Thread: What are you currently working on?

Originally Posted by Crudblud

I think that wouldn't be much of a musical at all, I'd stick with Coates, or better yet: 1940s big band style music.

Xenakis, Hildegard, Glenn Miller, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Cazazza Dan, Eric Coates, Sullivan and Mozart in a mash-up?

Originally Posted by ComposerOfAvantGarde

Xenakis, Hildegard, Glenn Miller, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Cazazza Dan, Eric Coates, Sullivan and Mozart in a mash-up?

You've got yourself a deal, good sir.

Got a competition to enter. I entered the same competition a few years ago with my piano quintet and came runner-up.

I am currently absorbed in working on my "Pieces For Piano & Woodwinds" suite which has six short pieces totaling 14-16 minutes of material. I call it pieces for piano and Woodwinds, but I purposely limit the Woodwinds to only Clarinet, Oboe, and Bassoon so that it doesn't get too dense sounding.

My goal for the suite is to compose each piece of the suite by a different modern method. I have already finished this part and I am now filling the pieces in and removing the crappier parts. I use Steinberg Cubase to compose in (they have a nice score writer IMO) because the great and realistic sounding orchestral instruments. So I can hear my changes immediately.

The six compositional methods are:

1. Chord to Scale: like many jazz pieces, pick the highlight chords first, then write melodies based on the synthetic scales created.

2. Exotic Scale to Chord: use a less known scale, harmonize it, and strictly compose using chords from the harmonizations. I used the Acoustic Scale for one part, for example.

3. Serialism: obvious enough

4. Post-Serialism: my own compositional technique which found a whole slew of more automorphic operators in Z_12 to use besides inversion and translation. More on that later!

5. Many modulations: strictly tonal, but modulate enough to make the tonal center fuzzy.

6. Bitonality: two keys, two harmonizations, put them together to get some interesting chord progressions.

Originally Posted by etkearne

I am currently absorbed in working on my "Pieces For Piano & Woodwinds" suite which has six short pieces totaling 14-16 minutes of material. I call it pieces for piano and Woodwinds, but I purposely limit the Woodwinds to only Clarinet, Oboe, and Bassoon so that it doesn't get too dense sounding.

My goal for the suite is to compose each piece of the suite by a different modern method. I have already finished this part and I am now filling the pieces in and removing the crappier parts. I use Steinberg Cubase to compose in (they have a nice score writer IMO) because the great and realistic sounding orchestral instruments. So I can hear my changes immediately.

The six compositional methods are:

1. Chord to Scale: like many jazz pieces, pick the highlight chords first, then write melodies based on the synthetic scales created.

2. Exotic Scale to Chord: use a less known scale, harmonize it, and strictly compose using chords from the harmonizations. I used the Acoustic Scale for one part, for example.

3. Serialism: obvious enough

4. Post-Serialism: my own compositional technique which found a whole slew of more automorphic operators in Z_12 to use besides inversion and translation. More on that later!

5. Many modulations: strictly tonal, but modulate enough to make the tonal center fuzzy.

6. Bitonality: two keys, two harmonizations, put them together to get some interesting chord progressions.

Sounds really cool. I'd love to hear the outcome.

Originally Posted by ComposerOfAvantGarde

Sounds really cool. I'd love to hear the outcome.

Thanks! I will try to post it once I tweak the textural elements to my liking. I wish there was a way to upload it other than YouTube, though, considering mp3 format looses a significant amount of the fluidity of a piece IMO. Maybe someone knows a better way?


Anyways, I wrote the first Movement of a new project this morning. Similar to the last piece, Piano & Woodwinds, this suite is Piano & Brass, scored for solo piano, one trumpet, one trombone, one French Horn, and one Tuba. So it is a chamber work. I decided to make the first movement very contrapuntal. It reminds me a lot of Paul Hindemith's work now that it is done and I have listened to it. Pretty cool stuff.

You know you can put WAV in an AVI file, right? Export the audio as 24-bit 96 kHz WAV and set the video resolution to 1280*720, the video can then be played in HD ensuring little to no loss in sound quality.

Thanks Crudblud. That is precisely what I was looking for.

Originally Posted by etkearne

Thanks Crudblud. That is precisely what I was looking for.

Could you give a link so we could hear some of the music you have already written?

It looks like most of the folks here use the "Soundcloud" thing, so I am working on setting up an account there right now and will post my link as soon as I have a couple of works in there.

Originally Posted by ComposerOfAvantGarde

Got a competition to enter. I entered the same competition a few years ago with my piano quintet and came runner-up.

After 50 bars of music I decide finally to call it Chamber Concerto. I've written a slow, transforming opening which is now the first movement and I'm working on the second movement now. The movements go as follows:

I. Metamorphosis (crotchet=60)
II. Scherzo (minim=112)
III. Cantabile (TBA, probably crotchet=80)

It will probably go for about seven minutes. I like to keep things breif but action packed. Instrumentation as follows:

Alto saxophone
Baritone saxophone
Horn
Trumpet
Trombone
Tuba
Percussion (bongos, congas, snare drum, tom-toms)
Piano
Double bass

Started work on another piece for piano. Not sure if it will be a full blown sonata or a one movement work. It begins tonally in Bb minor, and transitions into a more scraibin like dissonance, with a motif being presented there which might be developed later.

The A section of the piece starts in 7/8 time, but i plan to in later recaps of A:
go into 9/8, and
5/8

just to keep with the themes compound signature. There will also be a section where the A theme is turned into a tone row, playing the full row and its inversion, then later developed with further rows from the matrix.

I also have an interesting development harmony that is Bb major - Gb major - Emajor - Cmajor, which almost outlines a petrushka chord (G and C# are absent), these notes are also present in this excerpt. And I have a cool harmony where going from Bb minor to iv - V - bii, moving to the neopolitan (B major) and hinting Eb minor.

Here is the score currently:
Start_0001.jpgStart_0002.jpgStart_0003.jpg

and preview:
http://soundcloud.com/sapphire-1/bb-minor-piece

Page two looks awesome!

Still the same piano prelude. I feel like I'll have to spend more time per week on this if I want to finish it before 2032.

A song for voice and piano, words by Byron. I don't know what voice it is yet so I will write it for tenor and hope for the best.