Tag: composition

Composition Exercise #17

Create a pulse-based piece that continually slows down until it ends 5 BPM slower than it begins.

How – if at all – does this affect the feel of the music? Does it work well in a thirty second piece? In a one, two, five minute piece?

What changes will improve the piece?

Do you need to follow conventions in the other aspects of the piece to compensate for the unusual tempo aspect? Or do you better twist conventions in pitch, rhythm, harmony, melody as well?

Do you feel like making the piece shorter? Longer? Make the difference between start and end tempo bigger? Smaller?

What if you make the piece end 5 BPM faster than it began?

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Composition Exercise #9

This time, compose the way a spider does.

Set your anchor points across the space and find a way to bridge them. Provide just the bare necessities of scaffolding, then work your way in circles from the outside in. Make adjustments where necessary – be all over the place. Zoom in where it makes sense, zoom out when you need to see how one part fits the whole.

Your web will suffer damage – but cherish the bombardment! Through your patient, systematic, somnambulant work you’ve set yourself up for these lucky breaks. Entangle the bounty in your ever evolving mesh. Then, again, sit still at the center and watch what happens.

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