TandlerovMusic

TEASER!

So, I kind of lied when I said I might not be posting any new music here for a while.  Here’s something that beat its way out of my head this morning while I should have been working.  It’s actually two themes that overlay each other.  I’m thinking that the top line would be Nine’s theme, and the lower line would be Dice’s.  I went with celesta because I like the sound, and I feel like it evokes some of the childishness that I think both of them poses (although I think Nine’s probably more aware and comfortable with it).  

I consciously made this theme consist of two independent melodic lines, because I want to be able to have them start out separated, and then gradually grow together in the music (insert obligatory joke about Nine being ‘on top’ of Dice here).  When I do actually get to write music for that development in the plot, I’m planning on giving both those themes to the bass oboe, one after the other, and then have the texture thin out until the solo celesta (or, more realistically, piano) can put them together.  Trust me, it sounds good in my head.

Let me know what you think!

P.S. - Yes, I was using Demi’s drawing of the same title as an inspiration.

Edit:  Yeah, I’ll admit, I wanted to try for something a little darker.  Maybe something in the aeolian mode (natural minor) or something mixolydian or dorian.  I’ll keep working on it, although it might take me a while, since I have to make it through this last week of classes first…

FINISHED DRAFT OF GREYSCALE MOVEMENT FOUR!!!

My longest work to date, at just over nine and a half minutes long (and no, I didn’t INTENTIONALLY make it Nine minutes long.

I’m listening to the MP3 version now, and wishing that it sounded as good as it does in Finale.  

So, Silvae and Skie, what scene should I do next?  I’m probably going to have to spend more time on school in the next two weeks, but I don’t want to stop writing now that I’m on a roll, so to speak.  

Thank’s to all you guys who followed this piece through the long process of sketching. It made a huge difference to know that people were actually following the progress of this piece, and I don’t think I could have finished it if it weren’t for you guys.  The material I was trying to cover in this movement is pretty challenging on its own, and setting it to music was really hard sometimes.  I struggled a lot internally with questions like how I was going to express Nine’s relationship with Pai, and how I was going to present Dice’s description of euthanasia and his false offer to have Pai rehabilitated.  Even though those sections almost wrote themselves once I got started, it took me days to come up with both (and honestly, writing the events for ‘Still Smiling’ made me a bit teary-eyed).

Since finishing this piece, I’ve had this amazing feeling; that I’ve passed some sort of test, and that I’m going to be able to start writing full time, and in the style I’ve always loved the most.  I’ve always dreamed of writing like the great English Impressionist-Romantics, like Vaughan Williams and Charles Villiers-Stanford.  I may not be there yet, but I feel like I’ve taken a big step in the right direction.  Who knows; maybe my first symphony will be the massive choral-orchestral work I always dreamed it would be…

I wish I had the time to talk about how my beliefs as a quaker shaped my interpretation of the material, but I don’t want to alienate people, and I’m afraid that it would sound really insincere, which would be the last thing I want.  So, I’m going to write a post about it on my other website, which I’ll link to once I write it.

Hold on guys.  The times, they are changing…

New sketch.  Notes coming tomorrow (haha.  I know what I said).

Ha!  As I said, here are some NOTES!  (Oh God, will that ever cease to be a joke?)

New Draft!  I spent a lot of time going over the transitions between the sections and making them smoother.  I’m now almost satisfied with the beginning of the piece, although a few things still need tweaking.  I’ve also added a long section at the end that brings me all the way up to “Better Than This.”  I know it seems like I kind of glossed over the last couple of pages, but I ended up deciding that, while there were significant emotions expressed, there wasn’t really any action that I could depict musically without ruining the mood of the piece.  

Anyway, it’s now almost done, and then I’m going to be doing MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF TYPESETTING AND EDITING so that it looks nice in score form.  (I guess I’ll be doing parts as well).

I’m thinking of livestreaming some of the final development phases (I figured that no one would want to watch me move notes around for WEEKS ON END, so now that I actually have lost of stuff to work with, I figured some people might be interested in seeing how I turn all of my note-vomit into a piece of playable music.  Let me know in comments if you’d be interested in watching (Note:  Livestream would probably happen Monday night at around 7:00 pm, EST.  

EDIT:  FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!  IT IS FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!  HUZAH!!!!!!!!  

STATS:

Length: 129 measures (9:30 in length)

Time Taken: 17 days, 6 hours (approximately)

Final Staff Count: 50

I shall be posting the finished recording on my website and on Tumblr at midnight.

Movement Four - Sketch No. 3.

Even more changes to this one.  I honestly can’t believe that I’m still having good ideas with so far left to go.  I’ve still got most of four pages to go before the end, although I’ve now gotten through one of the most emotionally challenging pages, “Still Smiling.”  Currently, the music stops just before the third panel of “Scientific Garbage,” which is where the first ‘pretty’ melodic section I’ve written so far ends on a harsh minor cadence to the mediant of the mediant.  

I’m thinking about bringing that ‘pretty’ section back in some form at the end of the piece to kind of see Pai out of the story line (strings and harp would be similar, but the melodic part would be a duet between the alto flute and clarinet).  That section is actually based loosely on a requiem for choir and harp that my choir director wrote as his doctoral thesis, for anyone interested.

I can’t wait to get into some of the newer pages once this one is done.  Specifically, I can’t wait to write for Dice x Nine, because that’s what I’ve been saving the oboes for.  Watch out, here comes the bass oboe! I’m using the Bass because the sound is complicated, dark, awkward, rich, and somewhere between rough and smooth; rather like the couple it’s eventually going to represent.

Anyway…

Sorry about the fuzzier areas of the recording.  I’m still figuring out how I’m going to get rid of that, but I promise that I’ll figure it out before I finish writing (it doesn’t happen in my writing software, so I think it’s a problem with iTunes).

Greyscale Suite Movement IV - Further Progress

After an epic and frustrating battle with my music writing software (which you can read about below this post), I can finally bring you the latest sketch of movement four.  The beginning remains basically the same, although I added some swells and things to make it more interesting.  More obvious changes occur later.  I’ve now gotten as far as “Blackmail,” so only five pages until I’m done.  

I’m thinking about writing something more thematic after I’m done with this movement, and I’d like your opinion about what might be good.  I’m going to post links to YouTube recordings of pieces that I’m thinking of emulating, and you can tell me what you like best in comments.  The piece will be called “Flightless Bird” after Silvae’s drawing on the Greyscale Tumblr.  

Also, my composition teacher asked me to do a complete analysis of the piece so far, so I might post that up here if people are interested in reading my thought process.  

The audio file is a bit messy still, probably because there are SO MANY MIDI CHANNELS INVOLVED.  Seriously, the score has more than 40 staves now, so the larger bits got a bit mangled.  I’ll try and fix this in the final version of the recording, but that might take a while, so don’t hold your breath.  

PIECES TO LISTEN TO:

Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4W6xhaqoYM

Lullaby for Strings:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ZQVUesZE0

Adagio from Elgar Symphony No. 1:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSYXbE3e9xQ

From the Bohemian Forest - The Silent Woods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dasjimQ9PU

Lyric Pieces: No.58: At the Cradle  Book IX - Opus 68

Arranged for woodwind section.  This is one of my favorite pieces for piano, and one of the first of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces that I arranged.  Hope you enjoy!

Greyscale Movement IV - A Sketch

Hi Y’all.  This is my current sketch for the fourth movement of the Greyscale Suite.  Right now, it covers the action on the page “Euthanasia” and the page immediately after that, but I plan to continue covering the action through “Better Than This.”  

It’s been slow going on this movement.  It’s just been really hard to get my ideas to sound good, and I’ve been having less and less free time to work on this as the semester has progressed.  I’m hopefully going to finish this by the time I leave for Italy in May, although if I can finish it sooner, I will.  I can’t wait to get to work on actually writing some catchy themes for these characters, even though I suspect that’ll be the hardest part of this project.  

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has been listening to the stuff I post here.  Before I started this blog, I really didn’t have a way of finding out what people liked about my music.  It’s been great to see so many people listening to the music that I spend so much time and energy writing, and I love all your comments and questions.

Please, if you have suggestions or questions about this sketch, or anything else on the blog, leave me a question over on the right.  I generally answer them within 24 hours, if not sooner.

Update:

Wow, stuff keeps happening now.  I’ve had to add another harp to the instrumentation (I thought one would be enough to handle all the chromatic notes, since I usually don’t use that many, but noooo), and I’ve been milking this minor III to minor I6 progression for all it’s worth.  This is easily the biggest movement yet, just in terms of the orchestration.  This is what it looks like so far: 3 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo, and 3rd doubling alto flute), two oboes, english horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 tenor and 1 bass trombone, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel, 2 harps, and strings.  I’m probably going to have to add at least some chimes and snare drum, and I’m contemplating marimba or xylophone.