Hello again! Back for another wonderful segment of Tony's composition blog, are we? Let's get to it then!
When I first opened my composition this week, I felt compelled to move on to my next movement despite the fact that my last movement wasn't finished and unedited. At the same time, I felt I didn't have much in mind for this next movement. With this week done, my first movement finished/edited, second movement half done, and a lot of positive and helpful feedback from my peers and Dr. Ross, and having a general idea of my last movement, I feel very content.
My problem with the framing of atonality so far in this project is that it seems to always lead to something that doesn't always sound happy. Now, luckily my classmates had proved that wrong, and ultimately I knew it wasn't true anyway. I was just being a bit of a sook. But how was I to go ahead and make a movement that was light in nature? I watched some wicked flamenco guitar pieces, and similar piece and was inspired. I decided that 6/8 was perhaps the best place to start with this because of its bouncy nature. I also decided to create a driving rhythmic figure that would largely dominate the movement. From here, the piece took off. It soon became clear that the guitar and piano would be facing off in this movement. In that, I found the inspiration to finish off the first movement, as well. After the big dark crashing of the guitar and piano, the guitar would try to set things straight, but unfortunately the piano always wanted to intervene. The guitar gets fed up, and challenges the piano to a duel. The guitar's driving rhythm is centered around Eb, which the first 4-5 chords of my progression are based around. I was worried about this, that it would sound too tonal. However, with the suggestion of my friend Aaron Good, as long as I made the piano in an opposing key, the idea of atonality would certainly come across. And so, a jazzy funky duel ensued. The piano will take the reigns in D next, and the last movement will cover C#, C and B.
I met with Andrew Noseworthy just before class this week, and he gave an excellent overview of a lot of guitar techniques and how to notate them. I have quite a few ideas as to where to implement such things, and Dr. Ross was helpful during class with some of these things too. Be prepared for this next week!
Regarding my feedback this week, I largely agreed with all of it. I hope that as a junior composer in my class, people aren't afraid to truly criticize some of my ideas! Again, it seemed mostly based upon score layout, but I did get more musical ideas too. I will certainly address my "closed chord" syndrome (that's self diagnosed). The piano could benefit greatly from a more ambitious part, using the extent of its range more. The guitar could use more chords, especially when the piano gets louder and is more thickly scored. I was very happy that people seemed to be picking up on the subtle use of my established chords. I'm not going to go through all of the score nit-picky comments, but know that I agreed with practically all of it and will be incorporating most of those.
So with a more clear direction, inspiration from my class mates and all of their wonderful compositions, and only one more variation to go, things are starting to look good!
Until next week...!
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