Entry 10

So I’m not quite going back to square one, but I’m definitely going to have to do a lot of tweaking to what I have done of my piece thus far in order to make it both organic and change it so that it is based on a certain style (or in my case a series of styles) but then elaborates on them and takes them in a different direction. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to do film music- I’d like very much to be a film composer someday so my natural tendency is to write film music…Plain and simple, without deviating away from the music’s natural style and without tweaking anything In other words, what comes naturally is definitely not best for this project, and from this I challenge myself- to leave the railroad tracks behind and start writing as though I’m thinking for myself, rather than for the film. It is for this reason that I’ve decided not to use the movie clips so much, seeing as before I was using them as a constant reference. Doing this only encourages me to write music which would suit the film, and in doing so, I’m not following the guidelines given in class…Earning me a (metaphorical) slap on the wrist. With this in mind, I’m going through what I have written so far, and analyzing it before I tweak it.

Part 1: Romance. I have no problem beginning the piece with something that sounds like typical romantic music, though I definitely have major problems diverging from that. What I’ve done this far to make it different is just substituting crunchy, dissonant chords for where a resolution should be…But I can tell already that that’s not quite enough. I’ve thought about how to elaborate on this quite a bit, often while knitting which makes little to no sense because not only am I drawing blanks left and right but my ‘scarf’ looks like it has been eaten by a house hippo. Obviously I’ve got to start with the basics…What are the components of romantic music? Thick texture, slow rhythms, lots of octaves, big leaps, and some chromaticism.

First, though, I need to have a destination in mind…Where do I want this to go? It can begin as a romantic piece, but where should it end? Well, I should begin with the random crunchy chords, for starters. By putting them where the resolutions should be, I’m leading it somewhere…Possibly toward the world of atonality, but I don’t want the whole purpose of this to be taking a romantic piece and unraveling it into an atonal piece. I could quite possibly take it somewhere completely unromantic, but I don’t want that just to be a progression of crunchy chords. I’ve decided to add a few little hints throughout the piece which lead to a staccato end of the romantic piece- staccato isn’t usually used in a romantic piece, and the texture wears out to be very thin as well, a big change from the full texture it began with. The crunchy chords simply lead toward the question of whether the ending section is actually tonal or atonal...I still haven’t decided, and will leave that decision up to the listener.

I’ve also taken the tenor clef out of the cello to make more of a bass line…And because tenor clef is a bit hard…heh.

Part 2: Horror. Yeah, I’ve scrapped the use of a cult film. As fond as I am of Reservoir Dogs, it’s hard to compose music typical of a cult film because cult films generally use a very wide range of music…A Clockwork Orange uses the theme from Rossini’s “Thieving Magpie,” and Beethoven’s 9th, while Donnie Darko uses more mellow pieces, like Gary Jules’ rendition of “Mad World.” I need something a bit more specific to write for, and horror films are fairly stereotypical…Which should be easy to write. For this one I’ve got a fairly good goal in mind. It’ll begin atonal and discordant, with a very high register and maybe some special effects on the violin like playing behind the bridge- we all love that noise, don’t we? But the rhythm will be what moves it toward a kind of jazzed up version of horror music. This part could be interesting and fun to write. What sucks is that I’m going to have to get rid of pretty much everything that I have right now L Oh well. Live and let die.

Boooooo there it all went…I just deleted it and then saved the changes I made. Bye-bye music!

I’ve decided that the cello will play an important role in this section, and it’ll be pizzicato, like a bass. More bass is always good. While the violin keeps the tremolo going on notes played behind the bridge (it’ll eventually work slowly to ponticello and finally playing on the actual strings)

ORGANIC! So this has to be organic, an organic whole. “characterized by the systematic arrangement of parts; organized; systematic: elements fitting together into a unified, organic whole.” So says www.dictionary.com. So my piece needed to be more unified, and I found a way to solve this- a motif! The motif present in the very beginning of the romance part comes back- surprise surprise- in the horror section! The interval of a minor 6th followed by downward motion, though it’s changed from a major 2nd to a minor 2nd, which will help with making this section sound more horrific and clashy- just what I want.

Fast-forward to today (I wrote most of that last night) after it was played in class. Thanks again to Kim and Saird for playing today with me J Here are a few things I’ve jotted down to keep in mind for when I edit it/add more to it.

- bring some of the lyrical section from part 1 back in part 3- an idea I had was to do so playing it as artificial harmonics on the violin or cello, to keep the kind of ‘corpse around the corner’ (haha) mood.
- Make it a bit clearer where I’m heading in section 1.
- Tweak the eighth and sixteenth section in the piano in the 2nd section to make it less blahhhh
- Change the triplet section in the left hand of the piano in the first section or put that part in the violin instead
- Write ‘pizzicato’ in the cello part where it is appropriate
- Add more to the jazziness of part 2