School assignment

Hello everybody,

Maybe this will just be my outlet topic for this horrible assignment for school, but perhaps this topic can turn into an interesting discussion.
Since I have my final exams this year, I have to do a school research project, like all other pre-university students in Holland.

Obviously, I chose the subject Music, because the assignment is then to compose a composition for a professional ensemble. It sounded like a lot of fun, but now the problems have begun... The assignment for Music is to write a plan, in which you describe what you want to do with the music, before composing a single note. The teacher asks for which tonalities, which orchestrations, which themes, which time signatures, which tempo etc.

What do you think about that? I always compose, while composing, because that is my way of composing. How can teachers expect from students to write a document containing 10.000 words about the music (in one week), before composing a single note?

Greetings from a desparate composer

I'm assuming you've written an essay before. Teachers here at least always encourage prewriting your essays, or planning it out so writing becomes a lot more fluid and easy when you go to do it. It's the same kind of thing they're expecting if you here, though I'm not sure if that really carries over as well.

1 minute ago, Monarcheon said:

I'm assuming you've written an essay before. Teachers here at least always encourage prewriting your essays, or planning it out so writing becomes a lot more fluid and easy when you go to do it. It's the same kind of thing they're expecting if you here, though I'm not sure if that really carries over as well.

 

I know that they want you to write an essay before, but that is more like a general story and some notes about the music, isn't it?

Hi @Maarten Bauer

I think that you ask for a "plan" before writing. Like the script in a film.

What I would do is: first, explain what you want to express or write about (the autumn, for example; or "randomness"...) I would then propose the big frame: the Form. What parts are in the form and how they interplay (contrasts, repetitions, variations), and why. What instruments you want to use and why, what kind of voice do you want to give to each one or each group. If you want to express a "story", a sequence of anything, how do you plan to fit that in your music.

If you use any scales, why. Or if you stay tonal, or atonal or whatever.

In summary, trying to explain how you are going to use all those tools to tell the story...

Surely, this would be a starting point, when you are in the process, you'll make changes, but that's something you can explain later.

For example, I work sometimes this way. I want to express something "sad" (abstractly sad, because I am in that mood) and I have lots of "tools" I've learned. And I think about how to do it: "I'll do something in three parts, some sort of ABA, and I will use some scale I feel like "dark", and I remembered one I had been experimented with: the superlocrian bb7, I use it, and for the other parts I think harmonies by seconds and sevenths could be nice because they are very different...) Etc... 

11 minutes ago, Maarten Bauer said:

I know that they want you to write an essay before, but that is more like a general story and some notes about the music, isn't it?

 

I think you misunderstood me, but what I meant was the idea is prewriting helps actual writing.

Explain what you want to say and how you'll musically do it. Why G minor, why Eb locrian? It's like writing a very theoretical set of program notes.

The problem is that I want to write in Mosaic form, but that would result into many mini scheludes for each theme, because each theme stands on its own.

So each theme has another mode, another time signature, other instruments, other tempo.

@Maarten Bauer  but that doesn't have to be a problem. I love mosaic form, you know it, it's wonderful, different and allows you to express things in other ways.

Take it as an advantage. Explain why you use Mosaic Form and how many parts has the mosaic, and the different order you organize the pieces. Sometimes, when I do something in Mosaic Form, I think about it as a continuo, and afterwards, I deconstruct it: I begin exposing the parts in an order that is not the final "right" one, which comes later. That gives me the feeling I am looking for something I find in the end.... But you can find dozens of interpretations to what you compose.

This forces you to create a piece in a manner different from your usual process.  Great idea..  Like grammar school, creating an outline without actually putting the fine points in.   I often write something musical with a lot of small parts, jams, ideas etc. Then step back, and try to organize it flesh it out into something that sounds like it makes sense.. Even in writing, I could never use an outline, it stopped all creativity.. Instead I wrote out individual sentences, cut them up, and then organized them into an intelligent order. Finding where I was repeating myself with idea, just slightly different words.  Started to realize doing the same thing musically once I started using the orchestral scoring function in my DAW.  I, like many others, start with a small musical seed, then build it up into something functional..

I met a famous choreographer, and asked him how he accomplished his pieces..  He started with an idea of what he wanted to convey, where he would start, and where he would end, Filled in a few stopping points. then the details to get from one point to the other.  All of this before he even started to think of movements and combinations of movements. 

So the piece was complete (in a way) before he even chose the dancers.  

I've been drawing analogies to creating music by binge watching TV series on Amazon Prime..  The shows with long story arcs (that spread out over a whole season, or several episodes really interested me.  Noticing how a concept is stretched out over time..  How certain characters carry the piece thru a 5 - 7 year stretch, how individual actors, are only in for one episode or have re-occuring roles, (once every 2 - 4 episodes).  or in for 2 seasons, then gone.

This brought in a feeling of familiarity, but also of freshness, because when they came in, had some kind of experience, and then were missing for a few episodes and came back.. I welcomed them..  Much like you might decide to use a certain motif here and there, repeated by a different instrument, in a different register, the same movement of notes (1-2-5-4 repeated but shifted up to the next harmony, or even the shape of  notes up to 3-4-8-7).  Because the notes are different, it might note register with the brain, but another part of the brain, realizes the same relationship of notes)

You can cultivate your own version of this, even before you even write one riff, or melodic phrase..  Yes, it's rather hard (or seemingly impossible at first).. But this will force you to accomplish your goal (whole piece) faster, without having to waste time, exploring all your options. 

I'm quite the Beatles fan, and read everything I could about them.  Lennon and McCartney were always under deadlines to write something, The song 'All You Need Is Love' was the first world live broadcast, reaching something like 75 million people world wide..  Lennon wrote it a few days before it was to be performed.. He was told, it was to be live, had to be positive, and simple so that people would 'get it immediately'..  "LOVE" had always been the message in many Beatles songs, so he stuck to that, made the chorus, simple, so that someone hearing it for the very first time, could start singing along with song, before halfway thru the first chorus.. 

I think the challenge you are presented with, is a great one.. Please keep this thread active, posting what you have done.. It will be interesting to follow..  I'm going to set this up as a challenge to myself to do. 

Good luck, I know you are going to come up with something good.

30 minutes ago, markstyles said:

This forces you to create a piece in a manner different from your usual process.  Great idea..  Like grammar school, creating an outline without actually putting the fine points in.   I often write something musical with a lot of small parts, jams, ideas etc. Then step back, and try to organize it flesh it out into something that sounds like it makes sense.. Even in writing, I could never use an outline, it stopped all creativity.. Instead I wrote out individual sentences, cut them up, and then organized them into an intelligent order. Finding where I was repeating myself with idea, just slightly different words.  Started to realize doing the same thing musically once I started using the orchestral scoring function in my DAW.  I, like many others, start with a small musical seed, then build it up into something functional..

I met a famous choreographer, and asked him how he accomplished his pieces..  He started with an idea of what he wanted to convey, where he would start, and where he would end, Filled in a few stopping points. then the details to get from one point to the other.  All of this before he even started to think of movements and combinations of movements. 

So the piece was complete (in a way) before he even chose the dancers.  

I've been drawing analogies to creating music by binge watching TV series on Amazon Prime..  The shows with long story arcs (that spread out over a whole season, or several episodes really interested me.  Noticing how a concept is stretched out over time..  How certain characters carry the piece thru a 5 - 7 year stretch, how individual actors, are only in for one episode or have re-occuring roles, (once every 2 - 4 episodes).  or in for 2 seasons, then gone.

This brought in a feeling of familiarity, but also of freshness, because when they came in, had some kind of experience, and then were missing for a few episodes and came back.. I welcomed them..  Much like you might decide to use a certain motif here and there, repeated by a different instrument, in a different register, the same movement of notes (1-2-5-4 repeated but shifted up to the next harmony, or even the shape of  notes up to 3-4-8-7).  Because the notes are different, it might note register with the brain, but another part of the brain, realizes the same relationship of notes)

You can cultivate your own version of this, even before you even write one riff, or melodic phrase..  Yes, it's rather hard (or seemingly impossible at first).. But this will force you to accomplish your goal (whole piece) faster, without having to waste time, exploring all your options. 

I'm quite the Beatles fan, and read everything I could about them.  Lennon and McCartney were always under deadlines to write something, The song 'All You Need Is Love' was the first world live broadcast, reaching something like 75 million people world wide..  Lennon wrote it a few days before it was to be performed.. He was told, it was to be live, had to be positive, and simple so that people would 'get it immediately'..  "LOVE" had always been the message in many Beatles songs, so he stuck to that, made the chorus, simple, so that someone hearing it for the very first time, could start singing along with song, before halfway thru the first chorus.. 

I think the challenge you are presented with, is a great one.. Please keep this thread active, posting what you have done.. It will be interesting to follow..  I'm going to set this up as a challenge to myself to do. 

Good luck, I know you are going to come up with something good.

 

Thank you for your response, Mark!

Actually, you changed my opinion about the assignment: it is indeed very interesting, but I think that describing every theme, i.e. more than 40 themes (incl. variations), is way too much to do in one week. I will ask the teacher if I can just describe the first 10 themes. Otherwise it becomes an assignment consisting of more than 10.000 words.