Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I've been sick.
Today, I'm putting up a sort of demo version of a piece that I think is my best work in composing via computer. I've been tinkering with it, trying to find a sound that works, but that was becoming very complicated, so instead I've just put up the most recent version using the sounds that I composed it with - all bell-based synths.
Chrysalis
I hope someday to record a version of this for steelpan orchestra but in its current state I fear that the arpeggio parts are unplayable due to their speed and complexity. The cello voice is wonderful for arpeggios but the size and layout of the instrument makes it very physically demanding to play complex lines without rest.
Irrational Planet - a blog with an eccentric orbit
Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The Pentatonic Scale
Pentatonic scales are fun, pure, simple, quick to learn and easy to remember. Their blessing is also their curse - the lack of dissonance in these scales can make them bland. They're very sweet and pleasant. They don't have the attitude of blues scales or extended chords. But they're a great tool for soloing and composing.
One handy cheat is playing the pentatonic scale of the dominant over every chord in a major key - For instance, G A B D E over C major chords. This almost always works, and avoiding the tonic note makes the scale more interesting.
If you want to get clever, you can throw chord changes back in and modulate to the pentatonic scale a fifth up from every chord that occurs. It's a tactic for going "outside" that I've been playing with recently. After playing G over C, for example, you could play D over G, bringing in the foreign note F#.
When I fool around at the piano I love to play pentatonics with big stacks of fifths for harmony. The pentatonic can be seen as five consecutive perfect fifths. The G pentatonic scale, for instance, can be organized as G D A E B. Fifths played like this on the piano create a towering open space of harmonic layers. There's a sense not of chord-ness but of ancient, natural polyphony.
One handy cheat is playing the pentatonic scale of the dominant over every chord in a major key - For instance, G A B D E over C major chords. This almost always works, and avoiding the tonic note makes the scale more interesting.
If you want to get clever, you can throw chord changes back in and modulate to the pentatonic scale a fifth up from every chord that occurs. It's a tactic for going "outside" that I've been playing with recently. After playing G over C, for example, you could play D over G, bringing in the foreign note F#.
When I fool around at the piano I love to play pentatonics with big stacks of fifths for harmony. The pentatonic can be seen as five consecutive perfect fifths. The G pentatonic scale, for instance, can be organized as G D A E B. Fifths played like this on the piano create a towering open space of harmonic layers. There's a sense not of chord-ness but of ancient, natural polyphony.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Eris Vs. Eros
Here is my second tune to be posted to the interwebs: Eris Vs. Eros.
Three mythological names in one title may be a bit too much implicit meaning for a three-minute long computerized instrumental to live up to, but once I'd thought of the name there was no doubt that I was going to use it. Don't read too much into it. Titles are mostly a hook to catch someone's attention and give them a rough picture of the content. I feel it's appropriate that they should be only vaguely suggestive, though, because too much "meaning" up front prevents the audience from hearing the music with an open mind.
This brings to mind something that David Byrne wrote in the liner notes for the CD release of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:
Byrne: In the West, anyway, the causal link between the author and performer is strong. For instance, it is assumed that I write lyrics(and the accompanying music) for songs because I have something I need to "express." And that as a performer it is assumed that everything one utters is naturally autobiographical. I find that more often, on the contrary, it is the music and the lyric that trigger the emotion within me rather than the other way around. By making music, we are pushing our own buttons, in effect, and the surprising thing is that vocals that we didn't write or even sing can make us feel a gamut of emotions just as much as ones that we wrote. In a way making music is constructing machines that, when successful, dredge up emotions - in us and in the listener. Some people find this idea repulsive, for it seems to relegate the artist to the level of trickster, manipulator, deceiver. They would prefer to see music as an "expression" of emotion rather than a generator of it, to believe in the artist as someone with something to "say." This queasiness is connected with the idea of authenticity as well; that, for example, musicians who "appear" down-home must be more real.
I was very happy to read that, because it matches up with my own artistic experiences and makes me feel that I'm on the right track. Writing music for me is an almost psychedelic experience. During the creative act, there is little conscious consideration of "meaning." There is instead a feedback loop of generating ideas and critiquing them, over and over again until the thing feels right and complete in its entirety. Meaning arises unconsciously, as the art that one creates tends to reflect one's feelings at the time, even if one is not aware of it.
Three mythological names in one title may be a bit too much implicit meaning for a three-minute long computerized instrumental to live up to, but once I'd thought of the name there was no doubt that I was going to use it. Don't read too much into it. Titles are mostly a hook to catch someone's attention and give them a rough picture of the content. I feel it's appropriate that they should be only vaguely suggestive, though, because too much "meaning" up front prevents the audience from hearing the music with an open mind.
This brings to mind something that David Byrne wrote in the liner notes for the CD release of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:
Byrne: In the West, anyway, the causal link between the author and performer is strong. For instance, it is assumed that I write lyrics(and the accompanying music) for songs because I have something I need to "express." And that as a performer it is assumed that everything one utters is naturally autobiographical. I find that more often, on the contrary, it is the music and the lyric that trigger the emotion within me rather than the other way around. By making music, we are pushing our own buttons, in effect, and the surprising thing is that vocals that we didn't write or even sing can make us feel a gamut of emotions just as much as ones that we wrote. In a way making music is constructing machines that, when successful, dredge up emotions - in us and in the listener. Some people find this idea repulsive, for it seems to relegate the artist to the level of trickster, manipulator, deceiver. They would prefer to see music as an "expression" of emotion rather than a generator of it, to believe in the artist as someone with something to "say." This queasiness is connected with the idea of authenticity as well; that, for example, musicians who "appear" down-home must be more real.
I was very happy to read that, because it matches up with my own artistic experiences and makes me feel that I'm on the right track. Writing music for me is an almost psychedelic experience. During the creative act, there is little conscious consideration of "meaning." There is instead a feedback loop of generating ideas and critiquing them, over and over again until the thing feels right and complete in its entirety. Meaning arises unconsciously, as the art that one creates tends to reflect one's feelings at the time, even if one is not aware of it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Irrational Planet Thing
A few years ago, I was sitting in computer science 101 and thinking about music instead of paying attention. I was mentally stuck in 5/4 time, a seldom-used meter with five beats to the measure(famous examples of pieces in 5/4 include the Mission Impossible theme, Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and a Gorillaz song simply titled 5/4*). One nice thing about being stuck in 5/4 is it makes you nigh invulnerable to earworms. After a great deal of thinking and tapping out rhythms with my pencil, I wrote in my notebook a rhythmic pattern of three dotted quarter notes and an eighth note. This would become a bass line. I chose E minor simply because I hadn't composed anything in E minor before. I added a repeating motif above the bass that would become the central theme of the entire piece. I had a random idea that the melody could be split between measures, taking up two-and-a-half beats each from the measure preceding it and the measure following. If only all my random ideas worked out so well. It would take two more years of listening, tweaking, and learning before I was able to finish the piece. I began to feel that I'd painted myself into a corner with weird overlapping rhythms and wonky chord progressions.
While listening to the tune, I had a funny notion that it might be considered dance music on some other planet inhabitated by many-legged Far Side-esque aliens(I've often thought that in a perfect world, Take Five would have inspired a dance craze instead of just a trend in jazz). So I decided that the name of the piece would reflect this idea, although it would take a lot of brainstorming to come up with the final title, Irrational Planet. And Irrational Planet: The Song Thing led to Irrational Planet: The Album Thing, and now I'm posting it on Irrational Planet: The Blog Thing. This rendition of the tune was created in Logic with software synthesizers.
Irrational Planet: The MP3
*Video game fans should also recall the Ridley boss theme from the Metroid games, the battle theme from Final Fantasy VIII, and the final overworld theme from Secret of Mana.
While listening to the tune, I had a funny notion that it might be considered dance music on some other planet inhabitated by many-legged Far Side-esque aliens(I've often thought that in a perfect world, Take Five would have inspired a dance craze instead of just a trend in jazz). So I decided that the name of the piece would reflect this idea, although it would take a lot of brainstorming to come up with the final title, Irrational Planet. And Irrational Planet: The Song Thing led to Irrational Planet: The Album Thing, and now I'm posting it on Irrational Planet: The Blog Thing. This rendition of the tune was created in Logic with software synthesizers.
Irrational Planet: The MP3
*Video game fans should also recall the Ridley boss theme from the Metroid games, the battle theme from Final Fantasy VIII, and the final overworld theme from Secret of Mana.
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