This semester, I have enjoyed experimenting with and learning about a wide range of new and unfamiliar compositional processes as well as styles.
mercury is in retrograde
The first project that I worked on this semester was a work written for string quartet (more specifically, the Darlington Quartet).
Believe it or not, I don't have the widest host of knowledge when it comes to classical music (my knowledge is very limited), so to be honest I really don't know where the external influence/s came from composer-wise for this one.
I composed this piece with a classical style in mind (more like my impression of what classical string quartet sounds like). I experimented with a few distinctive sections that are characterised by their different moods, through the use of long, drawn-out chords of pleasing harmony, pizzicato parts and a staccato arco section.
Mercury is In Retrograde was composed for the purpose of broadening my horizons when it comes to composing, through exploring unfamiliar instrumentation, harmony, form etc. I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to work with the Darlington Quartet, a group of extremely talented professional string players, and to learn more about writing for string instruments and the boundaries and limitations that come with that, although I never actually personally worked with them in the end.
The aesthetic of this piece is intended to be generally pleasing to hear (i.e not necessarily dissonant) and to exude a light, positive mood.
It is important to me, personally, as a budding composer, to show that I have a diverse range of compositional experience in a wide range of genres and styles (this is the purpose that this piece serves)
The initial compositional process generally involved me in front of the piano, with a pad of manuscript paper and a pen, experimenting with different melodies as well as harmony across 4 (or less at some points) voices, keeping in mind the physical limitations of each instrument, regarding its range etc. I then put these rough ideas into musescore, altering most of them slightly, changing ideas a bit and deciding how the contrasting ideas were going to transition into each other.
The structure is characterised by the ABCDD'A form that I wrote it in. This structure was not one that was intended prior to the writing of the piece, but rather a form that evolved as I experimented with different motifs and ideas, chopping and changing what I thought fit nicely, whether it be smoothly transitioning from one to another or abruptly switching (both of which occurred at different times throughout the piece). This is so that, as a listening experience, the audience is soothed by the calm moods and smooth transitions, and sometimes pleasantly startled by the abrupt change between, adding a layer of contrast to the listening experience.
Believe it or not, I don't have the widest host of knowledge when it comes to classical music (my knowledge is very limited), so to be honest I really don't know where the external influence/s came from composer-wise for this one.
I composed this piece with a classical style in mind (more like my impression of what classical string quartet sounds like). I experimented with a few distinctive sections that are characterised by their different moods, through the use of long, drawn-out chords of pleasing harmony, pizzicato parts and a staccato arco section.
Mercury is In Retrograde was composed for the purpose of broadening my horizons when it comes to composing, through exploring unfamiliar instrumentation, harmony, form etc. I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to work with the Darlington Quartet, a group of extremely talented professional string players, and to learn more about writing for string instruments and the boundaries and limitations that come with that, although I never actually personally worked with them in the end.
The aesthetic of this piece is intended to be generally pleasing to hear (i.e not necessarily dissonant) and to exude a light, positive mood.
It is important to me, personally, as a budding composer, to show that I have a diverse range of compositional experience in a wide range of genres and styles (this is the purpose that this piece serves)
The initial compositional process generally involved me in front of the piano, with a pad of manuscript paper and a pen, experimenting with different melodies as well as harmony across 4 (or less at some points) voices, keeping in mind the physical limitations of each instrument, regarding its range etc. I then put these rough ideas into musescore, altering most of them slightly, changing ideas a bit and deciding how the contrasting ideas were going to transition into each other.
The structure is characterised by the ABCDD'A form that I wrote it in. This structure was not one that was intended prior to the writing of the piece, but rather a form that evolved as I experimented with different motifs and ideas, chopping and changing what I thought fit nicely, whether it be smoothly transitioning from one to another or abruptly switching (both of which occurred at different times throughout the piece). This is so that, as a listening experience, the audience is soothed by the calm moods and smooth transitions, and sometimes pleasantly startled by the abrupt change between, adding a layer of contrast to the listening experience.
beware the queen ant
This piece was written for a classical Percussion Quartet, with the instrumentation of a Timpani, Xylophone, Snare Drum and a Hi-Hat player.
It is written in a classical style, with a playful mood, exploring the specific narrative of the High and Mighty Queen Ant (represented by the Timpani), whom all in the nest must obey (or else...), and her guards (Snare Drum), who punish any ant (Hi-hat and Xylophone) who dares fall out of line. It goes through different periods of conflict between the Queen (and her guards) and her subjects, in the forms of simultaneity but also conversation between instruments.
Again, this piece doesn’t necessarily exist for the purpose of being perceived/experienced by an audience, but rather to be a personal growth experience for me, as a composer (who has never written for anything even remotely within the realm of classical percussion).
Keeping the narrative in mind throughout the compositional process, I wrote this piece by singing/tapping different ideas into my voice memos, and playing back the ideas that I felt suited the piece. I then notated the parts, changing some bits that I wasn’t quite happy with/thought could sound better when played by the instrument sounds, and began structuring it as a whole piece. I kept a lot of conversation going, because I really liked the idea of lots of call and answer going on throughout the piece.
It is sort of randomly structured. In hindsight I definitely should have put some more thought into the specific structure of the piece and applied it definitely, rather than just experimenting and going with the flow. To be honest though, I am pretty happy with how it sounds anyway, but a bit of uniformity or the idea of a returning motif could have made it sound more deliberate and cohesive. However, I think that the randomness and mood shifts adds to the idea of a developing narrative, the ants sneaking around in fear of their queen, at some points clashing with her or her guards.
It is written in a classical style, with a playful mood, exploring the specific narrative of the High and Mighty Queen Ant (represented by the Timpani), whom all in the nest must obey (or else...), and her guards (Snare Drum), who punish any ant (Hi-hat and Xylophone) who dares fall out of line. It goes through different periods of conflict between the Queen (and her guards) and her subjects, in the forms of simultaneity but also conversation between instruments.
Again, this piece doesn’t necessarily exist for the purpose of being perceived/experienced by an audience, but rather to be a personal growth experience for me, as a composer (who has never written for anything even remotely within the realm of classical percussion).
Keeping the narrative in mind throughout the compositional process, I wrote this piece by singing/tapping different ideas into my voice memos, and playing back the ideas that I felt suited the piece. I then notated the parts, changing some bits that I wasn’t quite happy with/thought could sound better when played by the instrument sounds, and began structuring it as a whole piece. I kept a lot of conversation going, because I really liked the idea of lots of call and answer going on throughout the piece.
It is sort of randomly structured. In hindsight I definitely should have put some more thought into the specific structure of the piece and applied it definitely, rather than just experimenting and going with the flow. To be honest though, I am pretty happy with how it sounds anyway, but a bit of uniformity or the idea of a returning motif could have made it sound more deliberate and cohesive. However, I think that the randomness and mood shifts adds to the idea of a developing narrative, the ants sneaking around in fear of their queen, at some points clashing with her or her guards.
sunday markets
This project was a piece written for a non-existent Animè film/series as part of the Kevin Penkin visiting artist thing from project week. I was given basically no parameters for this one, except for those of the instrumentation of a chamber ensemble (WAAPA’s HearNow).
I imagined the setting of a little Japanese girl wandering her bustling local farmer’s market on a sunny Sunday morning. The instrumentation I decided to work with was pretty small, consisting of one classical guitar, a percussion section of congas, a glockenspiel and a triangle, one electric bass, one electric piano and one flute. I picked these because they suited my idea of a light, whimsical, upbeat piece. Overall, I gave it an upbeat Latin Bossa type of vibe, which I felt fitted with what I wanted from the piece.
To me, I am fairly happy with the way Sunday Markets really captures the essence of the narrative I was going for, and I think it would go really well in an actual screenplay of it. I hope that when people hear it, they can visualise/imagine the little girl exploring the vibrant markets.
I made it on the fly, starting with the electric piano, which was the first instrument that I decided fitted with the vibe I wanted. I wrote out the basic skeleton of the piano part, slowly adding more instruments. There are some parts that look like pretty dissonant/unusual chord voicings in the piano part (as well as other parts on top of it but mainly the piano). I did this on purpose to create a bit of funky jazziness through lots of use of chromaticism, mainly in the transitions between different chords. I added the flute layer over the piano, which I realised unintentionally gave it a ‘Mario-Kart’ soundtrack sort of vibe (which I wasn’t mad about tbh). I then added the bass, which was intentionally supposed to be fast-paced and clashing at times, with the idea of adding a ‘funky’, jazzy feel to it, which I reckon turned out pretty well. After this, I wrote out the guitar part to sort of double the piano part, but adding another dimension of rhythm. Last came the Conga and Triangle parts.
The piece as a whole is a very short one, so if it were to be actually used as a film score, I would need to lengthen it rather dramatically. It worked for the Animè concert though because I like the way it is short and sweet, because there was really nothing more I felt needed to be added. My idea was to hold the audience’s attention for a short amount of time and keep them wanting more :P
I imagined the setting of a little Japanese girl wandering her bustling local farmer’s market on a sunny Sunday morning. The instrumentation I decided to work with was pretty small, consisting of one classical guitar, a percussion section of congas, a glockenspiel and a triangle, one electric bass, one electric piano and one flute. I picked these because they suited my idea of a light, whimsical, upbeat piece. Overall, I gave it an upbeat Latin Bossa type of vibe, which I felt fitted with what I wanted from the piece.
To me, I am fairly happy with the way Sunday Markets really captures the essence of the narrative I was going for, and I think it would go really well in an actual screenplay of it. I hope that when people hear it, they can visualise/imagine the little girl exploring the vibrant markets.
I made it on the fly, starting with the electric piano, which was the first instrument that I decided fitted with the vibe I wanted. I wrote out the basic skeleton of the piano part, slowly adding more instruments. There are some parts that look like pretty dissonant/unusual chord voicings in the piano part (as well as other parts on top of it but mainly the piano). I did this on purpose to create a bit of funky jazziness through lots of use of chromaticism, mainly in the transitions between different chords. I added the flute layer over the piano, which I realised unintentionally gave it a ‘Mario-Kart’ soundtrack sort of vibe (which I wasn’t mad about tbh). I then added the bass, which was intentionally supposed to be fast-paced and clashing at times, with the idea of adding a ‘funky’, jazzy feel to it, which I reckon turned out pretty well. After this, I wrote out the guitar part to sort of double the piano part, but adding another dimension of rhythm. Last came the Conga and Triangle parts.
The piece as a whole is a very short one, so if it were to be actually used as a film score, I would need to lengthen it rather dramatically. It worked for the Animè concert though because I like the way it is short and sweet, because there was really nothing more I felt needed to be added. My idea was to hold the audience’s attention for a short amount of time and keep them wanting more :P
taming technology project
Over the final project week of the semester, visiting artist CLAUDIO provided me with a deeper, richer understanding of basic recording using Ableton as a DAW.
I ended up just using Logic Pro X because I had already previously used up my Ableton free trial and was unable to re-activate it without having to pay for it. I chose to record a 3-part harmony of myself playing the song, Without You Without Them, by bogyenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker). I used the Zoom H4n field recording device to record each part, which I had transcribed and arranged into 3 separate parts for Tenor Saxophone.
I filmed myself with one continuous video, playing each part until I was happy with it, also keeping the Zoom recording onto a Logic track the whole time. I kept the camera in the same position, rearranging the music stand and microphone so that for each of the 3 parts, I was only standing in one specific third of the camera grid. I played each part with the metronome click in my headphones so that each part could be easily and correctly synced up.
The editing process was fairly simple. I edited each video clip to the best take and cropped them lengthways in thirds. I used CapCut to arrange these clips side-by-side, editing the background to make it almost look like one seamless video of 3 people (who are all the same person).
The audio editing was pretty easy, I trimmed each part to the best take (making sure it was the same take I had chosen for each video part) and put the parts on 3 separate tracks, syncing them up to be in time with each other. I applied some light equalisation, but other than that, didn’t do much audio processing, as I didn’t want to take away from the raw, homemade feel that I was going for. It was then just a matter of importing the final muted video file onto Logic and syncing it to the final audio.
I ended up just using Logic Pro X because I had already previously used up my Ableton free trial and was unable to re-activate it without having to pay for it. I chose to record a 3-part harmony of myself playing the song, Without You Without Them, by bogyenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker). I used the Zoom H4n field recording device to record each part, which I had transcribed and arranged into 3 separate parts for Tenor Saxophone.
I filmed myself with one continuous video, playing each part until I was happy with it, also keeping the Zoom recording onto a Logic track the whole time. I kept the camera in the same position, rearranging the music stand and microphone so that for each of the 3 parts, I was only standing in one specific third of the camera grid. I played each part with the metronome click in my headphones so that each part could be easily and correctly synced up.
The editing process was fairly simple. I edited each video clip to the best take and cropped them lengthways in thirds. I used CapCut to arrange these clips side-by-side, editing the background to make it almost look like one seamless video of 3 people (who are all the same person).
The audio editing was pretty easy, I trimmed each part to the best take (making sure it was the same take I had chosen for each video part) and put the parts on 3 separate tracks, syncing them up to be in time with each other. I applied some light equalisation, but other than that, didn’t do much audio processing, as I didn’t want to take away from the raw, homemade feel that I was going for. It was then just a matter of importing the final muted video file onto Logic and syncing it to the final audio.
collaborative project
This semester, I collaborated with a good friend, Lucinda Tassone, an incredibly talented visual artist currently studying Fine Arts at UWA who agreed to help me out. We caught up a few times to casually brainstorm ideas, and came up with the final idea of an abstract sort of short film clip. She was going to do some animations over some random video footage I had taken from my handycam of skating and other random stuff. I was inspired by her art style to do some punk rock-y music over the top of it, which I felt really fitted the vibe.
I wrote and recorded each part for the song myself, with an electric guitar, electric bass, basic midi drums and some crunchy vocals.
Overall, I think we are both super pleased with how this collaborative project turned out.
I wrote and recorded each part for the song myself, with an electric guitar, electric bass, basic midi drums and some crunchy vocals.
Overall, I think we are both super pleased with how this collaborative project turned out.