Entry 8.

So I've decided to begin with one of the easier genres to write music for- romance. That's right, sappy lovey dovey music that could be played while watching the last scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The clip, in total, is about 3 minutes long...So I might not end up using the entire thing. In this clip, my music will be replacing "Moon River." A classic. That's all fine and well, though, but my piece, despite the fact that it has to be discintively romantic, has to have something 'different' about it. I haven't exactly decided what that's going to be yet...I'm used to writing pieces that could pass for film scores, so it'll be strange to have to stray from that habit.

Romance movie music...It's slow, it's full of strings, it's legato. I've already got about 30 seconds of music written, so I've got a motif or two to play around with. The instrumentation's pretty simple- I've decided on violin, cello, timpani and piano rather than trombone, cello and piano. Now for the tweaking part. First I have to find the essence of romantic music...Lots of appropriately placed dynamics, (so I could mess them around a bit, make insignificant parts loud and the nice parts insanely soft) imitation in the parts, (I could take this to an extreme) graceful curves in the piece (I could make it as disjunct as all heck) and it's generally smoothe and legato (I could put in abrupt stops and change the articulations.) So I've got lots of things I could do...But what do I want to do?

Since romantic music generally has good symmetry and long, flowing phrases, I've decided to see just how long I can make one line go on for...Make it a never-ending kind of rambling 'I love you I love you I love you I love you' kind of thing, and even use the natural rhythm for those words in the piece for effect. So there's one thing- this whole section will be one long, rambly line, simply stating the motif over and over until the listeners are as sick of that rhythm as they are of cheesy romance films. Seriously, there are a lot of them out there, and they all end the same way. Since each portion of my piece can only be so long, I can’t go on for too long with the same motif, so I need another way to tweak it. There are some unexpected turns in the harmony, but even still, it sounds fairly typical of a romantic piece. My natural tendancy is to leave it like that, because I really like composing movie music, but I have to tweak this so it doesn’t sound so…Cliché. Therefore the cello and violin will be plucking. Where they’d normally be playing nice, long bows, they’re going to pluck. The piano will still have the legato melody, and its dynamics will have to be compromised so that it doesn’t swamp out the strings, but I’m keeping the timpani in at a good solid dynamic. I don’t think the timpani are very typical of this kind of music anyway, so there, I’ve un-cliché’d this piece. And it’s done! Well, this part, anyway, and playing the clip from Breakfast at Tiffany’s behind it really adds to the effect, and somehow, what I wrote seems to fit the movie quite well, ending at a very appropriate place, 1:06 into the clip. Woot! This part won’t be the first part of my piece…I’m thinking action first (Lord of the Rings) followed by romance (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) then cult film (Reservoir Dogs) followed by Horror (The Shining) and ended with drama (American History X) It should be epic!