Entry 11.

Renovations. The act of tearing down something old, and rebuilding wit new ideas and materiels. Normally, I hate ‘em. But life is full of all sorts of little pleasantries like this, like when you realize you’ve put up wallpaper before you paint the walls, when you go down six flights of stairs only to realize that you’re going to class an hour too early, or when you miss the fact that the best before date on that microwave dinner you just ate is day/month/year, not month/day/year and that it expired three weeks ago.

Fortunately you can’t get food poisoning from composing.

I know that it’s a bit late to be restarting, but I couldn’t help doing so when I realized I already had an awesome idea for a cliché piece. The whole movie thing was interesting, but I think perhaps it was a bit too ambitious, and didn’t really encompass what I believe Clark wanted us to achieve while doing this project. I'll keep it saved on my computer for some rainy day when I decide to add to it. The idea that I have now will be much easier, I believe, as I have experience writing the genre I have chosen, and because I’ve discussed the idea of doing this with the infamous Alex Pryor several times, it seems nearly imperative that I compose a techno motet.

That’s right, I went there. Techno motet.

Needless to say, I have to give Alex credit, seeing as he and I came up with the idea together and had planned to write some techno motets just for fun, and when I approached him about using the idea for composition class, he also helped me pick out the instrumentation- for a keyboard, tuba and flute. When I say keyboard I mean the type that can sounds like a piano until a button is pushed, at which point it plays a basic drum beat and you can change the piano sound itself into a more synth-like sound.

I’ve been listening to some good old techno in order to prepare myself for this, namely listening to ‘Dance Mix 93,’ and finding it really amusing, seeing as I remember listening to this and thinking that it was AMAZING when I was 5. I think we had ‘Dance Mix 91’ and ‘Dance Mix 92’ on tape at home, and I’m sure we’ve got ‘Dance Mix 94’ and possibly ‘95’ on CD at home. Yeh, I was a cool kid, I listened to all the right music. I’ve also downloaded some music so I could get the feel of what makes techno music into techno music, and have jotted down a few things I’ve noticed.

- Very steady drum beat that doesn’t change.
- Very steady chord progression which has a very square rhythm, usually on the offbeats of the drums
- It tends to mull around in one place in particular…Lots of repeated sections.
- It tends to mull around in one place in particular…Lots of repeated sections.
- It tends to mull around in one place in particular…Lots of repeated sections. (Ok, this is a joke. Haha)
- Gradual building in intensity
- Basso continuo which occasionally drops out to thin the texture for a regular number of bars (2, 4 or 8) before coming back in.
- Some chromatisicm
- Lots of offbeats
- Almost always in 4/4 time
- Accent on beat 2 and 4
- Lots of accelerating rhythm (eight note to sixteenth note to thirty second note.)
- A legato line floating over top of the short, rhythmic pounding of the harmony/drums


Well, off I go. The best thing about this, I think, is that it’ll give me a bit of practice writing counterpoint…Yay!