Music Composition
The Software
All music was written on Music Write 2000 Pro, rendered into WAV files by Audio Compositor, both purchased legitimately, and converted to MP3 using CDex, which is open-source (i.e., freeware).
Quasi-finished Compositions
“Quasi” because nothing’s every really finished, right? But these are things that actually appear to end.
Icy Wind (2.6 MB) is a slow-ish synthesizer piece that I like a lot. It also has a slight variant (2.4 MB). It doesn’t start being different until about two minutes into it. I can’t decide which one I like better. If you want to, you can tell me what you think.
Resolve (573 KB) is a 12-tone piano piece, but not in the Schoenberg style. One of the notes in the theme is doubled, and it’s a very tonal piece. It’s more along the lines of Bach’s Fugue in F minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier, although of course not actually good. The name is a pun, I guess; I was resolved to write something in this style, I had a hard time making the chord progressions in the piece resolve correctly, and the piece actually has the feel to me of someone getting up his resolve to do something — although what, I don’t know.
Ditty in C (1.5 MB) is the second piano piece I’ve ever written, and my first using software. Yes, I know it’s a silly name — I wasn’t worried about the name when I wrote it, and I probably won’t ever again, either. Here are pages 1 and 2 of the sheet music. The midi file. All three files in a zip file. (1.4 MB).
“Lynch” (2.1 MB) is a short ditty I wrote while trying to emulate Ray Lynch. I failed to emulate Lynch well, but the ditty works well enough for me. I haven’t spent much time on it, but it’s a fun style in which to write. It was also the first time I’d attempted to do pitch bends and things like that in Music Write Pro, and while it doesn’t sound perfect, it’s close enough.
Work in Progress
Although I say “in progress”, there’s no guarantee that any of this will ever actually be completed. Most of them don’t have real names because I don’t know what they are yet, and unlike most things on the site I don’t guarantee that any of these will always be on the site. (Note that I say this almost as if someone would actually ever notice or care...)
I put these here with the understanding that no one will tell me that they’re garbage. I *know* they’re garbage, but they represent some experiments. This is like my online notebook, or scrapbook as the case may be.
“20040329” (3 MB) is the latest version of something orchestral that I’ve been working on for a while. The name is just the date that this was last modified.
“Sebago” (1.4 MB) is a little slow orchestral something-or-other in 7/4 time that I was working on while on vacation at Point Sebago, Maine.
“Another” (488 KB) is something I was goofing off with. Sue says it sounds a little bit like something you’d hear in church.
I also have two things I goofed off with using a “Klezmer” scale. Klezmer uses the fourth or fifth mode of a harmonic minor scale, and I’ve been using the latter (e.g., using E major as the root chord, while only the G is sharped and everything else is natural). Think “Hava Nageela”. Anyway, I’ve been playing around in Audio Compositor with natural sounds versus artificial ones, so I have two variants: “Klezmer3” (1.3 MB) and “Klezmer4”. (1.3 MB) (1 and 2? Don’t ask.)
“Guitar” (2.3 MB) is something I’d actually like to learn how to play — once it gets an ending, of course. Part of the intent with it was to put melody in the bass line as well as in the top line, just like in other classical music. It was only modestly successful in that respect, but I like the result anyway. There’s even a little bit of that klezmer scale in here, although used in a more subtle way than in the klezmer thing I did above.
“Harp Solo” (424 KB) is one of those random things I tried with syncopations and harmonic weirdnesses. Yeah, one of those. I think it might go somewhere someday, but I guarantee you that no harpist will ever be able to play it.
“LYNCH2” (940 KB) is another thing named after Ray Lynch even though it really sounds nothing even remotely like him. This uses natural sounds (harp, pan flute, ocarina, marimba, and cello), but it doesn’t sound like something you’d hear in real life anyway.
“SLYNCH3” (475 KB) (have I mentioned that I name things after Ray Lynch even though they sound nothing like him?) is a two-fold experiment: one is a typical polyrhythmic thing with threes and fours, and the other is a polytonal thing with a twist: I never use the third of the chord in either voice to make it resolve to major or minor. So you end up with suspended chords in both voices, but each voice plays a different suspended chord simultaneously. Also, interestingly, you can still get flat-fifth chords out of the two voices, on top of each other — that’s how the current version ends.
“Polytone” (1.4 MB) is an attempt at writing (guess what?) a polytonal piece. The melody (in F) is played by a clarinet, and the accompaniment (in C) is played by a piano. The interesting thing about this for me is the end (which is not really an end, it’s just where I stopped) — because I tried to shift the clarinet back to C and the right hand of the piano to F, and it’s almost jarring. The key of F is so well established in the clarinet that it’s desperate to resolve to an F note, and when it doesn’t...anyway, if you understand polytonality then you probably know all this already, and if you don’t then you don’t care. Assuming that there’s a “you” that isn’t me reading this.
Another experiment: In “QTT” (I forget what it stands for) I take a normal chord progression and throw in a major chord on the augmented fourth of the key. It’s an augmented fourth, so it should seem weird and dissonant; but it’s a major chord, so it should sound consonant. The result is nice enough, and maybe I’ll take it somewhere someday. Two variations of instrumentation: “qtt” (400 KB) and “QTT2” (373 KB).