Grant North's Senior Project

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, ...