I have an idea started for my third piece, and Andrew Staniland + class helped me with some great suggestions of how to finish it. It is a very driving piece, mostly straight 16th notes with lots of open sounding intervals/sustain pedal, meant to be very washy at times, but also very rhythmic. I am trying to keep the driving feel throughout, but changing the rhythmic emphasis as harmonic changes occur so as to keep it interesting.
Some suggestions: m.4 has an accompanimental figure of simply 5ths and 8ves, with a pretty melody on top.... taking those melody notes and fitting them into the accompaniment gives the part a lot more color! something to keep in mind if similar figures occur
- a lot of 3+3+3+3+3+3+4 and such rhythms occur (in 4/4), I could come up with some sort of numerical system to decide the rhythms OR the intervals for me
- the idea of a "blur" at some point in the piece, where so many notes are played very fast and loud, with the sustain pedal all the way down (maybe moving up a chromatic scale), and then slowly lifting off the pedal to reveal the original theme in a new key area. I think this will sound great in the context of what I have so far!
As with most of my pieces, I'm going to keep the rhythmic element a very key component in the compositional process... I now have lots of ideas on how to do this!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Newfound Music
I always enjoy Newfound Music day, and the concerts that accompany it. This year was particularly enjoyable!
The two presentations that I chose to write about were "Inner Space/Outer Space", a presentation about the Sound Symposium, and Derek Charke's presentation on "Sound Ecology".
I am vaguely familiar with the Sound Symposium, and it was great to get an inside scoop of 2008's festival. I've attended several and even performed in some "Night Music" events at the Ship, which are sponsored by the Sound Symposium, so I knew that sound spontaneity, improv, and new approaches to music and art are the basic approaches involved. 2008 had a theme related to geographic locations, how they can affect sound, and the way we perceive it. Concepts such as a "sight-specific" piece (where the composition was intended to be executed at a certain place and certain time), and an individual's "sound biography" (referring to all the sounds one has heard in their lifetime, and the emotions and memories we then associate with such sounds) were new concepts to me. Watching several performers set up experiments of music in strange locations, or having pieces entirely dependant on the participation of the audience were interesting as well.
The idea of Sound Ecology was very intriguing to me as well. I've done a fair bit of processing and messing around with recorded guitars/percussion that I do at home, and in electronic music class last year, some other random noises I created... but capturing the wide array of sounds that occur in nature and using them as a basis for a composition was something I had never thought of. Taking the crunch of someone walking through hard snow and looping it to create a driving rhythm sounded amazing, and layering this all to a tape and then playing flute over it was something Derek did in some of the concerts.. GREAT STUFF!
The two presentations that I chose to write about were "Inner Space/Outer Space", a presentation about the Sound Symposium, and Derek Charke's presentation on "Sound Ecology".
I am vaguely familiar with the Sound Symposium, and it was great to get an inside scoop of 2008's festival. I've attended several and even performed in some "Night Music" events at the Ship, which are sponsored by the Sound Symposium, so I knew that sound spontaneity, improv, and new approaches to music and art are the basic approaches involved. 2008 had a theme related to geographic locations, how they can affect sound, and the way we perceive it. Concepts such as a "sight-specific" piece (where the composition was intended to be executed at a certain place and certain time), and an individual's "sound biography" (referring to all the sounds one has heard in their lifetime, and the emotions and memories we then associate with such sounds) were new concepts to me. Watching several performers set up experiments of music in strange locations, or having pieces entirely dependant on the participation of the audience were interesting as well.
The idea of Sound Ecology was very intriguing to me as well. I've done a fair bit of processing and messing around with recorded guitars/percussion that I do at home, and in electronic music class last year, some other random noises I created... but capturing the wide array of sounds that occur in nature and using them as a basis for a composition was something I had never thought of. Taking the crunch of someone walking through hard snow and looping it to create a driving rhythm sounded amazing, and layering this all to a tape and then playing flute over it was something Derek did in some of the concerts.. GREAT STUFF!
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