Trackings No. 2 - score completed

About ten days ago on Saturday, May 14, 2011 I finished editing the complete score for Trackings No. 2 for cello, double bass and piano.  In this process I edited the six movements for consistency of dynamic and  expression placement, articulations and other performance data.

I am interested to see the photos Micheal Vickers  creates to go along with the music I have composed.  I have seen a couple of the images, but not too many.  The goal for this piece will be to schedule the premiere for Spring or Summer of 2012.

Trackings No. 2, movement 5 - score completed

On Wednesday I completed the 5th movement of Trackings No. 2 for cello, double bass and piano.  The title of this movement is Dream.  In this movement I worked with disjunct themes and ideas.  I tied them together with an underlying harmonic progression.

With the completion of the 5th movement this means that all six movements of Trackings No. 2 are complete.  At this time the only thing left to do is to edit the score in its entirety.  All of the movements are in one file, I just need to edit the six movements to make sure the formatting is consistent.

Over the next few weeks I will be shopping the piece around trying to see if there is interest in it.  I am not going to limit my search to cello, double bass and piano performers.  I will check out piano trios and if I need to re-orchestrate the piece then so be it.

Feasibility of Performance

As I have been working on Trackings No. 2 I have been thinking about the ensemble.  This piece is composed for cello, double bass and piano.  This is an uncommon ensemble and I have been wondering is it the right ensemble?  Like all composers my hope is that this piece will receive multiple performances.  With this instrumentation I wonder about that.  The thought of changing the instrumentation has crossed my mind, but to what?

I guess I could re-score it for a piano trio of either violin, cello and piano or clarinet, cello or piano.  Neither of these ensembles really excite me for this piece.  After some deliberation I wonder should I really care?  I mean of course I want this piece to be performed, but the instrumentation is not too off-the-wall.  I figure I will leave it as a cello, double bass and piano piece for now.

I am not ruling out any instrumentation changes.  I am just saying that right now I do not feel it necessary to take the time to make the changes.  However, if a performance opportunity arises for a different instrumentation that would work for this piece, then I will change the instrumentation.

Trackings No. 2, movement 3 - score completed

Today I completed the 3rd movement of Trackings No. 2 for cello, double bass and piano.  As I mentioned in an earlier post I opted to scratch the original sketch in favor of another sketch.  This new sketch came together easily.  I tried a couple of different orchestrations prior to settling on the grouping of cello and piano right hand and double bass with piano left hand.

Now that the 3rd movement is completed all that remains is the 5th movement.  My goal is to complete that movement in the next week or two.  I have already sent the score and MIDI realization of the 3rd movement to Micheal Vickers via email.

Scraping a sketch

Today I sat down to work on the 3rd movement of Trackings No. 2.  This piece is in collaboration with photographer Micheal Vickers.  Originally the sketch for this movement focused a lot on natural harmonics.  I had kept this in because I thought it would make for an interesting and colorful movement.  After spending some time with it today, I realized that it was not worth keeping.  I did not care for the harmonic world I created.

Sure, I could have salvaged some of the material and made it better.  I thought about it, but decided it was not worth my time.  Instead, I decided to bring back the sketch that was going to be the final movement until I decided to end the piece is a different style.

I think this other sketch will allow me to create some good, contrasting material to the movements that will be around it.

Upcoming Projects

With the bulk of the work for Time in Memoriam completed I have begun to play my next composition.  I have been thinking about what piece I want to have performed on the 9th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  I have been in contact with flautist Greer Ellison about writing a piece for her to play on the Festival.  She is interested, so that is a possibility.  Right now I am uncertain if it will be a solo piece or a duo or a trio (probably no bigger).  I will need to contact Greer to see what she might be interested in.

I am also starting to plan my next wind ensemble piece.  I have a couple of "feeler" emails out right now to a couple of friend of mine who conduct high school or junior high bands.  I am checking to see if they would be interested in a new piece for their band.  I am now waiting to see who responds to the email.  My goal is to compose two or three pieces in the next year.  At the point I will be able to create a flyer and try to market the wind ensemble music.

In the meantime my first priority will be to complete the two unfinished movements of Trackings No. 2.  Even if it is finished in time, it is unlikely that this piece will be performed until next year (hopefully at the FCM).  This is due to budgetary concerns.  However, the piece will be finished within the next month.

Trackings No. 2, movement 6 - score completed

Today I finished the score for the sixth movement of Trackings No. 2 for cello, double bass and piano titled "Not to Return."  A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I had completed the sketch score for this movement.  Today I finished editing the score including the dynamics and expressions.  This leaves two other movements to complete.  My goal is to complete these two movements by the end of April.

Sketch completed for Trackings No. 2, movement 6

Yesterday, I composed what will be the sixth movement of Trackings No. 2.  When I began working on this piece my intent was to expand several movements of Birches for cello and bass.  However, yesterday I was looking at a short sketch for piano I composed for a counterpoint class a few years ago.  I thought that it would be an interesting basis for a movement of Trackings No. 2.  I easily saw how I could incorporate the cello and bass in to this sketch.  After working out the orchestration, I developed the rest of the sketch to finish the movement.

There are still two movements left to compose, the third and the fifth.  I plan on composing these other two movements after I have finished the score for Time in Memoriam.  My hope is to complete the rest of Trackings No. 2 by mid to late April.

A look ahead

With the sketch score for Time in Memoriam complete and the full score nearing completion I have started to think about what my next project(s) will be.  First and foremost I need to finish Trackings No. 2, my second collaboration with Micheal Vickers.

I have recently been thinking about revisiting a couple of pieces I compose a while back.  The first is Concerto for Bass Trombone and Chamber Orchestra.  As it is I have always considered this piece the final movement of a larger piece.  I have had various ideas overs the years for other movements.  However, without a performance opportunity there is no real reason to compose this other than for myself.  Lately, I have been thinking that maybe this is something I can work on with Jonathan Warburton, the bass trombonist who contacted me about a month ago.

The other piece is Off you go... my trio for flute, cello and percussion.  I have always liked this piece, but like the Bass Trombone Concerto I view it as a larger multi-movement work.  I have been talking with flautist Greer Ellison about composing a piece for her.  Expanding Off you go... is an option I may explore.

In keeping with my current compositional focus I do need to start looking for another high school or junior high school band to compose a piece for.  There are a couple of friends I am considering contacting, though I am unsure of who to contact first.  Maybe I will just contact both and see what happens.

2010 in review

Looking back at this past year I have come to see it as a year of transition.  I decided to compose more music for high school and junior high concert bands.  Rather than just composer the music and hope that someone will perform it I contacted people I know who direct concert bands and asked if they are interested in me composing a piece for their band.  I also felt that contacting the conductors was important because it gives me a goal and a timeline in which to compose this piece.  The plan is for me to compose four or five pieces and then create a mailer to try to market these pieces.  Of course I will still compose more wind ensemble pieces.

This past year I completed two pieces.  The most recent piece is Night Sky for concert band.  This is the first in the series I have listed above.  This piece is composed for Adam Noel and Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School Concert Band.  Night Sky was a big undertaking for me as it had been quite awhile since I have composed for a large ensemble.

The other piece I completed was Book 1 of Ètude Scéniques for solo trumpet.  These ètudes started off as exercises designed to retrain me to compose in a more tonal style.  I needed to do this in preparation for composing Night Sky.  My typical compositional style would likely have not been appropriate for this age group.

There are also two pieces that I am currently composing.  The first is my next wind ensemble piece Time in Memoriam.  I am writing this piece for Lee Morrison and New World School for the Arts High School Wind Ensemble.  I have recently begun work on the second half of this piece.  The other piece is my second collaboration with photographer Micheal Vickers, Trackings No. 2.  So far I have composed three of the six planned movements: numbers 1, 2 and 4.  The third movement is currently in progress.

In 2010 I received only one performance (that I know of), but it was worth it.  My piano piece 4-5 was beautifully performed by Stacey Barelos at the 8th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music.  I composed this piece in 2002 and it finally received its premiere performance in 2010.

There are a few non-compositional projects that I have started or continued in 2010 that I am proud of.  First is this blog.  This has been a great outlet for me to organize my thoughts and keep myself accountable.  I have also revamped and kept current the New Music Forum website.  In November I started a new blog focusing on an area of research in which I am interested: Color Music.  Through this blog I hope to define color music and further my research.

2010 was a challenging year for me on so many levels.  However, I do see this past year as a transitory year for me.  I have made a lot of decisions as to my direction and I have been able to keep up with multiple projects while working full time.  I am looking forward to seeing what 2011 brings.

Back to work

The holidays are always a terrible time for me to accomplish anything compositionally.  I get busy running errands, working or spending time with family.  Now that the holidays are over and I have had time to decompress I am going to get back to work.  My first priority is to extract the parts for Night Sky, get them printed and deliver the package to Adam Noel.  His concert band is scheduled to perform this piece in the spring so I need to finish the parts within the next two weeks.

After that is done I will resume work on Time in Memoriam and Trackings No. 2.  I would like to finish Time in Memoriam by the end of March.  Trackings No. 2 should be completed by mid-to-late-February.  At least this is the plan.

Between now and the end of the year

Over the past few weeks I have come to the realization that I have a lot to do between now and the end of the year.  I want to finish Time in Memoriam.  At this stage I figure that this piece is about forty percent complete.  Now that I have connected the A and B sections and have a couple of clear ideas for the last part of the piece it should not be too difficult to finish the sketch soon.

I need to make a couple of final edits for Night Sky.  This includes making sure all of the markings and dynamics are consistent and present.  I also need to transpose the score.  The most time consuming thing for this piece will be to extract and edit the parts.  This alone will take a couple of hours.

Ideally I would like to finish Trackings No. 2.   However, with three movements left to compose, I do not see this happening.  I do think that I can finish as least one more movement.  With my deadlines approaching I need to spend the majority of my composing time finishing Time in Memoriam and Night Sky.  So if Trackings No. 2 continues into the new year then that is not a problem.

I have also been thinking about what to compose next.  I have been enjoying composing music for younger ensembles.  I am excited to hear how these pieces will turn out.  I am debating if I want to compose another high school or junior high piece right away.  Or if I want to try to compose for a professional or college ensemble.  I need to continue to think about this and send out some "feeler" emails to people I know to see if there is any interest for me to write a piece for them.  There is still plenty of time to figure this out.

Reworking the 3rd movement

I had initially skipped over the 3rd movement of Trackings No. 2 in favor of the 4th movement.  Now I am going back and working on the 3rd.  This is a tricky movement as the cello and bass play harmonics in the first twenty-two measures and again from measure thirty-six to forty-six (the end of the movement).  Even in the section from measure twenty-three to thirty-five is not played "normally."  These thirteen measures are more focused on the bowing shifting between sul ponticello and sul tasto.

How do I approach adding piano to this movement?  This is the question that led me to skipping over this movement in favor of the fourth.  On the original sketch score I have made a couple of notes to myself about this.  One is to compose a part where the piano does not go below middle C.  This makes sense as the cello and bass perform harmonics, so their actual pitch will be in the upper register.  Also this movement title is "Crystal" so it does lend itself well to the playing in the upper registers.

Another note says to "create slow moving oscillations" and to "think shimmering."  Again these suggestions lend themselves well to the idea of crystals.  With the cello and bass performing long tones some sort of motion in the piano part does seem necessary.  In order to create a fitting piano part I will need to look at the harmonies created in the strings.

Another consideration I will need to make in this movement is the duration.  As it is this movement is just over three minutes.  The goal for this piece is to limit the movements to no more than two minutes each.  These movements should be "scenes" or "vignettes" and not too long.  The approach I will take with the accompaniment may be dependent on what I decide to cut from the movement.  If the material is interesting enough I may try to adapt the cut section(s) into the piano part.

This movement does provide an interesting set of challenges.  I will need to take my time to carefully craft a logical piano part.  It will be interesting to see and hear the end result.

Score completed for Trackings No. 2, movement 4

Today I finished the score for the fourth movement of Trackings No. 2.  This movement titled "Arching" is just under two minutes in duration.  My main goal of the day was to figure out in what way I wanted this movement to end. I thought about ending small where the cello and bass would peter out with the pizzicato oscillation.  I felt that in order to do this type of ending justice I would need to add between four and eight more measures.  This would have pushed this movement over two minutes.  This would not work because one of the parameters under which I am composing is that each movement is under two minutes in duration.  Also, after I thought about it more this type of ending would not do the movement justice.  Ending "big" was my best option.  I made some changes to the transition that leads back to the recap and pout an eighth note tag on the end to create an abrupt ending.

The big change I made today was to the oscillation at the beginning of the movement.  Originally the oscillation start with the movement.  I began to feel as if there was too much going on at the beginning.  So I took the six-note, two-measure melody I had composed the other day and included it at the beginning (measures 1-8) and at the recap (measures 38-45)

Today I went through and included all of the phrasing, dynamics and expressions.  This movement is done... for now.  As always I may make some changes later on if I decide that it is necessary.  Right now this movement is in good shape.  All that is left to compose in this piece is movements three, five and six.

Making Progress on the Fourth Movement

Yesterday I was able to spend some time on the fourth movement of Trackings No. 2.  I started by completing the piano melody in measures twenty five to thirty two.  As I may have mentioned in a previous post the challenge in completing this movement is going to be the transition.  The trickiest part of it was coming out of the transition into the return of the A section.  The cello and bass part that had previously been sketched was transposed for a couple of measures at the recap.  I wanted to compose a piano part that was not just a transposition of the beginning.  I think I found something that works.  The problem now becomes the fact that it is new material and I may need to look at including similar material somewhere else in the movement.

The main thing that is left to do is to compose the ending.  I have a couple of ideas as to how to end this movement.  I need to decide if I want to end big, or small, but abrupt.  I will be playing with both ideas tomorrow when I have some time.

Composing Session: September 28, 2010

Yesterday I spent some time working on the fourth movement of Trackings No. 2.  The main focus of this session was to complete the first twenty-eight measures.  For this section, the ground work was set, I mostly needed finish the ostinato in the piano.  I also had to rework the first half of the piano melody in measures twenty five to twenty eight.  I still need to compose the second half of the melody which picks up at measure twenty nine.

I like what I have done in this movement.  I eliminated a second layer of the accompaniment which starts at measure five.  It seemed to me that this did not add enough for me to keep it in.  The main thing that needs to be overhauled is the transition starting at measure thirty five.  This four measure transition will bring the piece back around to a recap of the beginning.

Is it stealing?

I have noticed a trend recently in the music I have been composing.  I have been taking themes or in some cases whole movements from one piece of mine and using them in a completely different piece (i.e. Trackings No. 2 taken from Birches).  I am not recomposing the same piece when I do this.  In fact the pieces that I take themes or movements from are "dead" pieces.  This means that I have no intention on continuing these pieces.  Of ten there are some interesting melodic or thematic ideas that I was either unable to develop to develop at the time or never got the chance to because of other projects.

To answer the question posed in the title, no it is not stealing.  Can someone really steal from themselves?  I think there are instances in which someone can.  However, what I am doing is taking from pieces that will otherwise go unfinished.

This is the case with Fate of the Future.  This is a wind ensemble piece I began sketching in 2001.  There are a couple of melodies and themes that I have always liked in the piece.  However I was unable to develop those ideas at the time and complete the piece.  I have decided to adapt those melodies and themes into Time in Memoriam since I feel that they would work well for this piece.

One day I do plan on composing a piece titled Fate of the Future.  I like this title and I am going to keep it in mind.  Right now I am just not sure what this piece will be.  All I know is that I will not be using the music from the original sketch.  It will be an all-new piece.

Working the Fourth Movement

I began revising what will be the fourth movement of Trackings No. 2 about a week ago.  I skipped working on what will be the third movement as I did not have a clear idea of how to reshape that sketch to include piano.  (Though I do have a few ideas now.)  Also, I thought that this would be an easier movement to work on.  I am thinking now that I was wrong.  I have been really digging in to this movement so that the piano is more than merely a double of the cello and bass or an accompanimental outline of the melodies.

The aspect that was giving me the most trouble was the oscillation I wanted in the piano through the first eighteen or so measures.  Yesterday I finally had a breakthrough with that element.  The great thing about this oscillation is that I creates a different character when transferred into the cello and bass parts as a pizzicato.  I was just messing around with the MIDI patches when I switched it to pizzicato strings and I really like it.  I thought that that would be great as the accompaniment to the piano melody later in the movement,  Now that I have worked this out, I just need to rework some of the phrasing, do a few other edits and enter the dynamics and expressions.  Most of which I have already written out.

Sculpting and Moulding

The composition process for Trackings No. 2 has been quite different than most other pieces of mine.  This is due to the fact that I am starting with sketches of a "failed" piece and revising and expanding it by adding piano.  By no means am I merely adding the piano and redistributing the principle and accompanimental materials.  Actually, I have been adding layers creating at times more intricate counterpoint.  I have also been adding measures where appropriate for phrasing or other purposes and cutting measures for sections that do not work or fit the scope of the movement.

In Trackings No. 2 my goal is to compose a series of short movements.  Each movement no longer than two minutes.  This is a challenge for me as each movement will have a beginning and an end.  There is little room for development in a piece like this.  I am more accustomed to writing music that develops of time creating a journey.  I can see this type of piece as an analog to an author writing short stories rather than full-length novels.

In addition to the short movement format the other challenge, mentioned earlier, is starting with an older sketch.  There are times in which I feel as if I am sculpting a piece rather than composing it.  A sculptor starts with a lump of clay or a block of stone and reshapes it into the form of his or her vision.  In my case the sketches for Birches is my lump of clay.

I like this analogy.  It goes to show that there are many cross relations between the arts.  What makes this instance a little more interesting is that Trackings No. 2 is a collaborative work with photographer Micheal Vickers, yet another facet in the cross-relation between the arts.

Composing Session: August 14, 2010

Yesterday, I began working on expanding the fourth movement of Trackings No. 2.  I moved to the fourth movement from the second because I need to take a close look at the third movement before I can work on it.  I may need to reconsider some of the techniques I use in that movement.  I felt that my time is better served right now working on the fourth movement as I have a good idea of how to expand and revise this movement.

The primary melodic ideas are composed in 4/4 meter.  However, instead of the typical eighth note groupings of four groups of two, I use the grouping 3+3+2.  This grouping allows for an asymmetrical feel within a symmetrical meter.  Most of what I was able to accomplish on this movement was making editorial notes for what I intend for the piano to do on the original cello and double bass sketch.  In the next day or two I plan on incorporating these edits into the score.

The main thing I worked on yesterday was the diagrammatic sketch for Time in Memoriam.  I began by reviewing my notes for the types of elements I wanted to include within each section of the form.  After adding a few more notes, I began to sketch the shapes and colors for the first two-and-a-half to three minutes of the piece.  Eventually I will go into more details about this type of sketch, but suffice it to say that these shapes and colors will help me to identify which instruments will be playing where and for approximately how long.  When I created this type of sketch for Obscured Ruminations, it gave me a complete picture of how I wanted the piece to unfold.  I thought that it would benefit me to do this type of sketch for this piece.  So far I think it has as I am beginning to get a clear idea of the scope of this piece.