charachter piece final revision

The final revisions for my three character pieces were made after the meeting and discussion with Dr. Ross about three weeks ago. His suggested revisions were mainly concerning enharmonically respelt notes, mainly in the piano parts. Other suggestions were to re-notate some of the rhythmic patterns and beaming rests to notes. The remaining suggestions were about dynamic markings, placement and consistency, marking in melodic phrases and articulations.
I agreed with all of the suggestions and made all appropriate revisions for the final score. No changes were made to any melodic or accompaniment parts, only details were added for interpretative ease.

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.

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

feedback for feedback

my first piece was performed on wed. and went relatively well .
although it was the end of class and the feedback was minimal it was still constructive.
-the first comment was that it sounded very jazzy - even though i wasnt necessarily going for that approach it just goes to prove that if you take a bass for a walk people will immediately be reminded of jazz.
-the second comment was that it sounds somewhat tonal - all chords and basslines were based on my atonal chord progression, in respect to the bass you can walk pretty much any series of notes and have it sound quite tonal-depending on what it is being played along to.
-the third was a comment on the rhythms - the overall rhythmic scheme was quite simple and along with the jazz sounding comment i think my revisions will have a focus on more complex and interesting beat patterns.
-the last comment was on the role of the bass as the accomp. - I was trying to get an equal division between piano/bass as solo/accomp. but it is difficult to make pizz bass predominent. i included some arco markings at the end of my second piece when the bass plays the main melody, this will foreshadow the bass as the dominent solo instrument of my third piece
i'm currently in the final draft of my second piece and quite pleased with it, i'm looking forward to hearing it performed on real instruments.
cheers

Time to move on

On Monday I officially declared my 1st piece complete by handing a copy of the score to Mike. It will be performed during tomorrows class, it is written for bass and piano. I will comment on comments later this week.
Now with one complete piece I believe its time to move on to the next, I'm not sure what the mood/emotion it will take but I did think up a theme inspired by an interval - atonal western??

Week 1 - chord prog.

Since I didnt blog about week 1's chord progression I'll see no harm in doing so now.
Comment made about my prog. were the following:
-it has a gradual increase until about chord 4(of 12 chords) then plateaus until approx. chord 10
>need to increase tension of chords 6 through 8
-could use more gradual increase and peak
-needs more taper from chord 9/10 to 12
-octave doubling is not recommended in this weeks project

fine tuning, cont'd

An early version of my piece was played in class today(thanks to Mike), there are two things I'll need to work on:
1-re-voice chords that are used more than once(as commented by Clark Ross), and
2-re-notate the piano score(Mike did a great job at sight reading but the rhythms weren't as I intended them to be).
looking forward to hearing the other works later this week.