Hello fellow composers, I would greatly appreciate if you take a listen and share some thoughts - I'm very content with this one and think I learned a lot in the last months.
Nothing revolutionary I guess but I just try to emulate the music I like the most which is (late)romantic in style.
The piece consists of one part which is repeated three times, each time an Instrument ist added (the clarinet in the second part and the violin in the third part). The first parts ends at 0:58 seconds.
The base harmonies are mostly played by brass and Alphorn :)
Each repetition has some slight variations and different endings.
So my main focus lies in trying to create tonal ambiguity, playing with implied cadences and the listeners expectations. I also try to bring out orchestral and instrumental colors and trying to induce extra rhythm with the help of the variation of expressions and Timbres of the instruments.
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Facilita Cornet solo Derek Garside CWS Manchester band 1961 YouTube
Now this one has me pondering the idea of an intricate melody or pattern between the notes of a main melody.
Hi,
If you search for and listen to Facilita (see above) on YouTube it demonstrates exactly what you're suggesting - particularly listen to the last variation...I hope you find it fun.
Stephen
Timo, do you have a score? The intended orchestral coloring is sometimes hard to perceive with MIDI realization.
Hi Timo,
Just speaking about the notes, it had a touch of late German/Austrian romanticism about it to my ears. It is quite powerful musically speaking and in that regard, excellent in my view. As John says, if you needed anymore specific critique or feedback, a score would be beneficial.
Timo, what sound libraries do you use? How do you create your mockups?
Hi all, thanks for listening and commenting!
@MM Coston:
Your ideas about a chord within a chord or a melody in between notes of another melody sound intriguing, maybe you could elaborate a bit further how you imagine it? I have had similar ideas but I'm not skilled enough (yet :P) to do something like this in a convincing way.
I'll ckeck out the suggestion form Stephen (thanks!).
What do you mean exactly with the subtleties (the string arpeggios?)?
@John:
I would love to be able to provide a score, but this is completly DAW written and I'm litterally an illiterate on music notation unfortunately. Maybe I can provide a midi file, if that helps?
I create the mockups in the piano roll of FL Studio and I've used different libraries on this:
- solo Alphorn from Sonokinetic
- a Brass ensemble (sustain patches) and percussion from "The Orchestra"
- a legato violin and a legato clarinet patch from Hollywood Orchestra
- the string arpeggios are simple triadic up and down motions. I created them with Caprizzio, a library that uses simple basic prerecorded motions and ostinatos in all keys and lets you tweak and adjust them in many ways. I used a patch of a violin ensemble that lets you arpeggiate 8 notes up and 8 notes down in any key (chord notes, not scales, unfortunately) or tempo you like. The violins are played with a nice kind of sloppy sliding expression which would be impossible to recreate any other way.
@Mike
Thanks for your kind words! As I said above, I would love to give a score but I lack education in that regard :(
@MM Coston:
That sounds very interesting. Kinda like a fractal melodies, but with less self-similarity and more independence of the motivs, patterns and melodies.
Maybe it would even be possible to zoom in and out of the different layers, using tempo changes.
Maybe you could say a melody which is played extremly slow is on a micro-layer and in between the notes of that melody you play a similiar or related melody in normal speed and call it macro-layer. Above that you pay a fast melody and call it meta-macro-layer or something like that - and then you change the tempo and zoom in and out of the different layers, for instances the micro-layer melody gets faster and becomes the new macro-layer; whereas the former macro-layer melody also gets faster thus becoming the new meta-macro-layer.
I bet this sounds kind of weird (or silly as you stated in your first comment) but I actually love brainstorming about concepts like that and experimenting around with such ideas - but often the musical result sounds not as great as the concept itself.
Anyway, I will fool around with that in the future and see if I can come up with any interesting music based on this idea.
Timo, this is very interesting music for someone who doesn't use notation! Your style reminds me somewhere between Wagner and early Schoenberg's Farben orchestral music--do you know that music and his thinking behind it? You are more tonal than Schoenberg, I think, and it was the ending, in particular, reminded me a lot of the end of Tristan (Isolde's Liebestod).
Timo Schuemer said:
John,
yes I know Schönberg and his work. To my ears and taste, Verklärte Nacht is nice, Pelleas and Melisande is nicer and the Gurrelieder are even great - at least the orchestral-only parts (I can't get into classical singing at all).
But he lost me with his later dodecaphonic works. I tried to like it, listened over and over again, but in the end... the music just leaves me cold.
My access to music is based on the sound and what kind of emotional and physical reaction it can provoke - not if there are sophisticated concepts or ideas behind it.
That is why I wrote that I have experienced, when I try to use an idea or concept to compose, that the musical result often is not as great as the theoretical background itself.
Wagner on the other hand... I have to admit I cannot escape his overtures or "Wagner without words"-orchestral excerpts from his operas, even if I try.
The music just hits my sweet spots and gives me chills and tears of joy over the sheer beauty, power, sadness, longing, transcendence and all the other qualities of the human condition (and maybe beyond?) that it subjectively transports to me.
The Farben orchestral pieces by Schönberg you mentioned are also great - I like especially "The Past" and "Chord colours" of the five pieces
Is there a particular thinking behind this work that I'm missing and that differs from Schönbergs other (early) works and is general thinking?
All in all, I like the concept (and the musical results that are possible with it!) of dissoncance and consonance inside the tonal realm - and warping tonal centers and harmonic functions around in ways that make the composer seem like a magician who plays with space and time and maybe even manages to give you the illusion to grant a glimpse behind the curtain of this mystery we call existence.
The concept and results of real atonality or serialism of later Schönberg and related composers cannot give me this intense rapture I am seeking in music at all.
Timo,
I listened to your piece again. Though your music is more tonal than Schoenberg almost ever was, something about the static nature (at least at the beginning) reminded me of Farben. There is a sort of timelessness quality I feel you are going for, though perhaps the more apt point of reference would be the Parsifal Act I Prelude or the opening of Das Rheingold?
Personally I am drawn to this kind of expression myself--the profound utterance! But also what you refer to as the interplay of dissonance and consonance. I find myself doing that more and more in the opera I am working on--ideas that are tonal on their own, but not necessarily existing in consonant harmonic relation to the other ideas surrounding them (but also not being afraid for them to coincide in a big fat triad at times).
You should work on beefing up your notation skills--working within the limitations of an orchestra and being forced to "write it down" always have a way of clarifying one's intention.
Hello Timo-
When I heard your first chord, I was entranced! I thought your piece would be a glorious Messiaen-like experience. I still liked your piece even though you resolved the delicious dissonances instead of building a new world with them. I would have liked it better, though, if you had dared to stay with the power of that first chord. Messiaen starts with the same chord in his last composition, as you may hear in the example below. Instead of resolving his dissonances, he builds envelopes of sound with similar intervals and chords, based on his Second Mode of Limited Transposition:
I couldn't find a link to just the first movement, so here's the entire piece. The first movement is the one that I find similar to your opening chord, but the entire piece is one of my favorite approaches to "modern music". He completed this piece in 1991, just before his death in 1992.
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