Join collaborative music composition

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Hello! Did you think about creating orchestra or chamber music in collaboration, sharing ideas and workflow? Every composer has his own workflow: let's join different workflows and approaches, learning from each other and creating a new type of collaborative composition.

Where? Online, from your smartphone, tablet or PC.

Why? Meet, discuss, share, learn, compose.

What style of music we are going to compose? Orchestral and chamber music of tonal and/or atonal quality - maybe only tonal - maybe only atonal - depending on what composers will get to the meeting.

How much knowledge of music composition is required? You have to be able to compose a whole piece. No other degree or experience is required. Emerging composers are welcome! Do not be afraid that you have too little or too much experience - try to participate! Music analysts and philosophers are also welcome, because we will also discuss general form and style questions - not just compose music.

What are we going to do?

- Discuss our different approaches, workflows, styles and ideas.

- Choose the goal for our collaboration music piece (write music in some particular style, write music for a painting, write music for a poem, write music for a composition contest...)

- Plan our composition process combining our different workflows. Create a scheme of our music piece.

- Compose!

When? 

- Every saturday at 16:00 GMT (this is 18:00 Berlin or 12:00 New york). First meeting will be on April, 9.

- I will post a link to join the meeting about 10 minutes before this time in this forum thread.

- Meeting will be recorded as video and will be available to view later.

What tools can we use?

- Google Hangouts On Air for video conference and screen sharing (link will be posted)

- Google Drive for a whiteboard

- Flat for collaborative work with scores

... more

What do you need to participate?

- Smartphone OR tablet OR computer. Best way is to use computer with webcamera and a USB microphone, that you can put close to you. The better your sound quality - the more interesting a collaboration will be.

- You need to have a Google account (you can register here).

- You do not necessarily need to use your webcamera. If you choose, you can use only voice communication

Official language of this meeting is English.

I will host the meeting. My english language is not mother-tongue, but I will try my best. Please, if someone with good english can co-host this meeting with me, it will be very helpful.

Let's discuss this idea. Frankly speaking, I am very excited to start! :) Please reply if you are in.

https://composersforum.ning.com/forum/topics/online-collaborative-m...

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

I'm trying again after seven hours.

Nada-niente-nothing!

The application still cannot upload a simple mp3 of 3.88 megabytes although the limit is 7 megabytes.

This a screen shot of me waiting for something to happen.

 

 

I don’t know what is the problem, admin or anyone else please help

,

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

It didn't even upload properly my png image of 14.8 kilobites. What the hell is happening?

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Perhaps for this site and all its members it would be a lot better if it was to replace HTML with BBCode, like most sites do today. It is a hell of a lot easier to grasp and immensely more secure for the site.

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Thanks Socrates. Could you please write measures where modulation is not enough determined?

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

This is how I created section N:

First I created melody from your viola part by chanring rhythm (and changing notes sometimes). Then I added piano accompaniment using very strange chords that I selected by playing piano and then suspending them. At this moment chords and melody were very disconnected and the overal sound was very strange:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtPe8n4jghI

 

Next I started to bring chords closer to melody in terms of notes and rhythm.

At the same time I took a short rhythm from your music (cello part) and used it for chords. Then I modified it to better resemble how waves strike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPVvYrS-vXI&feature=youtu.be

 

Next steps were to make music flow more smoothly (changing rhythms, notes, inserting measures) and to add more instruments. You can see that in short my composition was divided into two steps:

1. Create something strange sounding, but derived from previous music.

2. Modify it to make music flow more smoothly. Arrange.

 

Using this approach the question for me is where to stop - I can continue and the music will be more natural and less strange. I feel that I came to a place where natural and strange are balanced for me, but actually I would be glad to decrease strange and increase natural if you help me telling what measures sound most strange.

 

I did not use traditional harmonic approach for this piece of music: only voiceleading. I did not analyze the music from the point of view of harmony, but this actually can be very interesting to do!

I see now that I used BbDdFAb, CEGBb, AbCEbBb, BbEbFAb chords, which are IVm, V, III and Some Strange Color Chord (joke) in Fm.

I see that you use CEG extensively, not sure about the other chords.

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Hello, Mariza.

I have to admit that while continuing composition of the piece, I created several even more pronounced contrasts, exploring the limits of music compatibility. This does not comply to my idea to create several fewer contrasts and I was thinking about discarding this music. But later I decided that it is not a strict rule. My love to contrasts is so strong that it neglected the limits and introduced more of my styles into the music.

Also, I have to say that composing this piece was done without looking back to any schemes and it probably breaks some of them. So, it turned out that I used "inspirational-intuitive-feeling" way to compose this piece rather than schematic.

Please see and tell me seconds or measure numbers where you feel something wrong. Also, we can discard this music if you find it too incompatible with your music.

P.S. I did not work with flute at all yet and I am planning to do it later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2MqjjXMa0o

Socrates, here is the link to Sibelius render of the last version.

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Thanks for your three responses, Alexey. I copied them and I'll have a look at your pdf and  respond in the next few days.

Alexey Arkhipenko said:

Thanks Socrates. Could you please write measures where modulation is not enough determined?

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Hi, Mariza!

Seems that I finished all the planned activities (28th version so far):

I added introduction, using the ending motive, your rhythmic idea and a Vivaldi inspiration in between (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2etXORS5S0). I added text to score to represent how transitions were made.

I added flute to some sections, either creating a new melody for a more gradual transition, or doubling some parts.

I created finale, which turned out to be tragic. In finale ship moves away after moving close to observer in the previous section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJ0TUXZ48A

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Hi. We are planning to meet and talk about this project 19.06.2016 at 16:00 GMT (this is 18:00 Berlin or 12:00 New york). I will post the link to join.

Please join if you are interested, the meeting is open.

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Hi. I will post 10 minutes before the meeting.

[Alexey Arkhipenko]

Link to join:

https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/hoaevent/AP36tYcW9jy4QJ5mvwo...