this idea, and the transition now sounds better, and runs very smoothly into the next section when it comes to the piano fingering (thanks, Simon!).

There was another section that is a direct repeat but modulated down a perfect fourth.. I thought this may have been enough variation, but a comment was made that it should be even more different.. I agree, and there are definitely some nuances I can spice up within the section to achieve this.

Anthony Braxton

I chose to reflect on the article about Anthony Braxton’s latest approach to composition, because I have always heard a lot about Braxton without ever checking him out. I am a big fan of his son (Tyundai Braxton), whose recent projects are praised for combining rock and electronic elements in unique ways. I had always heard that Anthony was a well-regarded jazz musician, but had no idea how unique and extensive his different approaches to composition were.

This article is about his latest series of compositions entitled “ghost trance musics”. In the start of the interview he speaks of his past experimentation with schematic musics, coordinate music, serialism and other 20^th century techniques, hieroglyphics and colour and dance in music – this is clearly someone always looking forward, so I am itching to hear what this latest project actually sounds like. While I think I would have to read this article 4 or 5 times to fully understand what it is Braxton is trying to achieve with the ghost trance music, I took away enough to be greatly intrigued.

His inspiration comes from ghost dance music of Native Americans, which was used to spiritually unify them with their ancestors, as well as trance musics of Europe, Persia, and Africa. He speaks of using the music as a tool, or a body of information, looking to “unify large and small time spaces”. It seems to me that he is taking a mentality that arose with minimalism – that music didn’t need to be about melody, it could be about texture or repetition or the concept of time in music or any number of things – and taking it to the next level. He drops other boundaries by stating that instrumentation is more or less irrelevant and that the participation of a “friendly experiencer” along with the designated musicians will help achieve his goal.

Again, he is relatively vague when describing technical aspects of the music.. it’s always analogies and explanations of what he is trying to achieve structurally, or what he is trying to provoke in the listener, etc. So I have no idea what to expect as far as what it actually sounds like, but I am now extremely curious. So I guess this was a very effective article.

Blog #4

I was away this past week and missed a lot of time I would have spent working on my pieces, but I managed to get something together anyhow. I was stuck for hours in the editing/re-writing phase of my second piece, so decided to leave it for the time being and try to get a start on my final piece.

I knew that I wanted to have a typical "finale"-esque third piece, so as to be exciting and climactic in the set of 3. I knew I wanted it to be fast, busy, unpredictable in accents and time signatures, and incorporate some themes from the previous 2 pieces (certain chord changes and rhythmic figures).

Many of my chords were very spaced out in their initial voicings, so I put most of them in their prime form and played around with stepwise single note patterns to see if I could get a starting point. Once I had a good progression going, the phrases and sections kind of constructed themselves within a couple of hours.. certain chords I instantly knew to sit on for a bit longer, others I knew I wanted to occur very loud for a brief period of time, etc. My atonal progression seemed a lot easier to work with when I stripped it down to single-note play with all notes very close in register.

Due to time constraints I didn't get a whole lot of feedback today in class, also probably because the performance was under-prepared and sight-reading a fast, unpredictable piece is quite challenging. There was the comment that many of the ideas could potentially be developed more, which I agree with, but I think this piece moreso than my other two would be effective if kept quite short. The different ideas within it all seem to flow in and out of each other quite fluently, so rather than extending or coming up with new material (because there is a lot packed into about 1:30 already) I may just toy around with structuring/repeats of certain parts to see if I can make it a bit longer while retaining its concise quality.

Blog #3

Today's class was very beneficial to me. I was having much more trouble ironing out this second piece but have already made good progress with it since this afternoon.

Firstly, hearing real instruments as opposed to midi playback had me feeling better about ideas I've been doubting for a couple of days.

My concept for this piece was to have a slow, disjunct A section - have the instruments jump around in register, filling in each other's spaces rhythmically, and just being unpredictable in general. I then wanted to have this intensify, only for the piano and vibes to suddenly come together for a brief, trance-like climax, and then to fall apart again and end the piece in the same vein that it started. I had decent ideas for the different sections, but transitional material is always the biggest challenge for me... having a couple of ideas and knowing that they can somehow work together, but not knowing how to get to and from each.

I was given the suggestion to have the instruments gradually come together as the B section approached, rather than to have the "falling apart" nature intensify - this would make for a smoother and easier transition. The idea of having something abstract and arhythmical in one instrument (perhaps solo), and then the second instrument entering with a counter-rhythm that clarifies the pulse and the feel was Dr. Ross' more specific suggestion, and has already helped me come up with some possible solutions.

Blog #2

My first character piece was performed on Wednesday and I was mostly satisfied with how it turned out. The main feedback I received was that it had a cohesive structure, and that some ideas could go on longer or have some more development. This will be tricky, as the structure was the first thing I planned out.. I had feel changes, chord changes, and dynamic growth mapped out in my head as I wanted this to be a relatively short, simple "introduction" to the set of 3 pieces - I then filled in this structure with musical material based around said chords and rhythms. I think it was coherent because the structure flows and works on many levels, but when you break down the individual ideas I ended up putting in, they could definitely be developed more. I am now in a dilemma of whether I want to alter the material so that it sits well in a short, simple piece.. or alter the structure and extend some of these ideas.. or perhaps hint at some of these under-developed ideas in the other two pieces.

WE SHALL SEE.

Blog #1

Chord progression was performed and critiqued today. The growth in tension seemed to be received by listeners as gradual, though I was told the decrease in tension at the end was very miniscule. I am happy with the last few chords being where they are, I think their qualities could end a piece very effectively.. so perhaps through register or voicing changes I can make them seem less tense. The overall tension level was said to be quite high (partially due to my rock n' roll piano technique), so in order to make the pieces not seem TOO crunchy, I think I will try to do a lot with the few chords that are undoubtedly "pleasant" sounding.