the other pieces.
The ones that haven't been submitted for marks, but I like writing about the stuff I make.
ECUtorial - sea of stars
This is a piece I tried to make six times. It was made for the WAAPA composer orchestra ECUtorial. In 2020, the theme was Astronomical, which is essentially about writing a song about space and it's inhabitants. My attempt to write a song for this theme took about six tries, and when I finished, I realised that the band had changed. I tried to orchestrate for the new band, but by the time I finished arranging it, I was demotivated to a point where I just didn't rock up to meetings, and thus I wasn't even in the band. Maybe next semester...
untitled piece #1
This piece started out as a culmination of things I wanted to experiment with. There's this video by Ben Levin about taking notation software to the realm of impossiblity, and this video by David Bruce about the rhythms of Tigran Hamasyan, and how he augments the different blocks of rhythm in the piece. In the piece it starts out in 15/8, subdivided into 4+5+3+3. Then every number shrinks by one into 11/8 (3+4+2+2), then again into 7/8 (2+3+1+1), then into the realms of ridiculousness of 23/8 (6+7+5+5) before ending back in 15/8. It's not exactly how Hamasyan does it, but it's a cool concept none the less. The sounds are synthy because it sort of sounded like a video game (namely Celeste by Matt Makes Games) by the end of it and I thought it would be cooler if it was a synth and not a bad saxophone sample.
I normally would show the score, but Sibelius crashed (typical) and I didn't save it, but I did have a MIDI replication of it. Unfortunately, MIDI is used by machines and not humans, and thus is notated for machines to play. This means turning MIDI back into score elements is hard and too much effort for a piece that wasn't going to amount to much.
I normally would show the score, but Sibelius crashed (typical) and I didn't save it, but I did have a MIDI replication of it. Unfortunately, MIDI is used by machines and not humans, and thus is notated for machines to play. This means turning MIDI back into score elements is hard and too much effort for a piece that wasn't going to amount to much.
Just some of the things that happen if you pull a score from a MIDI file. Never again.
forest sprites
I started writing this before I came to WAAPA, but I've gone back to it a couple times. It originally was called "prologue" and was going to be the start of a longer piece for this interesting orchestra. I might still do the full piece eventually, but for now here is the opening. I've always liked the music associated with magic and fairy tales, and thus I chose the name "Forest Sprites". It seems that exporting the image has made some errors, but oh well.
i can't breathe.
The killing of George Floyd and the protests around the world in response is impossible to overlook. It's really interesting how people are responding, whether that be with anger towards the corrupt police system and/or the government and corporations who are saying they support the movement without donating or supporting them (and in some cases even disempowering people of colour). or sympathy towards the police officers who have to deal with the public rioting against them. I'm personally more favourable to the former argument, but unless you're a pychopath, it's definitely a tragedy that George Floyd died. Undeniably.
In an attempt to comment on the issue and to express my emotional response to not only the protests, but also the people deny the importance of what is going on, I wrote "i can't breathe", which is a reference to George Floyd's supposed last words. In honour of the Black Lives Matter movement, I tried to write music that was in the genres created by or predominantly performed by black people. The opening is a Djembe drum pattern, and the majority of the song follows a clave typical to Afro-Cuban music. In the middle there is a half-time metal breakdown; while metal is a predominantly white dominated genre, it's roots in rock and blues, two genres formed by black people, is undeniable.
If you haven't donated, donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Campaign Zero, and other charities and funds against racism and police brutality.
In an attempt to comment on the issue and to express my emotional response to not only the protests, but also the people deny the importance of what is going on, I wrote "i can't breathe", which is a reference to George Floyd's supposed last words. In honour of the Black Lives Matter movement, I tried to write music that was in the genres created by or predominantly performed by black people. The opening is a Djembe drum pattern, and the majority of the song follows a clave typical to Afro-Cuban music. In the middle there is a half-time metal breakdown; while metal is a predominantly white dominated genre, it's roots in rock and blues, two genres formed by black people, is undeniable.
If you haven't donated, donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Campaign Zero, and other charities and funds against racism and police brutality.
fanfare of graz'zt
Submitted to the Artology 2020 Fanfare competition, in which I did not succeed (oh well), Fanfare for Graz'zt was an attempt to make an angry sounding fanfare, somewhat inspired by a fanfare I heard before a concert as a way to show that the concert was about start (I believe it was a WAAPA student?). My first attempt was to do a sort of cluster of strings and make each player glissando down to a particular note, but with that came two problems: pretty hard and confusing to notate, and in the immortal words of esteemed composer Gerard Brophy looking at a piece I wrote: "I would have realised the idea was too complex and moved to another piece". And so I did, and I wrote some more rhythmic music that sounded just as cool and complex.
This was written in March, when I was having a quintuplet moment, and thus quintuplets are played in everything but the bass drum. You might be asking: "why Graz'zt? Who's that?" Well, it's a powerful demon prince from Dungeons and Dragons, and he's the title because it sounds cool and I didn't really have anything cooler.
This was written in March, when I was having a quintuplet moment, and thus quintuplets are played in everything but the bass drum. You might be asking: "why Graz'zt? Who's that?" Well, it's a powerful demon prince from Dungeons and Dragons, and he's the title because it sounds cool and I didn't really have anything cooler.