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