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.