Leaderboard

Hello again! I wasn't going to share this next installment in my "composed with dice" series as I thought the results sounded too random and haphazard but I've grown to like it somehow. I named this piece for Wind Quintet (Flute, Oboe, Bb Clarinet, French Horn in F, and Bassoon) a "Gadget" because of it's inventive character (but it's not strictly an invention or anything) and because it was composed with dice. I used a twelve-sided musicians dice (that has all the 12 pitch classes on it's sides) to roll a chord name and then a four-sided triangular pyramid dice to determine whether that chord will be 1 = major, 2 = minor, 3 = augmented, or 4 = diminished. I threw pairs of each of these dice together and came up with polychords which I used as a kind of under-drawing for my melodic material (just like caricature artists first start with a kind of under-drawing of a face where they draw an oval for the general shape of a face and a line bisecting the face and then another line at eye level and two more ovals in the general area where the eyes will be etc.). A rule I used to try and make the music more consistent with itself instead of seemingly just jumping between random ideas is to reuse previous harmonic material as much as I can and only as a last resort throw the dice again if I want something completely new harmonically and melodically. Unfortunately, if this piece were ever performed the Oboists and Clarinettists might want to kill me as you basically need to be able to do circular breathing with how the piece was written. An alternative might be to have two of each and have them trade off playing their part to make breathing easier. Let me know what you think! I welcome any observations or criticisms. Edit: I've uploaded an mp3 generated by Musesounds to compare. Also included a landscape score.

What were you into and making when you started and how has your style, tastes, etc changed since then? For me, I went through a lot of phases. Started with rock music and metal, then was really into electronic stuff in the early 2010s. I feel that I've largely "grown out" of those genres.

Thank you for your comment - it is appreciated. Each piece takes a slightly different approach, with varying levels of strictness. For all of them, however, the only thing that guides the harmony is what words are used, the order (pitch-wise) in which they appear, and how they are combined. This is generally not extended to the rhythmic material, as a note. In order to get my pitch material, I simply equated the full alphabet with the twelve-tones (though, not defined by register). For instance, in 'hazel,' the 'H' is equated with the German 'B,' creating the necessary split in continuing for the alphabet (i.e. h = b, i = c, j = c#, etc.). With "Hazel Heart," there are three words used - one of which is of course "hazel"; from this set, vertical harmonies are defined (taking one note from each word and moving in a variety of different ways). So, the first chord that is created between the three words is B-C-F. Once I have my material, the ways in which is it is combined is arbitrary. From bb. 30-33, the three mystery words appear all at once as one word (i) back-to-front; the same word (i) moves front-to-back; the top line taking one pitch from (ii) and (iii) successively moving from front-to-back; and the bottom line taking one pitch from (iii) and one pitch from (ii) moving back-to-front all at once. For "Grisaille," the piece is more rigidly defined. It is an exact transliteration of the following two haikus (by myself): A grisaille template stained with splotches of carmine, orange and sunless gold - dabbled in heather, a landscape in one tone, decorative grisaille. The pitch information is spread out in accordance with the form of the double haiku; so "A grisaille template ( = a, g, a, c, b-flat, a, c, e-flat, e-flat, e, b, e, e, g, e-flat, a, b, e) - which is the first line - takes up the space of 5 bars. The following line is 7 bars, and the next 5 bars. This structure repeats, being in line with two separate haikus. To account for the fact that I have six lines total, I have six chords derived in the same manner as the previous movement; one chord compliments one line at a time. "The Crooked Swan" takes an approach similar to "Hazel Heart", focusing on a few words - namely "crooked" and "swan." This can also be said about "Bluebell Lover". For me, it's less about you knowing exactly what words are used and more about the effect achieved in their utilization. The idea is that each poem is a self-contained image - a rose window - that has been smashed into pieces, and you, the listener, is trying to piece those shards back together. It's difficult to explain in a very concise manner, but I hope that all makes sense and clears things up about.

Thank you Peter, its a long piece and I appreciate you taking your time to review it. The limitations of the software I use mean only one tempo for the whole file which sucks but I did intend two of the variations to be played andante. A friend of mine is learning to play the piece so I will upload a recording soon, I have a draft recording and it sounds great on the kawai grand. I like your variation ideas and will bear them in mind when I compose another set of variations. I think Brahms recommended student-composers to compose sets of variations and I can see why because it pushes you to explore the possibilities of each aspect of music such as harmony, tempo etc within the confines of the theme.

It coheres well and would make a nice scherzo in a multi-movement work. As you hinted, breathing would be a problem and you'll certainly get your money's worth from the horn player! The clarinettist has to play 9 bars before a feasible breathing point. They have a better chance in the passage from bar 13, grabbing a breath at the staccato in bar 17. The long flute trill at the opening may have to be split somewhere. The horn part is difficult both from the breathing and notes from bar 44 where it gets a bit florid, as you've phrased them legato. The harmonics are close together in the top register. You definitely need a good quintet player for that. A triple horn would save the day having its high F section. It might be a precaution to put the trill notes in on all trills in view of the indeterminate key of the piece. Just a personal reaction. I felt the section from bar 44 seemed a little short putting it out of balance with the rest. Without a detailed analysis it had a different 'tone' to it although it has similar thematic material. (17 bars total compared with 44 before it). A most interesting piece, energetic, easy to listen to. Great. (I did watch the video on composing with dice....interesting in the way dice can be applied.)

I think my favorite was the crooked swan poem. It seemed the least abstract and using both the major and minor 3rd of the predominant tonality created a very interesting and trance-like mood. The other poems also used some very interesting modes/tendency tones to clearly ground the listener in a key (I think for the first poem it was E and the last one was B?) I don't quite understand how you came up with your melodic material though - you say you transliterated poems into music - how did you do that? Like - in the beginning it says that b, a, f, e, d# = hazel? How did you arrive at that? Overall quite enjoyable - thanks for sharing!

Congratulations! This is a remarkable and substantial achievement from you considering that most of your pieces are short minuets. Your variations are quite creative and far-reaching while still staying related to the original theme! For a classically styled theme and variations piece I'd say you're right on the mark. If you wanted to take your variations even farther away and explore more remote possibilities of the theme you could have changed the time signature, mode (those two in combination are my favorite variation to make), tempo, texture (maybe by using more extreme registers of the piano?) or construct a completely new melody by fragmenting and splicing your original theme and re-combining it into something new (or reversing or inverting some parts of the melody). I did notice you varied the structure and rhythmic patterns and figurations and accompaniment patterns though. Although throughout most of the piece, the repeats seem appropriate, I would have let the piece finish without repeating the last variation because it devalues the sense of finally reaching the long awaited conclusion. It's like "Yay, here's the end! Oh no - here we go again!" Anyways - those are my tips (although I admittedly should listen more to some of my own tips when writing variations myself LoL). It was an enjoyable piece. Thanks for sharing!