blog 8

So this is my last blog entry for 4100.

I just printed off my score to be passed in for grading.

I feel pretty good about the piece. Since my last post, I have completed my C section and the final A section.

My C section is a rhythmically driven passage with no real melodic content, and a switch to totally new rhythmic material. It was inspired by a movement from the Serocki trombone suite which uses similar rhythmical motion.

My final A section is in 7/8 which contrasts the opening 8/8 meter. The division is 2+3+2 as opposed to the 3+3+2 from the beginning. The material is very similar, but the mode has been transposed down a major second.

Over all, I feel good about it. I think I'm going to come back to it, maybe expand on it, or introduce a return of the B and another A section. Who knows. It feels done to me right now, and I can't wait to play it with Paddywagon!

blog 7

So I presented my material for comp class on friday. I am writing a piece for the paddywagon trombone quartet, and I've been experimenting with Messiaen's modes of limited transposition (As I've mentioned in earlier posts).

I wanted to change my form to a longer form piece, rather than a couple shorter character movements. I'd still prefer to use the latter for my piece, but I for the class and marking purposes, I'll have to write a single character form. Oh well! I've decided to write in a rondo type of a form, with the contrasting B and C sections incorporating some of the ideas I had for my first idea. So I guess it's a win win situation after all.

I started over with new material last thursday and it's been working great! I am using non-standard meters and key areas, so hopefully it'll turn out to be an interesting piece!! Hopefully I can bring the written material to paddywagon rehearsal tonight, to see what it sounds like!

blog 6

Today the ECM+ played our 4100 compositions!!! And I gotta say, it was QUITE the experience. The group did an amazing job, and it was everything and more what we all expected, at least for me.

I was very excited to finally have this experience. It's been a while coming, having known about it since august!!! I was nervous, not really knowing what to expect in this situation. It was the first time I really had a professional group read though one of my pieces with me in the audience following along with them, and working with them. I loved it!

I was wondering what the extended technique section of my piece was going to sound like. I really only knew what it could have sounded like in my head, and hearing a group play it, it really made me realize that I could have done SOOOOO much more of that kind of writing. It inspired me to try and compose more things like that. Take the chance. Even if you could fail horribly. We really didn't have anything to lose with this opportunity, and I think I gained a great learning experience and lesson.

I want to thank the ECM for doing this for us, and everyone else who helped facilitate this! It's an excellent experience for us students to go through.
A NECESSARY experience.

It was great, and I can't wait to do something like this again!

blog 5

It's been a little while since the last one, but honestly, this semester has been non stop work!! Holy!

I've since submitted my ECM piece, which will be read by the group this coming thursday. That is SUPER exciting!!! I can't wait!! I think it will be a great learning experience, in a lot of ways, like interacting with the ensemble as they try and read your piece.

I have begun work on my next assignment, which is for Paddywagon, the MUN trombone quartet. I am currently writing with Messiaens modes of limited transposition, and I gotta say, it's a really neat way of composing and thinking of your piece! New types of harmonies and sounds that I'm not used to working with!

blog 4

So it's been quite a while since my last post.

I've honestly been too busy working on the composition lately to find time to write something here! I guess that's a good reason??

A lot has been done since my last post. Most importantly, I'm "done"! At least, I feel like it's finished, so that's a good thing.

Looking back to my last post, I ended up finishing with a very different idea than I planned on. This piece has really morphed into something I didn't see back in september! I am proud that I kept truckin' on the original idea for the piece, even when I did want to change, or do something radically different. It stayed true to my original thought, and I'm happy it did!

I'm now trying to be as meticulous as possible with my editing as I can be. I've tried going over it again and again, and keep adding/changing details. I need to double check a few things tomorrow....

So I think I'll be able to submit my work on time, and without a mad rush! HUZZAH!

On another note, my concert band piece that I wrote last spring and entered in the Gower band composition competition, which I ended up getting 1st in :) , is being premiered next Saturday, which is SO exciting! I really can't wait to hear it, and write something new for the upcoming competition!

That's all for now!

blog 3

I've got the week of hell to deal with this week. So much to get done....so little time.

I think for Friday, I'm going to try and have about 75% of the piece done. This means a lot has to be done. I plan on expanding the intro into something bigger/significant.
I want to also expand my other sections and not have then so choppy/short.

I want there to be more space...which is hard when I have a constant ostinato on the go. I want some more smaller ensemble work between maybe 2 or 3 instruments, and try to re-orchestrate some themes/motives, and work on that.

I have a bunch of ideas planned, so hopefully I can get a lot of work done.

AH.

blog 2

I've just finished my preparation for class tomorrow. It's.....going.....slowly....

I don't know....maybe I'm lacking inspiration, or knowledge.....definitely the latter.

I like what I have, and know that it could turn into something good....maybe even great. But I just....can't seem to see the end picture yet.

I've changed the beginning three times already, and I'm still not satisfied..grrrr.

I discovered a new "section" which is good news. I think if I can expand on what I've come up with already, I'll be in business. I just need to figure out HOW

Bah!

New school year, new pieces, new fun times!

So this is my first entry for the fall 2010 4100 course!

The first piece is for flute, viola, horn, piano and percussion. The EMC will be visiting St. John's and are awesome enough to read through our pieces! Very exciting!

This is an unusual instrumentation, certainly for me at least, and it will really push me to be creative for this project.

I've started to fiddle around with the idea of polytonality, and using a pitch collection for my melodic/harmonic material(s). I have a 027 pc set but I'm thinking of using a 017 as my main motive. I have a recurring two sixteenth and eighth note rhythmic motive, but hopefully I'll be expanding on that!

I have a few more thoughts floating around in my noggin!

More tomorrow hopefully!

Well it's been a week or two since my last posting! So here goes...

Since the last update, I've heard the MUN Wind Ensemble play through my piece! I was sort of wondering what the difference of hearing it on my computer to hearing a live performance/reading with actual instruments would sound like. Would it change EVERYTHING? Would it make my rethink things about the piece? Would my orchestration be good or bad? There were so many ifs.

Most of my questions were answered with only one hearing. It didn't change everything! It didn't cause me to question my compositional decisions, or feel embarrassed, which was great. In terms of my orchestrations, I'd say mostly it was decent, but somethings that may not have been balanced/ appropriate during reading were probably due to the piece being sight-read. There are a couple things that I may change, but mostly I'm happy with it. I LOVED some of the chords that I created! I was really glad for sticking with my original thought for harmonic qualities and progressions.

I really wanted this piece to be a little/twice as long. There were some sections that really could have gone on longer. So maybe I will expand it this summer for something to do.

I got a taste of hearing a large ensemble play something that I wrote, and more than anything it was a tease/ desire to continue writing pieces like this so I can keep getting these experiences and opportunities. I have only been composing since the beginning of the school year, and let me tell you, hearing an ensemble play something I created really makes me realize that this is something that I really want to be doing and glad that I'm doing theory and composition as my major.

I had a great time composing/arranging this term! I'm excited to get started on a new project(s) over the summer!

Finished!

Well well well....

It's been a little while since a post.
BUT EXCITING NEWS! I think I just finished my band piece! Hurraaaay!
I feel pretty good about it too! There are a few things that I need to fine tune, mostly orchestration issues, typical... but nothing too taxing! I'm pretty satisfied with the form. I think so anyway... when I hear the band play in on wednesday, I'll know for sure. Well I guess that will answer a lot of my questions and curiosities about this piece.
Since my last presentation, I had a sort of march like thing happening, which meant to lead into a new section/ climax (which it does, as it turns out). Last week I added a new melody that played right into my climax. Right after the high point, the texture slowly gets less and less, as does the dynamic and tension. Then there is a restatement of my opening material, only orchestrated mostly for woodwinds, instead of brass, and I finish it off with a direct restatement of the very opening percussion.

I feel pretty good about it all! I'll hopefully present tomorrow in class and hopefully everyone else will like it too. I wasn't able to present on thursday because I discovered Thursday morning that my car decided to have a flat tire, and I spent all morning at a garage.....-_-....

Thats it! Now on to printing parts for the reading!

So I'm presenting my band piece again tomorrow, and I've got a few more things added since last week. I've extended one section, and beginning to think of ways to build to the climax of the piece. I've been having some trouble lately being happy with what I'm coming up with. It's just not fitting quite the way I want it, or hear it to. Hopefully it'll clear up soon, I think I just need to get away from it for a while and re-focus. I'M THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT IT!
So hopefully people will give some helpful feedback to try and pry me out of the compositional ditch that I'm stuck in right now!

Since my last post I've really dug into the wind band tune. Last week I presented twice, which was nice. On tuesday it was impromptu because there was a lot of time left to the class and I had at least something to show. It wasn't much, since I wasn't prepared, but I had gotten a better idea of my piece done since my previous turn.
My main idea is still with a gradual build up to a climax, and then a gradual decay until the end. I'm working around an A flat lydian scale mostly, but not strictly. I am using a lot of major chords with added 2nds and 4ths, which creates a very neat dissonance.
I present tomorrow with a little more new material. I have a 2nd section started, and I want some feedback before I start to really dive in.
I have a pretty good overall structure in my head, which is comforting, since we don't have a whole lot of time left! yikes! I'm really enjoying composing for wind band, and hopefully be able to write some other pieces!
Well, I'll have a more up-to-date post shortly after tomorrows class.

I presented some ideas for my concert band piece today. It wasn't much, hardly anything really, but a general chord progression that I had come up with and the types of harmonies that I plan on using and focusing on.

I was to create a very calm and beautiful atmosphere that over time starts to build and build tension and texture. I sort of came up with an idea for a melody just now, and it seems like the start of something!

I've also been listening to a lot of wind band music lately to really try and get a better idea of the balances, blends and sounds that are typical, and what I want to create.

That's it! Hopefully more soon

Ok it's been a little while!

Work has been crazy lately, so here is an update on my compositional life.

I recently passed in my finished copies of my 3 piano pieces. After I presented my last piece to the class, I was given the suggestion that I should more-or-less can the second half of it, and really try to expand the first half. I did that, which required a little bit of crunch composition to get it finished, but what's a couple of missed hours of sleep anyway? I was pleased with what I produced, and liked what that ended up being instead of my original draft. I expanded on the chordal progression that I had introduced and elaborated on it more intensely, I also did this to the rhythms and pitch directions and orders. I also had to re-do the ending of my first piece, which took a little bit of thinking and time, since I had been away from it for a while. The end result was a better and more appropriate ending, and arriving back to the "home key area".

So that is the finished updates for my piano pieces!

Newfound Music blog

So this is a little late, but here it is!
It's my blog about the Newfound Music Festival

I attended Derek Charke's lecture "Presentation on his music" and I was really interested in a lot of the topics and examples that he presented. He went through some recordings of various things and sounds that he put together to create an accompaniment to a flute piece. Then he went through the pitch collections that he used to make up the pitch order and ways he varied them. After discussing why he chose them and letting us here some of the electronic samples, he played a recording the piece and it was really interesting to hear how it all fit and presented itself. He then talked about a piece that he composed based on native throat singing of Northern Canada. He showed us some innovative bowing techniques that he devised to emulate the unique sounds that a throat singer can create, for example; moving the bow in both clockwise and counter-clockwise motion; and vertical up and down bowing. He played a couple excerpts of the piece and it was amazing the sounds that the string quartet was able to produce. It sounded unreal!

I was able to only attend the Thursday night concert, and looking at some of the posts about the other shows, especially Saturday night, I'm sad I wasn't able to hear those. But the concert on Thursday was great nonetheless. My favorite pieces were the Toccatas by Crawley, Gustnadoes by Charke, and Gwan by Godin. They were all very different, but really interesting and entertaining. I loved everything in the concert, but these pieces really captured my attention and interest.

I really liked Newfound Music this year, as I do every year, and I really wish that we could have more of these during the course of the semester instead of just being an annual event. Playing in Jess' piece with the concert band was a real treat! I really liked her piece and it was just great to see a fellow students work get promoted and played with the dedication that it received (the wind ensemble did a wicked job!). Our piano concert before the show on Satruday was also a lot of fun. Everyone's pieces were exciting and different, which made for a great concert. It was short and sweet, and we got a great audience! What else could we have asked for? Notable things from past Newfound festivals include playing in Reiley's "In C" last year, which was a lot of fun and a rare experience! These festivals continue to provide top-notch presentations and world class music, which makes us very fortunate to receive and participate in. Personally, it is a great learning experience and continues to give me encouragement and inspiration. It really is too bad that we only get one a year, but hey, maybe that will change in the future!

So our first concert of the semester went over very well!!
It was really nice to hear everybody's two piano pieces in the PC Hall. I think that the show was a success because it didn't run to long, there were no awkward pauses in between performances, and the show was about 45 minutes long, which is perfect for a pre-show to an 8 o'clock concert! I think we had a good sized audience as well! I was half worried that we'd have trouble getting people to come, but with a facebook group, a poster (by yours truely), and word of mouth we were glad to see so many people! It's always better to have a bigger crowd than I small one.
I had a short meeting with Derek Charke on Friday, and that was very helpful! Just to get another professional opinion is always a great thing, and he offered many tips and suggestions that I think will really help shape my pieces better.

So this will be a blog on my second piano piece.
Since it wasn't presented in class, I haven't had as many comments or suggestions about it. I originally had another idea in mind for the second composition, but the more I spent with that idea, the more I started to not like it. So I decided to try something new. Since the first piece had what I thought to be a flowing, or waterfall, feel, I decided to continue on with composing with a "nature" or an effect we can see or feel. I was composing at the piano in my house, and I saw the tree outside moving with the wind, so I thought about writing about wind. In the piece, it starts out with a gentle and slow movements, but gradually increase speed and direction. There is a part where it goes to a minor section, with a interpreted as a brewing storm, where the winds get more violent and malicious. It then comes back to a fairly calm state and starts to die away.
I loved hearing it performed live, and I got some pretty good complements about it too!

An update on my first piano piece:
I had it presented in class last thursday and it went over really well! Everyone seemed to like it, which is great, and they gave me some helpful ideas on how to improve. I am going to expand the opening material with more of my rhythmic alterations (4 sixteenth notes, and quintuplets) and also do this towards the end of the piece, and also change the ending.
The only change that will be used for this coming concert is the ending. With another composition being finished, and other work, and also leaving enough time for my performer to learn the music, I'll have wait until after the concert to do the other changes just because there isn't enough hours in the day.
I'm relatively happy with the new ending, I'll wait until Andrew plays it on piano to really see how it fits with the rest of the music, but hopefully it works out!

1st piano piece done

I just finished my first piano piece for the project.Well, when I say it's done, it's "pretty much" done. It's got a beginning and an ending, and hopefully I won't have to change much else in between! I called it "Cascade" because of the continuous descending triplet motion. I added a lot since my first sketch, such as more melodic material, a more concentrated harmonic progression and some alterations to the rhythm content. I'm fairly happy with it, I've played all of it on piano as I composed, but I'll have to wait until I give it to my performer to really hear the real thing.
So now I have to get started on my next piece! I think it's going to based on some of Bartok's works, and I have a pretty good idea of the character. The title "Thief" really comes to mind when I picture it in my head! So hopefully I can produce what I was on paper!

So this is my first post for 4100!
The first composition project is writing 3 short pieces for piano. So far I've been tossing around a couple ideas back and forth, trying to decide which ideas to use for my pieces. I started to work on one using a triplet motive with a harmonic progression like Bach's first prelude from the WTC. I've yet to finish it, and right now I am trying to find different ways to alter the rhythmic motion and incorporate some melody lines. I think I have thought of everything I'm going to do, I just need to put them to paper.