Grant North's Senior Project

  One week to go. What's left? Well, I need to mix my first movement. Finish writing and mixing my second movement. And complete my final movement from scratch. I've never felt more like a professional composer. Which is a bit of an amateur-ish thought. This week I began Movement No. 2. I wanted to place more of an emphasis on rhythmic development. This serves as a distinct progression in the overall symphony as it would contrast the dense instrumentation of the previous pieces. The string section takes center stage in this one as they play in a certain musical articulation known as staccato. Performing a note in staccato means performing it sharply and short, allowing for natural pockets of space while giving a frenzied and energetic tone. The woodwinds and brass sections are placed in supportive roles to bolster big moments. Percussion is very active as it drives the music along and keeps the listener in the loop of the rhythm. Speaking of rhythm.. At the time of wri...

All good symphonies have a theme. Some are more recognizable and in the forefront than others and some are more subtly interwoven. Symphonies are long stretches of music so the composer has to invent ways in which to add variation to the them in order to avoid their arch-nemesis, repetition. I worked on my first movement this week, and with the idea of developing a theme in mind I chose to do a Sonata-Allegro form, a format with which many symphonies start out with. A Sonata-Allegro is comprised of three sections designated A, B, and A once more. Each section is designated a responsibility: exposition, elaboration, and recapitulation respectively. It is a simple format yet incredibly open to the imagination of the composer. After wrapping up the prelude, I devised an emotion for each of the three movements I plan to write: disorientation, anger, and apotheosis. The first one, disorientation, will have both A sections pushing the music outside the boundaries of its key in D Minor...

Welcome to the first entry in my senior project blog. I hope you enjoy your stay as I ramble on for 4 required paragraphs and more in future weeks. My Capstone Project is writing and arranging a 4 movement orchestral symphony. Simultaneously, I continue to attend Music Recording and Production with my project advisor Matt Woodard. I chose this particular project because of its scope. Having this time specifically dedicated to writing without the distractions of normal schoolwork has a lot of potential. I've been writing single piece orchestral scores since lockdown and this feels like going all in, testing everything that I've learned and developed for over a year. This is an individual project. It was inspired by the 2013 video game soundtrack called Journey written by Austin Wintory. As a composer I've always struggled with connecting parts together. The score of the game is a textbook example of how to concoct what feels like one continuous movement with themes, ...