fun.

Finally! In the MEARL. Nothing like using Finale on a massive new iMac--way better than the Finale on my computer, which has decided to not to have any playback audio other than the default piano..

I've been working on taking the chords that I composed last week (which turned out quite well, actually) and from them building a series of character pieces. I want to use Piano and Cello. Because I love both the piano and the cello, and love them even more together. I was also flirting with the idea of adding a voice, specifically, a tenor.

However, right now my issues lie with finding atonal material with which I can be satisfied. Personally, I never write atonal music and I find that most of the material I've composed from these chords are, in isolation, quite tonal. Tonality is so drilled into me that I am composing material from these completely atonal, random chords that harmonically could make sense on its own. This is disappointing because it isn't the point of the project. I have to find a balance. I am finding it difficult to be satisfied with an atonal sound. Maybe I just need more time at the piano to figure this out...

Opening Week

Well, here it is: my first composition blog of the year. Admittedly it was the fact that today is the day I will have to present the first part of my first assignment to the class which booted me into gear, however, I've successfully completed the work all the same. Much of my week-- well, pretty much the entirety of the past two weeks has been taken up by preparing for the opening of Grease (The Musical!) at the Arts and Culture, which happened last night. It's been a crazy two weeks, but so worth it! Anyways, this blog is not about my love of musicals or theatre, it's about comp. So, more of that:

The first part of Assignment 1 of this year was to write a series of 12-16 chords. I wrote 12, simply because I believe I had over-ambiguously exhausted limit of progressive harmonic tension throughout the series by the fourth chord. I went a little overboard with the chords.. which I admit was really hard to do atonally because the whole time I just wanted to resolve everything. I feel like mine is a little strange--but then again, it's atonal. I guess we'll see once I get to the seminar today.