Sketch No. 50

The 50th in my sketch series. Working with basic tone rows (kind of ineffectively, but it works) and compound time signatures in this one. It sounds pretty minimal, until the slower parts. Enjoy!

You're also probably wondering why I used the treble octave up clef instead of an 8va... well... I got lazy. Haha, sorry. It's just a sketch, after all.

Very very nice.

1. You've been clever using irregular time signatures, and avoiding the "repeated tuplet effect", which is tiring.

2. Charming harmonies, and fresh.

The result is impressionistic, perhaps?

One question: Is it wrong using here the treble octave up clef? I think that if it affects the whole piece it is clear.

If I had written this, I would have omitted the time signatures, even the bars. It's nearly "ametrics".

Well, call it sketch, but I think it's a work well defined and done.

Greetings!

Very nice. Reminds me of George Perle in his mixture of quasi-tonal and serial styles.

I liked it as well. It has an impressionist overall mood, but maybe by way of Messiaen? I think the bar lines are very useful to the pianist who needs signposts. The early bars are just 4/4 with a kind of syncopation. But it gets more complex later on, like 9/16 + 4/16, so it really helps to have the measure dissected and delineated. So I disagree with Luis there.

Great work! To me it's quite chilling, perhaps an unconscious association because there has been a good bit of horror movie music similar to the triplets at the beginning. I like pieces that integrate a tone row in a not entirely serial context.

I definitely hear Messiaen, as Ken pointed out. I also agree about the importance of the bar lines and time signatures. In my mind, a piece would lack those features only if it had no real rhythm or pulse, but I could be thinking incorrectly. 

51 minutes ago, fishyfry said:

I definitely hear Messiaen

21 hours ago, Ken320 said:

It has an impressionist overall mood, but maybe by way of Messiaen?

I wasn't actually very familiar with him, so I looked him up, and what I heard I liked very much; I'm flattered! Thank you all for your comments!

On September 12, 2016 at 8:42 PM, Monarcheon said:

I wasn't actually very familiar with him, so I looked him up, and what I heard I liked very much; I'm flattered! Thank you all for your comments!

 

Oh Messiaen is a god. Last movement of Quartet for the End of Time (my favorite thing he ever wrote), Turangalila Symphony, his piano preludes, Éclairs sur l'au-dele, Oraison (one of my other favorite things), O Sacrum Vivium, etc. I am glad you went and checked out some of his stuff. He is just such a unique individual in the world of composition.