week no. 8
We are done!
My project: This spring I sought to write a new piece of music for solo guitar. Guitar has given me so much, and I wanted to give something back. Composing has always been an interest of mine from far before I was a musician, always admiring the structures of songs and their orchestration. Well, back then I just thought of it as I was drawn in by the fact that this person organized sound in such a way to create what we now call a song. I always knew I wanted to be a musician and once I had the resources to begin my journey that is exactly what I did and now I want to give back to an old friend, the guitar.
I wrote the piece, which ended up being in rondo form (ABACA)—I illustrated the cover art—I recorded the piece of music—I mixed the recording. It has been quite the journey.
Last week, we had recorded the separate sections of the piece and this week we mixed them an have a final product! I used garage band to mix the recordings. I simply overlapped them, nothing fancy:
I did add a bit of reverb and created a filter title “Holsclaw Hall” which is the hall at my university that I usually perform in. I wanted to recreate the sound of the hall from memory and the result was something like:
Looking back on this project, it was an uphill battle. My main issue was creativity. I felt as though every time I sat down to write I could not come up with anything. All of this piece was writing straight from ideas that simply popped in my head (except the last few measures of the final episode—they are a mess—which worked—but it took all of me to work out). The thing is that these bursts of inspiration were spread apart. I would go days with nothing and then suddenly I would think of the melody or part of the melody and the next part would come later—sometimes days later. I did attempt different composing techniques (12-tone rows, contrapuntal inventions, placing the alphabet to the chromatic scale and using word phrases to come up with melodies) and each time the result was not a good one, we are our biggest critics but also the music is for the listener and the first listener is the composer and if the composer doesn’t like what he wrote then why is he writing it? I did enjoy the process, I must admit.
This semester has been a journey and I decided to title the piece “JOurney”. The capitalization happened by accident after hold shift down fort the first two letters but I did like how it looked so its “JOurney”.
“JOurney” YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/dRmyjmjkPqc?si=MK8_crOXECD2YDmM
Project Video Link: https://youtu.be/CbpqF6m__Kc?si=BlG6h7xiD8W44sW1
