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.