What's Next

My main goal for over christmas and in to the new year to work on a piece that I started in the summer based on aleatoric music. The piece is written for string quartet and contains a ostinato in the viola while the other instruments play various passages in a yet to be determined order. I would also like to write another piece for voice and another instrument (or multiple) but I will definitely need to work on finding some text to start this project.

Mine and Justin's band will also be working on recording a new ep in the new year.

You can check out the one we released on december 4th at www.pre-raphaelites.bandcamp.com

Year End

Another semester of composition has just about come to an end. The course this semester was definitely a good way to finish off my composition courses at memorial university. Having a smaller class to work with was beneficial for getting back more criticism and help for our compositions. The ECM performing our pieces was a great experience and really helped us with our score preparation. I particularly enjoyed writing for voice and piano. I've never written for voice before and it was a lot of fun, once I finally obtained some, to use text to write the music. Also, the fact that I could be a lot more free with the piano was a plus where as usually I end up relying too much on the piano for content.

Final composition

After being supplied with text for my piece I found the writing process to run rather smoothly. The bulk of the piece was written within a 24 hour time frame and the music was derived by the text. The words that Dave chose for this poem were rather easy to colour musically. This definitely changed the music I had written for this piece previous to the text rather greatly. I definitely think that writing with a text can help fuel ideas for a piece of music and am even considering writing my next non vocal piece with it as an aid.

Text

I finally got a text for my piece thanks to the lovely mr. Dave Goudie:

Constellations

A thread,

A pin that works its way,

Across the sky

Tells a lie,

Tells a lie,

Forming clusters here and there,

Depicting gods and men

That never should conspire,

And a crab for some reason

A bead,

A shred of logic,

Somewhere in my mind,

I can't find,

I can't find,

Shame constellations

My plan for this piece is to use a lot of extended techniques to recreate the visual imagery. The first stanza will contain a lot of pizz. on the piano strings as well as scraping and swiping. The word 'cluster' will obviously consist of cluster chords and will definitely be a word I can play off of for a bit. For the line 'Depicting gods and men' I am going to try and create some sort of god like motive to play with. Definitely something rhythmic.

ECM Reading

We finally got our pieces read by the ECM last week after weeks of worrying and stressing about what they would think of them and how they would turn out. It was definitely a very rewarding and positive experience to see our pieces in the hands of trained professionals as oppose to the land of midi provided by our pirated copies of sibelius 6.

I enjoyed hearing my piece come to life, but there was definitely a few sections that I was a bit confused with and wasn't sure if it was my fault as the composer for not being clear of it was just a simple matter of it being its first read through with the ensemble. One section had the main motive in the Piano (around the 1:4o mark) which seemed a little bit buried. Also, at the 2:50 mark I intended the 16th notes to be equivalent to the 8th notes, which instead ended up to be an awkward transition. Overall, the transitions in my piece were definitely lacking but I did enjoy the form and my attempt at using similar material throughout the piece seemed to be a bit more effective than it tends to be.

Hearing the concert and the pieces presented the night prior to the reading really made me want to go back and re-write my piece entirely, but I'm glad I got this piece read too. It turned out much better than I had anticipated, although I feel like I still have a long ways to go before I am truly satisfied in writing a piece. Let's hope I can work some magic within the next week and a half!

ECM concert

Last night I attended the ECM concert. I wasn't expecting the ensemble to look as it did, especially with the electric guitar and only one of each instrument, but it made a lot more sense as the concert went on and you got to know more of what they were about. The writing styles of the composers were certainly a shock as well. I think my lack of familiarization to contemporary music definitely led me to be ignorant to what type of compositions to expect. Once I heard them I immediately wanted to go back to my piece and rewrite it to make it more suited to their style.

I enjoyed seeing the use of electric guitar in three of the pieces. Once again, I never knew how to approach such an instrument in an ensemble such as this. It was interesting to see the guitarist use effects, which was something I never considered outside of 'pop' music. I think I would definitely want to write for an ensemble and incorporate an electric guitar.

I think my favourite piece of the night was 'Binding the Quiet', by Christopher Mayo. I thought all of the pieces were great, but this is the one that stood out to me the most. I really liked particular how the instruments interacted in this piece. It was great that they had the composers come up and talk before they began the piece because then you were much more aware of what to listen for and certainly gave me ideas for future pieces. An overall great experience.

Composition 4100: The next generation

It's great to be back again for another semester and get some of the creative juices flowing again. Being my last year at mun I'm trying to listen, play and create as much music as possible in these last two semesters.

My biggest obstacle, as of yet, is to write fluent non-tonal music. I usually find my note choice to be completely random and not flowing. I tried approaching this assignment by taking a group of chords that are all tonal and manipulating/adding notes to them. Hopefully this approach will help me make more sense of the progressions I'm using.

Having Rob come in definitely opened up some more options for percussion in the piece. I have yet to incorporate percussion in any of my compositions so I'm definitely going to need to spend some more time with him, or another percussionist, to further increase my knowledge on the instrument.

Robbie vs notation

It's getting close to the end of the semester and I'm just putting the finishing touches on my piece. This piece was definitely quite a struggle for me to complete. So many times I contemplated scraping the entire composition and starting something new, but in the end I think I came out with something that is very contrasting to the rest of my portfolio.

Right now I am trying to pick out the best notation and symbols to best explain my piece to the performers. I have a acquired a book from the QEII called 'Music Notation in the Twentieth Century' by Kurt Stone which contains a lot of notation for extended techniques that I have been finding very helpful. I'm still trying to decide which would be the best way to notate the vertical bow scraps of the cello. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Robbie vs Suggestions

Last thursday I finally got my first reading on my string quartet, which was also the first time I head the piece myself. Although being a bit tricky to recreate, it was great to hear it being played by real musicians for the first time. No foolish midi instruments to discourage anything.

So far this piece is definitely a whole lot different than anything I've written in the past. So far it is broken up in to two main sections. The first section being very sparse using a lot of space and only revealing fragments of a line. The second section is based entirely on atmosphere and the instruments are mainly used more percussively than melodically. The next step is to figure out where I want to go with the piece. Steve suggested that I develop the first section further, hinting at the second section slightly at the beginning and then really open up with that second around the golden mean, which is more or less what I had in mind. Kim, however, suggested that I write a piece entirely on the second idea of muting all the instruments except for one and throwing around a melody to that one instrument.

Currently I have decided to keep writing the piece the way that steve suggested while still keeping kim's idea in mind when I'm focusing on the second section. That way if I feel as if that section could be strong enough to stand alone as an entire piece then I can just go for it and make the other section in to something else.

I've also spent more time this week playing around with the violin that I have at my house. I didn't want to resort back to the piano and I wasn't too fond of the idea of listening to the midi either, so I figured that this would be a good way to hear some of the ideas without falling in to the same traps. It also helps when figuring out how to write the lines for each instrument as well.

Robbie vs String Quartet

After many attempts at many different combinations of instruments I decided to go with the string quartet for the final assignment. The closest thing that I've come to writing for something like this was last year when I wrote my cliche piece for violin, cello and piano, so it should definitely be a learning experience.

Since I haven't studied, or have ever been a part of, a string quartet before I tried to get myself more familiar with the concept by listening to Beethoven's string quartets op. 131 and 135, six of Bartok's, and Webern's for inspiration. I particularly liked Bartok's no. 4 mvt. IV Allegretto, which was entirely pizzicato, and this sparked my main inspiration for my next piece.

At first I tried to dive right in and write the piece using mainly pizzicato however my sense of melodic direction was lacking. I didn't want to write a purely tonal piece but I had no idea how to approach it otherwise. I could grab a chord and rhythmically manipulate it but other than that I was stuck. Dr. Staniland suggested that I completely forget about every other method of writing melody, harmony and rhythm and focus one specific interval to write my piece. If I were to become stuck in any situation, just pick use the interval to help me out. Go up by an interval, down by an interval, have a chord repeat by that interval, have the passage start on the interval in that bar, etc.

So for this assignment I went with the interval of a 6th. I've also taken the approach of not listening to the playback on the computer. The recreation that sibelius makes in nowhere near the actual sound of what the instruments make (especially when you're using extended techniques) and this becomes very discouraging. It is very beneficial to have musicians play through your pieces as much as possible. "mom, I want a string quartet for christmas to put in my closet!"

Robbie vs Tonality

Well, time to catch up on some of this blog writing

The last one I attempted ended up getting erased because I kept it open too long and when I went to finally send it it came up for me to sign in again and I couldn't retrieve the majority of it. So I got discouraged! But here I go again..

Upon completing my three pieces for solo piano I realized how dependent I am on tonality. I was somewhat pleased with my compositions, but at the same time I found them to be relatively predictable melodically as well as lacking a sense of direction. I also find it, ironically, to be a lot more difficult to write for solo piano than other compositions I've written for. Possibly to do with the fact that I'm writing in my comfort zone and a lot of the time only writing things that I can play myself.

For the next assignment I tend on stepping completely away from the piano to try and break some bad habits. It's too much of a safety crutch for my writing and it tends to lead me to the same sort of ideas. I'd like to try and be more free with the use of tonality by stepping away from cliche melodies and harmonies and not be afraid to get a bit ugly instead of writing things that seem more naturally pleasing to the ears. My pieces usually contain a lot of passages that can be repeated consecutively over and over (like a chord pattern or 'riff' in popular music) but I would like to focus more on creating transitional sections.

robbie vs piece #2

In Thursday's class I presented my 2nd piece for the first time. I played it at the concert on the saturday before, but I wanted to get some feedback from it and I didn't exactly play it the way I had it written.. whoops!

The main few areas of the piece include:

the opening, which is very open and spaced out

the middle section, which is quite constant moving in the left hand with the right hand being very simplified

the final section, which contains the main melody of the piece

A couple tweaks that I have so far made to it are:

The first section could definitely be more exact with its spacing. I'm going to try and give a specific length to my empty passages rather than leave it up to the performer.

After Kate mentioned there being a lot of B double flats throughout the piece, I decided to reevaluate the key signature in which I realized that instead of Db flat major (C# major), the piece would contain far less accidentals in E major.

I originally wanted to elaborate on the final melody in my final piece, but I have been working on lengthening this section instead.

The middle section almost seems like it could stand alone as another piece, so I might incorporate this idea in to my final piece.

robbie vs Newfound music

The Newfound music festival is one of the very few activities at mun more so intended for the composition faculty. Obviously it's something that everyone can all enjoy, but for us composers it really helps to see what new tactics are used for composition that can help us write on a different level. This year I managed to attend the thursday and saturday night concerts as well as the morning lectures in the PC hall.

The lectures that Derek Charke and Andrew Staniland presented on the topic of looping and recording were quite intriguing. I spend a lot of time fooling around with looping pedals and recording software to create pieces for 'pop' music, but have yet to attempt to write for anything like this. Using the looping device as an instrument certainly gives the composer a lot more options for composition. The art of real time looping and manipulating would definitely be an interesting concept to toy around with.

As for the concerts, I enjoyed Scott Godin's piece for electric guitar and recording (or two electric guitars) entitled 'Gwan' in particular from the thursday night's concert. Guitar is something that I play quite frequently (even more than my primary instrument to be quite honest) so I could take in the performance a lot easier. I also find myself stuck writing pieces that are more western pop oriented, so to see something that bridges this sort of genre with traditional elements was very enlightening.

The Saturday concert I found to be very enjoyable to watch all around. It was definitely a change of pace from a lot of the concerts that take place at the music and was very refreshing. Jeff Dyer is a personal friend of mine so it was really nice to see him performing again. Dawn Avery's pieces were also very relaxing to sit down and listen t after all the stress that the composition concert caused me.

Overall I really enjoyed this year's festival. In past years I never really took in as much as I did this year and now that I have I'm excited for next year's. Definitely something to look forward to.

robbie vs deadlines

Well it sure is crunch time now!

Just under three days until the performance and I'm frantically trying to finish writing my pieces plus learn a half dozen of them to perform. I decided to scrape the idea that I presented in class yesterday, however I'm keeping the idea of having the melody in the left hand/lower register. I'm going to use this idea for my first piece of the three, which will be quite short in length and lead tonally in to the piece I performed last week.

My third piece is based around a motive that I wrote last week some time. It begins in the same key that my second piece eludes to, then the piece changes colour in the middle and I've toyed with motive coming back in the major to finish it off.

I'm hoping to get all three pieces finished by tomorrow night because I think they would be more effective to be played together in the concert. If not I'm not sure which two would sound the best without the third. Then, of course, I have to figure out a name for them. I'm considering calling the pieces 'serenade of the blueberry fritter' in dedication to my friend at work that told me she would buy me a doughnut if I named a piece after her. That's all I've got really!

Man vs Wild then bed!

mmmmmm eating bugs

-Robbie

robbie vs facebook

I just set up a facebook group for this year's class. Anyone who was on my list I sent an invitation to and anyone who wasn't I can add at the cost of being my friend! This way we can let people know about the concert and any other events and then post some pictures and whatnot.

okay bye!

robbie vs performing

Tuesday's class I presented my first composition, and despite wanting to, I decided to perform the piece as oppose to hearing the midi version of it. I'm not much of sight reader and a nervous as hell performer when it comes to classical music, but it definitely helped display the piece more or less in the way that I wanted it to presented. I have yet to decide whether or not I want to play my piece on saturday. I think I'm leaning more towards doing it. In the past I have just sat in the audience so I can give it my fullest attention, but it could definitely be a good experience to play it for a change.

But moving on, I'll talk more in detail about the piece that I presented. I'm playing two nocturnes in my rep this year; Chopin's nocturne in C sharp minor (op. 27 no. 1) and Scriabin's nocturne for the left hand only, and I think this definitely showed through this composition. You can kind of see the resemblance in the broken chords of the left hand and the melody in the first section in the right hand. I liked Aiden's idea of bringing back the 5/4 at the end of piece in the section where it trails off, so I think I'm going to try and incorporate that. Also, I might elaborate on the donkey kong country snowstorm part a little bit more. But not too much, because I don't want it to be overused.

As for my next piece, I already have 4 other ideas started.

One involves placing a book on the middle of the keyboard and playing with how the strings resonate (a little less muddier and prominent of a blur that the pedal offers). This piece is pretty ambient and sparse.

Another idea is a lot more minimalist and reminiscent of the cliche piece I wrote in 3100. I've been wanting to elaborate more on some of the sections of that piece for a while, however I feel that that might end up with me writing a much longer piece and won't quite fit with this trio of pieces.

As much as I want to write another minimalist music I'd like to take more of a chordal approach. So I've been trying to write a more chordal oriented piece which is slow coming but it certainly starting to grow on me.

The last piece I have started deals with a lot more transitional sections. A lot of the music I have written has been for pop music containing only a few sections, relatively in the same key or two and will have a chord pattern that can be repeated back to back as many times as possible. I'd like to incorporate more transitional sections in my piece that lead somewhere completely different (thus more of a line than circle, if that makes any sense).

Now to try and get these written and rehearsed for next saturday!

yikes!

You look great today!

-Robbie

Entry the first: robbie vs procrastination

Howdy y'all!

After spending half an hour trying to log in to my old blog, I admitted defeat and decided to make a new one. I did however go back and read some of them to realize how utterly foolish and incoherent the vast majority of them were, being generally written in the middle of the night while I struggle to finish composing a piece and putting it in to sibelius.

While I cannot promise that these blogs will be any more coherent and oozing (TMNT 2: the secret of the ooze) with intelligence than the ones prior to this semester, I will attempt to cut down on the large amount of procrastination I dealt with during the semester.

The enemy: Survival tv shows.

currently I'm watching man vs wild. Bear Grylls is pretty bad ass. A minute ago he just killed a snake and used the skin to drink his own pee! Pee!! That's foolish! I can definitely see this show getting in the way of some late night writing. Or maybe it will help me write some wicked epic music that I can incorporate with this course somehow...

One can only hope.

But now on to the music itself. This first project consists of us writing 3 short compositions for solo piano. Yikes! I have yet to write anything for a solo instrument before. And the killer for me is my undying love for minimalist music, which would be quite difficult to state in such a short piece.

***Recommendations:

(A few sets of compositions I'm going to refer to for this assignment that might be useful to all you kind folks as well, especially if you're not a piano player and don't know where to begin looking)

- Chopin's 26 preludes - majority of them are 1-2 pages and basically just concentrate on a rhythmic or melodic idea. Nothing too crazy, very easy to digest and pretty easy to dissect.

- Scriabin's complete collection of preludes - Scriabin is my home boy. His music is a bit more sophisticated and modern (obviously), so this might spark a bit more of an interest for people who want to explore more atonality yet still want to keep things relatively melodic.

- Boulez's 12 notations - Great great great atonal snazziness. If you are fiending something that's a little more out there, take a listen to these bad boys. A wicked representation of different characteristics per piece. It might be a littler harder to track down than the other two, but I found a copy of them on naxos on the cd 'Piano Music: 2008 Sydney International Piano Competition - Vol. 1. Solo Highlights'.

- man vs wild - http://www.justin.tv/drew312312#r=j9xmIyQ it just streams the episodes! Doesn't work all the time, but when it does whooooooa baby watch out!

That's all I have for you right now.

Man, now Bear's on a raft! I love when he's in the ocean!

Watch out for sharks!

They'll get ya!

-Dad