Thursday, July 7, 2011

Is creativity always in a box?


This is a fascinating talk by David Byrne about how the spaces where music is performed have contributed to the style and form of the music.

An interesting way to think about how music has evolved in particular and how the creative process is affected by the culture in which it is created.



Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Vienna Symphonic Library

I've started working with a new Virtual Instrument that sounds phenomenal. I never thought a fake orchestra would ever be able to fool me. But this one does. Not all the time. But a lot of the time. Pretty exciting tool to discover at this point in my composing life.

Now let's see what I'll make with it...

Monday, May 16, 2011

Orchestral music, finally

Last month I finished my first composition for full orchestra.
A big deal? Yes.
Hard work? Yes, absolutely.
But what a blast I had, working mostly at night for over 6 months, after the kids were in bed.
I spent some time listening and following along to some beautiful music.
Debussy's, "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".
Beethoven's later symphonies, some Brahms.
Stravinsky's "Petrushka", which I have always loved so much and "The Rite of Spring".
I also very much enjoyed Michael Gandolfi's "Garden of Cosmic Speculation" and was thankful that he made the score available on his website.
I even read through the good old "Principles of Orchestration" by Rimsky-Korsakov.

The piece started with a simple melodic idea, the pitch content of which my friend Paul mentioned, is the same as the old song "I've Got Rhythm". Now, I certainly would never claim to have rhythm, but I did the best I could with that pitch material. The inspiration for the melody of the piece comes from the music I made for a short film a number of years ago. The imagery that I found so inspiring was that of a misty Autumn day on Mount Holyoke in western Massachusetts . Here is the original musical idea.  a meeting like this by Evren Celimli
So the next step is to get my 15 minute orchestral piece "Colorful Mountains Cry For You" performed. I have sent it off to the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute and will hear back from them sometime this summer.