Week 3: Rising Action

 

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 writing there are 10
unique time signatures in the piece. A time signature is essentially the backbone of any music piece as it dictates the amount of notes that can be played in one measure. I talked at length in my previous post how I wanted to experiment with atonality and dissonance. In my first movement, I achieved this through harmonic means. In this piece, I achieved this through rhythmic displacement. The listener is not given much time to become accustomed and comfortable in a single time signature for any one time. Variations to themes can be applied by placing it in a new time signature, delivering the listener a familiar melody in an unexpected way. Essentially, the purpose of all this is to build tension through deception.

Of course, the piece can't be speeding along at 200% as I just described at the cost of exhausting the listener. There needs to be a low point. So the middle section is stripped down to provide a somber passage, the tempo is slower, and the time signature is fixed for its duration. The final section is a bridge/coda, bringing the entire piece to a morose ending. The entire orchestra is in full swing but it sounds almost exhausted, which will lead nicely into what I have planned for my third and final movement.

To copy and paste.. er I mean restate my goals for this senior project:

    1) To branch all the songs together so they act as one cohesive whole rather than unrelated individual pieces.

    2) To challenge myself in being deliberate and precise with my choices and see the symphony as a whole during the writing process

    3) To stay fixed on an emotional foundation rather than focus on technical prowess.

All the music I have created in the past 3 weeks have felt part of the same symphony while still having variety in terms of sound, emotion, and orchestration.

The more time I spend contemplating what the symphony will sound like, the more productive and the more inspired I become.

My third goal may prioritize emotional foundation over technical prowess, but I think I've done a good job bridging the two together so that they go hand in hand.

I designed the symphony to work as one whole and I wish to present it that way. But it will obviously not be done until I have everything completed to my liking. So in the meantime, here's the rough mix of the prelude I wrote in Week 1.

Enjoy

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TCguUEWZ9NMOwwepFBa-qswUGk7-Pc4n/view?usp=sharing