Techniques of Composition Documentation
- rcoyteking
- Jun 13, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 14, 2023
Reflection on the Semester:
I feel my progress this semester has been good.
I definitely feel like I've become faster at composing, and the pieces I've written have been varied and have allowed me to learn a lot about composing. I have listened to a lot of classical music that I haven't heard before, I've listened to much older baroque music and much newer 20th-century music in my various units which has broadened my horizons, so to speak. I have also studied impressionist and romantic era music - the eras I most enjoy listening to - in more depth this semester, which I feel has had an impact on my music. I have dipped my toes into electronic and synth production as well as creating my own synthesised bell sound. I have experimented with non-traditional notation in some of my scores, and I have been learning how to write old-fashioned counterpoint using pen and paper.
It has been difficult finding time to write music in the busyness of second year. Some of my pieces may have suffered slightly from having to write them under these tight time constraints. On the positive side, I believe my music has become more technically precise, and my ability to write about my music has also improved.
This semester has been very busy and more challenging than the last, but I have also thoroughly enjoyed the projects I worked on this semester and I'm eager to see what next semester has in store.
Comp Workshop Reflection:
There were many interesting and valuable presentations in Composition Workshop this semester.
One in particular that stood out to me was by Alix Simatos. He talked about creativity and how to maintain your own creativity. He argued that composing is just like being a performer. You have to consistently practice your instrument if you want to get good at it, and in the same way, you have to compose regularly to become good at composing.
He also spoke highly of transcription and suggested various strategies for creativity, including maintaining a routine, staying open-minded about your own music and keeping your judgments objective, writing down every musical idea regardless of how 'bad' it might be, and hand-writing music as a starting point for a piece.
Alix also discussed the idea that it's literally impossible to be 100% original. All music is derived from other music in some way. For a piece to be completely original, you would have to invent a new tuning system, a new rhythmic system, new instruments, and a new musical structure, but even if you can do all that, it will still be using pitch, rhythm, structure, and timbre just like every other piece that came before it. If you removed even those elements, it would no longer be identifiable as music and no one would want to listen to it anyway. Therefore, 100% originality is literally impossible.
The way you make your music 'original', is by taking stuff from other composers (or "stealing", as Alix humorously puts it.) By incorporating all these various ideas from many different artists, the end result will sound unique. Because it doesn't sound like you copied just one composer, but rather many different composers, your music starts to take on a character of its own, in other words, it sounds original.
My Comp Workshop Presentation:
My comp workshop presentation was on my end-of-year project I undertook last year, where I synthesised a 'photorealistic' bell sound using sine waves.
Much of my presentation consisted of a practical demonstration of my process, however, these downloadable slides include diagrams showing the partials of a bell and a diagram of a regular instrument's overtone series for comparison, as well as links to the resources I used to learn how to synthesise a bell sound.
Collaboration:
As part of this unit, I also took part in a collaboration with the WAAPA dance students.
I worked with a choreographer by the name of Frances on a section of her original choreography. Her dance was a critique of the sort of 'faux intellectualism' that pervades contemporary dance. The bit of music that I was tasked with writing was a chamber arrangement of the song Can't Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue. I managed to find a MIDI file online that someone had made of the song and then went about arranging it into four parts. Later, after getting feedback on my first draft, I cut out all the sections of the song except for the beginning, which I continuously looped over 2 minutes, and then added more layers of strings that would gradually come in over time (in a canon-like style.)
I haven't had the opportunity to see or hear the final product of the dance, but Frances seemed to be satisfied with my piece in any case.
The other composer who worked on this project was Alix Simatos.
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