I have been thinking of doing an analysis and construction blog on music as I thought maybe it would hold some merit, or that some people might think of it as a rather interesting look into the writing of music, from the composers perspective. With some of the recent blogs I'd been reading, I had been given a good answer to go ahead with this blog.
Setting the Stage
Recently I have been working on something that I have only ever described as 'silly'. It's not a composition of my own, e.g. a work for my catalogue, but perhaps what I would describe as a quirky video game remix/arrangement, as it is heavily entrenched in the contemporary side of things. The piece is an arrangement of a work that many of us are intimately familiar with, Listen to the Cries of the Planet from Final Fantasy VII.
Oh Final Fantasy, why do I love thee so? Oh right, cause it's kickass.
I, like many in playing for the first time, was immediately taken with the ambiance of the Forgotten Capital. It had nothing to do with the dramatism, but that certainly doesn't hurt, and we have seen some really interesting mixes/arrangements come out of working with this material. Some examples of this are:
I also recently found this, and while some of the notes are incorrect (people need to listen better t.t) the idea was cute, and fairly amusing. + Show Spoiler [reversion version] +
I however, decided that I was going to try to see if I could play around with Listen to the Cries of the Planet in an almost opposite structural/generative aesthetic and see what that would be like, or even if I could make it work at all.
For the last two years I have been working as a board member for the Society for New Music in my area, and we just started our 40th season. Opening the season was a concert with the seminal work by Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians. It's a 55 minute minimalist behemoth of a work, that is as amazing and energetically poignant as the impact it has had on music (rock, pop, or otherwise) since its premiere in 1976. I had been having an extended love affair with this piece, so it's no wonder the idea to mash these two sound worlds together came to me.
Initial Construction
Being that Listen to the Cries of the Planet and Music for 18 Musicians, or maybe I should just say stylistic minimalism, are almost completely opposite in their rhythmic aesthetic, I had to figure out a way to keep the musical ideas of the first, and use the generative process of minimalist music to influence the direction of the piece. This proved to be an interesting challenge as there were two major problems, the length of the work by Reich, and the process of the work, or just rhythmically charged minimalism in general.
The first problem I had to tackle was in generating the musical interlock, or repetitive pattern that is so common in early/middle minimalism. In early Reich works such as Piano Phase and Clapping Music, a single idea is stated, and then the second performer deviates, either directly or gradually, filling in the rhythmic gaps, and creating the intricate rhythmic patterns that emerge. Using the instrumentation and formal structure of Music for 18 Musicians, I set about figuring out the process of the piece. As an added note, I tried to use every musical idea in some way from the original piece, even the smallest of cells.
The first of course had to be the main melodic line. After some tinkering I came up with this cell, which in turn forced the piece to be in 6/4, and not some other wonky time signature that I was originally trying to go for, like 5/4 or 7/4, but more on those later. Incidentally this also coincided with the Reich, though I wasn't thinking about it consciously.
cell 1
With this figured out, the next step in was to complete the pattern with the next cell so that I could fill in the rhythmic gaps and complete the process . I think the obvious choice was the next most prominent structural element, the pizzicati. Using the negative space as structural points, I just finished mapping out the second cell pretty easily, adding in some rhythmic embellishments for contour or rhythmic sake. From here things get much easier because now I have the basic process set, and just needed to use an additive process in introducing new material. The rest of the procedural material, in their order are below:
cell 2
cell 1.5
cell 4
cell 5
Out of all of these ideas the 5th cell seems to stick out, because it isn't altered from its original in any way. That just happened to be a funny coincidence that I stumbled upon because it just, worked. The reason I named the second of these cell 1.5 is that it's just an inversion of the main cell. I figured that because of the somewhat simultaneity of the 'echo' from the original that I needed something relatively similar to fill in and reinforce the main rhythmic pattern.
At this point I started to realize that this playing around with the material was actually working, like scary working, and only fueled me to actually continue to make this work and also make it a piece, and not just some crazy/silly experiment with no obvious conclusion.
So, I had used most of the material from the original, but now needed to create direction and movement with the remaining portions. That and I had to decide how the piece would germinate. This is also where I came across my second problem.
Being that Reich's work is ~55 minutes, how was I supposed to condense this process into something more palpable for the audience while retaining the overall suspended feel and process of the piece? Mainly this just took a lot of creative decision making in cleverly shortening areas of music to their smallest possible point, whereas they still work both procedurally, but also aren't so concise that they seem non-suspended. This is where I started to make decisions that iterations/repetitions of 5 and 7 were to be the shortest periods of non-movement or progression, which conceptually was fairly neat but inadvertently, also turned out pretty well aurally. I also had to accept that this was going to be at least a 10 minute piece, in order to give enough space to the process without slighting it in any way.
Overall Form
The form of the piece is directly lifted from the piece by Reich, and some of the musical material is strongly influenced by it. The piece is constructed in four sections, and is loosely in arc form, where the first section is literally reversed at the end so that the piece begins and ends in the same place. The two middle sections are preceded by the Celesta, the stand-in for the Vibraphone (because somehow my VST doesn't have one...) as in the Reich, acting as structural anchors for the performers and audience to delineate the sections. In tackling the time/length issue, I decided that I would have to shorten the progression of chords to a maximum of 5 and that there would be 2 major internal sections and not 11 as with the Reich. In regards to the inner two sections, the first was designed so that 5 cells were interacting together, while the second in a more combinatorial, or additive sense uses all of the cell materials (7 in total, see the final two below). As an added note, the chords at the beginning and the progressions in the middle sections do not correlate directly as they do in the Reich, the idea was to be evocative of the structural and timbral elements, but not literally copy the structure point for point.
cell 6
cell 7
The result is a piece that is about 11.5 minutes in length that I think gives enough space for the generative process to happen, but is concise enough that someone unfamiliar with minimalist music wouldn't be too overwhelmed. I hope that I hit this on the head, because aside from one minor gripe (see below) I think I'm really pleased with how this quirky idea spiraled out of control into this piece.
Last Thoughts
My only somewhat negative thoughts about how this piece turned out are that I was disappointed that I don't have more realistic VST's at my disposal (the price of being poor I'm afraid). While they do approximate their acoustic counterparts fairly well, because of the recording processes of each instrument, and a lot of weird midi amplitude things, I had to make a lot of creative choices in what sounded 'best' in creating a good approximation of an amalgam, or just deal with the limitations of the VST. This I think hinders the impact of it a bit, as it's supposed to be %100 acoustic, and doesn't quite get there, but, that's a gripe I'll leave for you to decide whether or not it's super important.
One last note on the work, getting something like this played live would be inordinately difficult to do unfortunately. Reich's piece suffers the same logistical programming issues because of the instrumentation requirements (so you know, the instrumentation for this requires 2 Clarinets each doubling Bass Clarinet, 2 Xylophones, 5 Marimbas, 1 Celesta, 5 Pianos, and a Violin and Cello player), the Reich being far more difficult because, well, it's 40 minutes longer.
I hope you've found this to be somewhat intriguing, entertaining, inspiring, or perhaps informative in helping you understand the process behind this piece and how I approached it. Thanks for reading and listening.
Holy shit. This is epic. As a professional cellist, this is what I would love to spend my time recording. I can't compose with any ability but you sir have impressed me.
But you really REALLY need better VSTs or a live recording.
On November 10 2011 03:56 tkRage wrote: Holy shit. This is epic. As a professional cellist, this is what I would love to spend my time recording. I can't compose with any ability but you sir have impressed me.
But you really REALLY need better VSTs or a live recording.
Thanks man, and I definitely agree, I really need a better VST to work with, or live perf. It would make this piece about 10x better than in it's current form.
I just want to say, great job. I'm a big fan of Music for 18 Musicians, but I've never heard the FFVII piece before. I went ahead and listened to it after listening to your song, and I have to say you combined the "feel" of both pieces really well. Keep at it.
P.S. Out of curiosity, what software did you use? The VSTs did sound a little stiff, but sometimes there's not much you can do about that unless you're willing to fork over a few hundred bucks for better software. (Or thousands for the Waves suite, lol).
Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
On November 10 2011 04:51 sob3k wrote: agh god, go download Nexus for gods sake! Would sound SOOOOO much better with some individual note volume modulation and stereo spreading.
Nice job on the arrangement though.
Not familiar with Nexus, is it a pluggin? I actually did play around with the volumes of each instrument a lot, but there's also partially a limitation of the VST, it seems that it's not recorded evenly in some respects, and that presented the biggest problem for me in putting this together.
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
On November 10 2011 04:51 sob3k wrote: agh god, go download Nexus for gods sake! Would sound SOOOOO much better with some individual note volume modulation and stereo spreading.
Nice job on the arrangement though.
Not familiar with Nexus, is it a pluggin? I actually did play around with the volumes of each instrument a lot, but there's also partially a limitation of the VST, it seems that it's not recorded evenly in some respects, and that presented the biggest problem for me in putting this together.
ReFx Nexus, yes its a sample based synth plugin that comes in VST form. Has some pretty nice orchestral sounds and is easy to find. I can telly you more specifically how to get it if you want, just PM.
EDIT: also what embed code and site did you use to get an embedded player in TL? That would be super useful for me.
I never thought I would find something so dear as my favourite Nobuo Uematsu piece arranged in the style of Reich, the minimalist to inspire me the most. Even less did I expect finding it on a forum for Starcraft. I'm completely stunned.
I haven't studied Reich technically -- thank you so much for bringing this to me. I even arranged the very same piece for synths and breaks a few years ago. Your method however, surpasses my technical understanding, and I'm thrilled to see somebody take the time and effort to make this beautiful piece grow even more. What an assurement that I picked a good piece to rearrange!
If you're interested, you can find my version on http://soundcloud.com/sapht/ff7-breakcore-remixes-masamune. It hardly deviates from the original in terms of harmony and melody, my focus has been to create a synergy between the solemn beauty of the piece and intense breakbeat patterns.
I agree that there's a need for more dynamic instruments, but that's a production issue. The compositional issue, you nailed it. Well done, sir.
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
Well, my composition teachers said to me that if you want to have something of yours to be played, have more normal orchestrations and don't make it too hard to play, and I agree with that. What's the point of writing music that won't be played except very rarely? And not because people don't want to but because the composer had to make it a logistical nightmare to put up a performance.
I'm pretty sure you could find a way to rearrange those extreme numbers of werid instruments, because honestly most listeners (even experts) will not by any means think "this would have been better with 5 pianists instead of just 2" if they hear it performed. And are you sure there needs to be doublings on a piano when 1 piano/marimba is enough for timbre in a whole symphony orchestra? If something is doubled on a piano in such a small orchestra I'm sure that would be incredibly dominating, don't you agree?
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
Well, my composition teachers said to me that if you want to have something of yours to be played, have more normal orchestrations and don't make it too hard to play, and I agree with that. What's the point of writing music that won't be played except very rarely? And not because people don't want to but because the composer had to make it a logistical nightmare to put up a performance.
I'm pretty sure you could find a way to rearrange those extreme numbers of werid instruments, because honestly most listeners (even experts) will not by any means think "this would have been better with 5 pianists instead of just 2" if they hear it performed. And are you sure there needs to be doublings on a piano when 1 piano/marimba is enough for timbre in a whole symphony orchestra? If something is doubled on a piano in such a small orchestra I'm sure that would be incredibly dominating, don't you agree?
Your composition teachers sound like they are erring on the side of caution/practicality which is a good side to err on. If this were a composition that I was more serious about (e.g. for my serious, or real catalogue) I would have taken that into account perhaps a little more reticently when deciding on the instrumentation, but even then, sometimes, you just have to be adventurous. My masters thesis for example was scored for Chorus and Orchestra, and regardless of the inner workings of the piece, the addition of the chorus immediately makes this much harder to program, but the piece required it. Another friend of mine's scored his thesis for String Orchestra divisi a 32, very Ligeti-esque, and a very interesting sound world, but again, that makes for difficulties.
Regarding the doublings, the only doublings are Piano/Xylophone, and Marimba/Xylophone, the latter I've already addressed why I did that, in a live performance I'm not sure the marimba would be necessary. I should mention though, context is important, like super exceedingly important. Your acoustic sound world in a chamber setting will not function the same as within a full orchestra setting, or that of a solo or small ensemble setting. Subtle timbral and spacial elements need to be addressed. Register plays into this quite a bit as well. I would just strongly caution you not to take preformed conceptions on how one environment sounds and apply it to other ones unscrupulously, that will lead to what you envision, and what actually happens conflicting with each other, sometimes quite seriously.
I'm curious to ask based on your comments, do you know the piece by Reich? There's a reason he has it scored for 4 pianos. By separating the material it immediately becomes manageable for the performer. You may not be accounting for the repetitive nature, or more specifically the performance issues in condensing this material further. It would be a potential endurance nightmare for a pianist to play this kind of material (if condensed) for a sustained amount of time (the Reich would have been impossible to play if he had condensed it any further, and he even has a note specifically stating that you may want to use more than 18 musicians to make this more manageable for them).
Largely with my arrangement, I think this is more flexible to a degree as you can almost get away with having 3 pianos, save for two moments where that would be extraordinarily awkward/difficult, but if this were ever performed (or had i envisioned that happening from the beginning) I might re-evaluate that issue. You have to remember that I was also playing around with the Reich idea as well, which included the instrumentation, that and I wrote this in three days.
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
Well, my composition teachers said to me that if you want to have something of yours to be played, have more normal orchestrations and don't make it too hard to play, and I agree with that. What's the point of writing music that won't be played except very rarely? And not because people don't want to but because the composer had to make it a logistical nightmare to put up a performance.
I'm pretty sure you could find a way to rearrange those extreme numbers of werid instruments, because honestly most listeners (even experts) will not by any means think "this would have been better with 5 pianists instead of just 2" if they hear it performed. And are you sure there needs to be doublings on a piano when 1 piano/marimba is enough for timbre in a whole symphony orchestra? If something is doubled on a piano in such a small orchestra I'm sure that would be incredibly dominating, don't you agree?
Your composition teachers sound like they are erring on the side of caution/practicality which is a good side to err on. If this were a composition that I was more serious about (e.g. for my serious, or real catalogue) I would have taken that into account perhaps a little more reticently when deciding on the instrumentation, but even then, sometimes, you just have to be adventurous. My masters thesis for example was scored for Chorus and Orchestra, and regardless of the inner workings of the piece, the addition of the chorus immediately makes this much harder to program, but the piece required it. Another friend of mine's scored his thesis for String Orchestra divisi a 32, very Ligeti-esque, and a very interesting sound world, but again, that makes for difficulties.
Regarding the doublings, the only doublings are Piano/Xylophone, and Marimba/Xylophone, the latter I've already addressed why I did that, in a live performance I'm not sure the marimba would be necessary. I should mention though, context is important, like super exceedingly important. Your acoustic sound world in a chamber setting will not function the same as within a full orchestra setting, or that of a solo or small ensemble setting. Subtle timbral and spacial elements need to be addressed. Register plays into this quite a bit as well. I would just strongly caution you not to take preformed conceptions on how one environment sounds and apply it to other ones unscrupulously, that will lead to what you envision, and what actually happens conflicting with each other, sometimes quite seriously.
I'm curious to ask based on your comments, do you know the piece by Reich? There's a reason he has it scored for 4 pianos. By separating the material it immediately becomes manageable for the performer. You may not be accounting for the repetitive nature, or more specifically the performance issues in condensing this material further. It would be a potential endurance nightmare for a pianist to play this kind of material (if condensed) for a sustained amount of time (the Reich would have been impossible to play if he had condensed it any further, and he even has a note specifically stating that you may want to use more than 18 musicians to make this more manageable for them).
Largely with my arrangement, I think this is more flexible to a degree as you can almost get away with having 3 pianos, save for two moments where that would be extraordinarily awkward/difficult, but if this were ever performed (or had i envisioned that happening from the beginning) I might re-evaluate that issue. You have to remember that I was also playing around with the Reich idea as well, which included the instrumentation, that and I wrote this in three days.
Ok, I see your points, and it's clear that you know what you are talking about, and as I've said I'm not that into minimalist music and haven't studied serious modern composition very seriously yet (only 1 semester) so I can't say that my know-how about advanced, subtle orchestral timbre is anything to brag about (and not something that I find particularily interesting either to be honest). You have explained very well the reasoning about the issues I raised and I get what you mean now, thank you : )
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
Well, my composition teachers said to me that if you want to have something of yours to be played, have more normal orchestrations and don't make it too hard to play, and I agree with that. What's the point of writing music that won't be played except very rarely? And not because people don't want to but because the composer had to make it a logistical nightmare to put up a performance.
I'm pretty sure you could find a way to rearrange those extreme numbers of werid instruments, because honestly most listeners (even experts) will not by any means think "this would have been better with 5 pianists instead of just 2" if they hear it performed. And are you sure there needs to be doublings on a piano when 1 piano/marimba is enough for timbre in a whole symphony orchestra? If something is doubled on a piano in such a small orchestra I'm sure that would be incredibly dominating, don't you agree?
Your composition teachers sound like they are erring on the side of caution/practicality which is a good side to err on. If this were a composition that I was more serious about (e.g. for my serious, or real catalogue) I would have taken that into account perhaps a little more reticently when deciding on the instrumentation, but even then, sometimes, you just have to be adventurous. My masters thesis for example was scored for Chorus and Orchestra, and regardless of the inner workings of the piece, the addition of the chorus immediately makes this much harder to program, but the piece required it. Another friend of mine's scored his thesis for String Orchestra divisi a 32, very Ligeti-esque, and a very interesting sound world, but again, that makes for difficulties.
Regarding the doublings, the only doublings are Piano/Xylophone, and Marimba/Xylophone, the latter I've already addressed why I did that, in a live performance I'm not sure the marimba would be necessary. I should mention though, context is important, like super exceedingly important. Your acoustic sound world in a chamber setting will not function the same as within a full orchestra setting, or that of a solo or small ensemble setting. Subtle timbral and spacial elements need to be addressed. Register plays into this quite a bit as well. I would just strongly caution you not to take preformed conceptions on how one environment sounds and apply it to other ones unscrupulously, that will lead to what you envision, and what actually happens conflicting with each other, sometimes quite seriously.
I'm curious to ask based on your comments, do you know the piece by Reich? There's a reason he has it scored for 4 pianos. By separating the material it immediately becomes manageable for the performer. You may not be accounting for the repetitive nature, or more specifically the performance issues in condensing this material further. It would be a potential endurance nightmare for a pianist to play this kind of material (if condensed) for a sustained amount of time (the Reich would have been impossible to play if he had condensed it any further, and he even has a note specifically stating that you may want to use more than 18 musicians to make this more manageable for them).
Largely with my arrangement, I think this is more flexible to a degree as you can almost get away with having 3 pianos, save for two moments where that would be extraordinarily awkward/difficult, but if this were ever performed (or had i envisioned that happening from the beginning) I might re-evaluate that issue. You have to remember that I was also playing around with the Reich idea as well, which included the instrumentation, that and I wrote this in three days.
Ok, I see your points, and it's clear that you know what you are talking about, and as I've said I'm not that into minimalist music and haven't studied serious modern composition very seriously yet (only 1 semester) so I can't say that my know-how about advanced, subtle orchestral timbre is anything to brag about (and not something that I find particularily interesting either to be honest). You have explained very well the reasoning about the issues I raised and I get what you mean now, thank you : )
Out of curiosity, where are you in your studies currently, and who do you study with, anyone I might be aware of? My knowledge of Sweden's composers are brief, but I do know a few.
On November 10 2011 04:58 Barbarne wrote: Personally I'm not much for minimalism so keep that in mind while reading. First of all I fail to see why this requires 5 marimbas and 5 pianos. At no part did I hear 5 different rhytms like in Piano Phase, so why would you need 5?
Either way it's a nice project, although I'd personally tone down the repetitiveness in some parts to give room for an accompanimet more like the FFVII piece, giving both pieces equal importance since I see this as 18 musicians with another set of melodic elements juxtaposed on top of it instead of an actual amalgamation of the two.
Something like a straight break somewhere in the middle almost copying the original Cries (with strings playing a strong melodic part appasionato (or something like it) to show the vast difference in musical style between the two pieces) and instead here having elements of 18 musicians creep in and warp Cries into something new just as you did vice versa, would be interesting I think.
Anyway, nice work, I can't say anthing about minimalist composition and I have no idea what it would take to get this played, but I hope you can get your music (this or something else) played live some day : )
The reason you need 5 of each player is a performance issue. you cannot use less than that number of musicians and still have the piece played. There are also a few doublings because of timbral issues I ran into.
Actually I don't know if you picked up on it or not, in the second inner section, the 7th cell is directly lifted from that elongated melodic content from the strings.
Well, my composition teachers said to me that if you want to have something of yours to be played, have more normal orchestrations and don't make it too hard to play, and I agree with that. What's the point of writing music that won't be played except very rarely? And not because people don't want to but because the composer had to make it a logistical nightmare to put up a performance.
I'm pretty sure you could find a way to rearrange those extreme numbers of werid instruments, because honestly most listeners (even experts) will not by any means think "this would have been better with 5 pianists instead of just 2" if they hear it performed. And are you sure there needs to be doublings on a piano when 1 piano/marimba is enough for timbre in a whole symphony orchestra? If something is doubled on a piano in such a small orchestra I'm sure that would be incredibly dominating, don't you agree?
Your composition teachers sound like they are erring on the side of caution/practicality which is a good side to err on. If this were a composition that I was more serious about (e.g. for my serious, or real catalogue) I would have taken that into account perhaps a little more reticently when deciding on the instrumentation, but even then, sometimes, you just have to be adventurous. My masters thesis for example was scored for Chorus and Orchestra, and regardless of the inner workings of the piece, the addition of the chorus immediately makes this much harder to program, but the piece required it. Another friend of mine's scored his thesis for String Orchestra divisi a 32, very Ligeti-esque, and a very interesting sound world, but again, that makes for difficulties.
Regarding the doublings, the only doublings are Piano/Xylophone, and Marimba/Xylophone, the latter I've already addressed why I did that, in a live performance I'm not sure the marimba would be necessary. I should mention though, context is important, like super exceedingly important. Your acoustic sound world in a chamber setting will not function the same as within a full orchestra setting, or that of a solo or small ensemble setting. Subtle timbral and spacial elements need to be addressed. Register plays into this quite a bit as well. I would just strongly caution you not to take preformed conceptions on how one environment sounds and apply it to other ones unscrupulously, that will lead to what you envision, and what actually happens conflicting with each other, sometimes quite seriously.
I'm curious to ask based on your comments, do you know the piece by Reich? There's a reason he has it scored for 4 pianos. By separating the material it immediately becomes manageable for the performer. You may not be accounting for the repetitive nature, or more specifically the performance issues in condensing this material further. It would be a potential endurance nightmare for a pianist to play this kind of material (if condensed) for a sustained amount of time (the Reich would have been impossible to play if he had condensed it any further, and he even has a note specifically stating that you may want to use more than 18 musicians to make this more manageable for them).
Largely with my arrangement, I think this is more flexible to a degree as you can almost get away with having 3 pianos, save for two moments where that would be extraordinarily awkward/difficult, but if this were ever performed (or had i envisioned that happening from the beginning) I might re-evaluate that issue. You have to remember that I was also playing around with the Reich idea as well, which included the instrumentation, that and I wrote this in three days.
Ok, I see your points, and it's clear that you know what you are talking about, and as I've said I'm not that into minimalist music and haven't studied serious modern composition very seriously yet (only 1 semester) so I can't say that my know-how about advanced, subtle orchestral timbre is anything to brag about (and not something that I find particularily interesting either to be honest). You have explained very well the reasoning about the issues I raised and I get what you mean now, thank you : )
Out of curiosity, where are you in your studies currently, and who do you study with, anyone I might be aware of? My knowledge of Sweden's composers are brief, but I do know a few.
I don't study with anyone right now since I'm not studying composition at the moment : )
I'm a bit of an anomaly in the musical world since I decided to change subjects from Science to music at the tender age of 21. I started studying musicology in 2009 and didn't know what a chord was when I came to my institution the first day... Since then I've tried a modern composition course but it was way too early (jumping in slap bang with debussy is quite hard when you wouldn't be able to construct a decent harmony between just two voices...) but most importantly I realized that I would have to learn to play something to be able to write the music I hear in my head. This is because the approach of writing down what I heard didn't work at all since I had not learnt the parameters of notation while I was young, as most people do, and therefore had to learn all of that through playing and practice. Plus I realized that I needed to be able to improvise and since my favourite composer is Chopin, the choice of instrument was easy : ) So right now I'm working to become a classical pianist (since december 2010), and once I'm good enough and I have absorbed enough musical (practical) knowledge I will start focusing on composition again, so come back in a couple of years and ask again ; )
The problem with my situation is how there is no system for people who want to start playing seriously so late as I did so now I'm studying separate courses in musicology (currently schenkerian analysis) to make a living while practicing and getting tutored privately (by my russian concert pianist teacher) so that I can get into a decent school next fall. Auditions are around april, and I'm already getting nervous, but it's going well and everyone's saying I'm showing a lot of promise, so I'm hopeful for the future : )
What is your experience, are you a proffesional composer?
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