Saturday, October 25, 2008

cliche

I've begun working on my cliche piece, it is scored for cello, clarinet, didgeridoo and piano. The beginning was performed in class yesterday and received quite well. The cliche I have in mind is mainly imitation between instruments, but I will also include recognizable cliche melody clips and present them completely out of context.
A few challenges are presenting themselves as I try to get my ideas down on paper(electronically), the first is the challenge of bridging a tonal section to a atonal section without losing the natural flow, the second being the challenge of scoring a didgeridoo part. There is also the limitation of having one note as a drone to build upon, but it is forcing me to think of different ways of approaching the composition but I'm looking forward to hearing what evolves from the process.
Some comments on what was presented in class were
-to make more use of the piano: since I will be the one playing the Didj inside the piano, what is written for the piano part will be limited to my piano playing abilities, but I do intend to push the envelop try out a few ideas I had in mind.
-to incorperate the drone as a a section of the piece rather than having its entirety based on a C drone: This comment covers one of the challenges I stumbled upon, and now I'm thinking of maybe using 2 didjs with different pitched drones or make use of the piano for other tonal centres. There is also the option of only limiting the drone to a few sections and incorperation the "toot" witch is pitched an 11th above the drone.
No matter what becomes of this project I'm enjoying the current challenges.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

turkey blog

last wednesday my second and third pieces were performed and received well.
the comments and suggestions were the following:
from the pianists (Ian & Dylan) I was suggested to transpose a section down an octave and mark it 8va(easier to read), a few notes could be enharmonically re-spelled to all flats/sharps.
other comments were to - use the layer option on finale to use whole notes rather than 4 quarter notes tied with an ascending line within( I agree that it will make it easier to read), - in the triplet pattern of the third piece to think about breaking up some of the pattern(I will experiment with this as I think it might be tasteful), - to re-notate the bass slap(gallop)with X shaped noteheads, - mark in cluster chords/indicate approx. pitches.
I'm looking forward to the final drft,
but for now it will have to wait untill after turkey day,
cheers