Sunny Day in Ireland

@jim-4

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This is my attempt to convey some of the things I feel on a summers day. I have a conflict one one side there is a laziness, sit back and enjoy the day. While on the other I feel I should get out and enjoy the day. I mean here in Ireland we do not get many sunny days, you do not want to waste them especially if you are not at work, but how? Do you go mad put your life in your own hands and actually do something outside. The options range from gardening to actually going to the beech. We are lucky here in Ireland there are many unspoilt and beautiful beeches, not far from my home. Or do you stay at home, like a coward, just in case the weather changes?

When I first came up with the tune it felt as if something was stirring, it may have helped that while I was working on it the sun was shinning all day everyday. I remember sitting in my garden and humming the tune, it just felt so apt.

It has a funny instrumentation Piano, Cello, Oboe, flue and Bassoon and this version uses Garage-band Instruments. It has made me think again about using the BBC Symphonic plug in because the more I hear it the more mushy and heavy the overall effect is. It hides some of the things I am putting into the music. Don’t get me wrong it has a very rich sound but I suspect the problem may lay with me. Perhaps I need to work more at the mixing stage. I just prefer the lighter sound you have here, I think you can hear the subtleties far better. For my money it is these bits that bring the piece to life.

Personally I think this works and I like this.

Having said all this to myself perhaps I need to revisit Buterchurn Drive.

Butter Churn Drive

@jim-4

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Butterchurn Drive is an attempt to put a walk in the country to music. I envisioned it to be along a river as it meanders its way along to an old Inn. Then refreshment time. It is a lovely summers day and although the walkers are looking forward to the walk there is a little air of foreboding. Who likes exercise before you actually go out and do it.

The cord at the beginning is there to signify the entrance to the track. If you listen you can also hear a bubbling brook. I tried to put over that feeling of I really don’t want to do this but I will. Before as the music develops the walkers get more into it enjoying the views etc and really enjoy the experience. Of course the will be highs and lows, a little trip and a bird flys out in front of you. I was also thinking that if children are involved they can be very resistant to something at the beginning but go on to enjoy it. The “are we there yet?” Syndrome.

I am not sure if this works. I had not played it for a while and now after hearing it again, I think I have failed to get across some of the things I wanted to. Yes you can hear the babbling brook in the beginning. I definitely got the foreboding bit over, but is it a little over done? I wonder if it sounds like a very hard walk or even torture. What is missing is the joy and beauty and maybe a few surprises along the way. Most of which should be happy, some not (eg maybe Dog Poo). I think that for a work like this there has to be a way of putting it down then revising it and asking the rude questions, dose it work.

his is definitely a work in progress. There is more to be done and I have not planned it properly. I also suspect the mix is a little heavy so hiding some of the sights I wrote in it.

Salty Five Eight

@jim-4

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Salty Five Eight is another of those awkward ones. It is a bit short but I like it. I would like to make it longer as I know it could be more. It is a piece I wrote a while ago, and I have learnt a lot since then. In other words it needs to go somewhere and mean something. Personally I think it lacks the harmonic drive and structure that would enable it to develop. So with this in mind I had a go at re-writing the harmony and altering the melody appropriately. Somehow it is still not what I am looking for. Believe me at this stage I have had several attempts at it and I have failed. I want more for one of my babies!

I do wonder if all this work has made me over familiar with it and any improvement I try just sounds wrong, because it is unfamiliar. For example I can’t hear it played any other instrument but a piano. Maybe by hearing it too often I have lost my objectivity with it? This relates to another problem, you come up with an idea, you like it, but what is it? Personally, I find, if I can not identify it, give it a name, I just don’t know where to go with it. If it has no identity, it has no life of it’s own. Sometimes I wonder if it is not easier to have an idea of what you want to say then come up with a melody that fits. That worked with the Character Pieces, but I wonder if in reality I was being selective in the characters I chose. Picked the lower fruit, but then as we all know practice makes perfect.

So for now I am going to publish it and move on. Maybe one day I will come back to it (again) or not. By publishing, it may not get forgotten. I think it deserves better than that.

Any Ideas??

Awaken

@jim-4

I need to start with a confession, I can’t find the score for this. I always start by making a file using the date as the working title, it is only after I have played about with an idea for a while that a title may come. I like to discover the character of the idea, and that takes time. I have tried to rush this stage, but if I don’t understand the character of the idea, I just don't know how to develop it.

This can be a problem in two ways, Sometimes I may like an idea as in the case of Awaken, but can’t see how to develop it, so it may wait on my hard drive until I go back to it (or not). Obviously this is a recipe to forget ideas. In that case I take the viewpoint that maybe the idea was not as good as I thought. Did you Know that George Gershwin, lost in a hotel room a note book containing over 40 new ideas. On finding out this Gershwin Just shrugged his shoulders. He believed he would come up with enough new ideas to replace the lost ones in a very short time.

Also, as the file title is a bit cold I find it hard to associate the title I come up with and the file I started out with. Things can get a little lost. Luckly I put Awaken in a folder in which I regularly access and play, but what can I do with it without staring again. I am now trying when I save in progress bits, to incorporate both file and working name (you live and learn).

I came up with Awaken, and I thought there is a good opening, but what next? I have a theory that if you get stuck on something let it go. You will either go back to it later with an answer or it will be dumped. Although I can only do work on one thing at a time, I like to have other ideas bubbling around in the background.

John Harrison

@jim-4

Link to Score

John Harrison was a major clever clogs of the 18th Century. His claim to fame is to to build a clock that was both accurate enough and resilient enough to be both taken to sea and to be used to measure Longitude to a very high degree of accuracy. This was essential for safe navigation of the ‘Seven Seas’.

I do not know much more about him, other than what I read in Wikipedia, but what came to mind was an artisan working away in a workshop, probably at home, trying to improve his design until he could claim his prize.

The music would not be out of place in Pinocchio, where the puppet maker is toiling away in his workshop. I added the tick tock sound to give it a feel of a clockmakers, although surprising enough, I do not think that John Harrison was noted as one of these.

For once (don’t worry it won’t happen too often) I have used a simple 2 2 time. The melody is played by a Fantasia, which has a very light sound. To balance this I had to change the sound of the piano backing to an electric one.

Parallel fifths and octaves, have a bad press in Classical music (although they can be found in both Mozart and Beethoven’s music). This is because they can take some of the richness out of the melody, but on the other hand some times that is what you want. I have decided to look into this in my own music. Sometimes you want this to happen, but as with all things knowledge is power (they can be hard to find even in small scores). So I have decided to use a plug in for Musecore that detects parallel fifths and Octaves. Hopefully this will make the harmony more interesting. I also want to split out the melody and harmony before Orchestrating by using a SATB lay out. So I have a new plan.

1. write the melody on a Piano with cords
2. expand the harmony over a SATB choir, maybe change sound to Piano
3. Run the plug in as above and see what happens, (don’t have to fix them all)
4. It is the recommended by Teachers to have a piece laid out in SATB before Orchestration

Again the result is straight out of Musecore and I am happy with the result.

Oliver Twist

@jim-4

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The next instalment in this little serious of mine is based on Oliver Twist. Confession time, I love the book and I love the musical. But to be honest Oliver Twist is very far from being one of the strongest characters that Dickens ever created. The only way I can describe him is meek, he is also a little lost. I suspect he was a simple character on purpose. In the story he was the victim, pushed around by one strong character after another.

his is the second attempt. The first was far more melodic and thats where it failed. I did not feel it was simple enough to fit my vision. The problem is meek to me means very little, a bit wishy washy. The melody and the arrangement had to be simple. So I decided to make to use a simple arpeggio that follows a not so simple cord progression. I chose a wind quartet for two reasons. One, in the hope this can help me improve my orchestrations. Working with just one section of the orchestra, will force me to more inventive using it. Also I will gain much needed experience in the nuts and bolts of this section of the orchestra. The second is that in my opinion the wind section contains instruments that do not sound very solid. I then added a simple backing that builds up and viola you have my piece.

Personally I think I cracked it. The biggest problem for me was deciding which Orchestra to use. I made a mock up with all three options, Muscore3, Garageband and Spitfire. I prefer the Muscore3 straight out of the box option. The spitfire version sounded far too rich for what I want, and I feel I can get better control of the dynamics and panning (if that is a word) in Muscore.

Mr Boundary

@jim-4

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The next instalment in my series of character themes, is Mr Bounderby. This person can be found in a book by Charles Dickens called Hard Times. The book itself is set in Industrial North England in Victorian Times. One of it’s major themes is black and white decisions, Utilitarian ideas where something is either right or wrong, there is no grey area in between. In the book Mr Bounderby was a factory owner who belonged very much to this school of thought. To me Mr Bounderby was a pompous ass who would listen to nobody and had an unfailing belief that he was always right. To himself and all who would listen he was a self made man from humble origins.

I could see him in my minds eye him marching around the town, pumped up and fall of his own self importance. With no a thought for anyone worse off than himself. He was not a character I had any sympathy for, nor did Dickens for that matter. So I tried to catch that in my music hence the use of a tuba as the lower line. To me the tuba has a thump thump sound that ignores all around it. Great for a bass line, that needs to be heard. I picked the vibraphone for the main melody as it is has a light tapping sound. I think this not only signifies his attitude and to my way of thinking, his attitude stinks.

The result I think is a great theme for marching around town, totally full of yourself, totally oblivious to what is around you. The whole thing together sounds like a headless chicken on the march, relentless. With that underlying feeling of a pompous ass at work. I think I got this one right.

Again this was taken straight from Muscore3.

Sonata 1708

@jim-4

I had a go at this one. I started out thinking it should be a heated discussion between two people where one was the boss giving the orders and the other taking them. But the one giving the orders got a bit over powering and this lead to a fall out. I hoped by the end they would have made up, and gone about their business. I am sorry, I did not like it.

I do like the idea of a conversation, After all that is what a sonata is about, a conversation between two musical ideas. A good conversation should flow, there will be times when one will interrupt the other, either disagree or agree!! and the conversation should ebb and flow between the two parties, and a variety in intensity and excitement.

The plan as it stands has two ideas one is C Lydian and the other in Dm. The Lydian section is more in your face. While the Dm section has a laid back, we will get there eventually feeling. It is also in an odd time 7 8, which I like to think of as an awkward 3 4 or 6 8 time. There is also a section that starts as the intro, and maybe could be used in bridges and turnarounds that sounds like a mess, or how I prefere to think of it at the moment as background noise. It is from this that the conversation can rise.

For final thoughts I have a felling I shy away from using all the instruments at once and tend to steer away from Forte. This piece should be a chance to drop my toe into theose waters. I am beginning to think that I try too hard to have a story, can the piece not just be about the music and the interaction of the two ideas? Or to put it another way a conversation between two ideas, and that interaction will let the magic happen.

Sonata 2509

@jim-4

This started out using a couple of ideas I had. I like to spent a bit of time working with ideas, so that I have a few variations ready. One of the ideas is Bartok in nature and the other has fairly standard harmony. There is as a bridge come turnabout that is completely different. It is based on a Phrygian Dominant scale uses quartal harmony It sounds like a mixture of chaos and string puppets. Together they can make a Sonata Form.

I am trying to discipline myself so that when I get to this stage, I take the time to listen to the music, and think about what I am going to do. What dose it say to me? It is great having these ideas but I want them to mean something. Maybe this is a dance as the wind moves the branches of a tree.

I know that the Phrygian Dominant scale is a little out there, compared to what was before. Not only dose it add a little tension (not a bad thing) but it opens the door to changing the key to B flat Harmonic Minor. A Shade of darkness in music is never a bad idea. It also adds the opportunity of developing the texture of that . Transposing some of the ideas I was going to use in this section, may take us somewhere else. We shall see.

So here I am with the bare bones of something, but I need to take the time to note down a few thoughts. The melody is fine but the main decisions are what I want to do with it and how to manipulate the harmony to achieve my goals. It is good to write down those goals to see if you are successful. I kind of like the idea of a breeze through branches which kind of implies lightness. Remember the breeze will fluctuate in strength.

Thoughts

1. I like the tune
2. Not sure about clarinet, maybe use Viola for melodic contrast
3. Needs Piano
4. Can hear darkness in development section but it dose not sound eastern
5. Just before take up to Phrygian Bit needs work, needs not be like the wind working on the branches. Thicken the texture could be the wind strengthening.
6. Dynamics need to sway like the branches, especially the harmony
7. Recapitulation what is it about
8. Ending is abrupt

Bartok

Pilgab at hu.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Common

Bela Bartok was a composer that wrote music that employed a lot of dissonance. To enable Erno Lendaval to be able to analyse his work, he developed a system called Axis System.

See This Video from Milton Mermikides on You Tube.

My take on this is the cords can be laid out as in the table below.

1	C	A	F#	Eb
2	G	E	C#	Bb
3	D	B	G#/Ab	F

Assuming we want to create tension then resolve, if we make a particular group tonic. We have for a three cord melody the below ways of moving through.

Tonic	Sub Dominant	Dominant
1	3	2
2	1	3
3	2	1

If for example you use 1 – 3 - 2 from first column you get a standard Jazz II V I.

Some of the other possible combinations are

C – E - B Where C is the tonic, E the sub Dominant and B the dominant.

C – F – C#

There are many more.

Also bear in mind cords can be minor or major. I personally think that Dominant Cords work best. That could be the Blues lover in me coming out.

Take the time to go over this and watch Milton Mermikides Video again, because this system opens up a whole new World of possibilities.

Jim