Recoil - violin, cello, piano

Hello everyone, I was a regular user back in the late 00's and got a big boost in my composition career as a teen from this site. Some people may remember me. In the years since I was active, I've done quite a lot. Some years I've been a composer and others I've been something totally different. I got my Composition degree from Memorial University in 2014 and performed in St. John's, Newfoundland for about a year before changing careers. I've done pretty much the same thing while neglecting my musical past for about 5 years, and now since the pandemic I've rediscovered my old projects and started practicing my instruments again. I want to show off some of my work!

The first piece I'm going to present is Recoil for piano trio. I composed this during my downtime between semesters, without much guidance and following basically my own intuition with a lot of mixture, chromatic mediants, contemporary tropes. It turned out successful and I was very happy with the performances it got. Anybody who already knew my music will notice that I did not move away from my video game style - I embraced it for this project, while t's not quite so blatant in other works I've done. I composed this piece to have something I would love - and I hope that comes across.

Here is the performance from my graduation recital - (it was a point of pride for me to feature a piece my teachers had not seen).

It kind of gives you this Zimmer empty feel. Lets see where it's going.

Yea ok still Zimmer, this feel of Ab to C. I think it also occurs at the opening theme of Fallout?

Well until 44 it feels rather empty. Why didn't you use the piano for more than... you know... *chord*

I like it way better now, although you don't really get much away from the same chord progression.

I see what you were trying to do here, but it's too loud to "slide" into the piece.

This one is unperformable, one can't possibly move his fingers so quickly AND also change from arco to pizz.

But

since you do use a very high register in the Cello you can try to have one of them play pizz and the other arco,

and give some of the melodic material to the piano (say have him keep playing the triplets in the left hand while doing the stacc with some richer chords on a higher register in the right hand.  Also what do you mean by this  how come they separate the bows AND do stacc AND this notes are connected by a slur?

wow wow wow hold up for a sec. You can make it a run but for the love of quack that just seems unnecessarily scary. Also you might want to change the way your chord is spread over the keyboard, to have bigger intervals on lower registers, to add some richer notes (say D and F# for a C on the higher register). 

Congratulations, you just murdered a pianist for absolutely no reason. Why won't you give some of those lines to the strings?

I mean, the players would just sit there basically doing nothing.

I believe you should have finished the piece here. It's a beautiful and energetic run, just give two or three "blast" chords and end it there.

What you have from this point on is a big waste of time.

Hello - I appreciate your comment. Thanks for pointing out some of my sloppy engraving. 

I think you'll notice that the "unperformable" bits of my piece were actually performed in the recording I provided - I would have edited those out if my performers couldn't do it. I think any professional pianist looking to play contemporary chamber music will have 2s against 5s and 3s against 5s down. It's difficult but I was pleased with the performance of it.

Mitchell

Hi Mitchell.  The pattern you have for the piano in measure 63 and onward gives me Chrono Trigger vibes!  (which if you're unfamiliar is a really cool RPG for the SNES)  I love it!  I love it when composers take their video game music or rock music inspiration and translate that into classical music which is something I think you've done here.  I love how you build ostinato figures - the only thing I miss is smooth transitions between those ostinati and the sections of music that follow them (like at measure 105 you just stop the ostinato instead of somehow transitioning into the next section).  I like your idea at the end of restating the introduction - I just think the ending should be at 152 so that the piano and strings end together.  But that's just my opinion.  I really enjoyed the voicings and harmonies you employ.  Great job!

6 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

Hi Mitchell.  The pattern you have for the piano in measure 63 and onward gives me Chrono Trigger vibes!  (which if you're unfamiliar is a really cool RPG for the SNES)  I love it!  I love it when composers take their video game music or rock music inspiration and translate that into classical music which is something I think you've done here.  I love how you build ostinato figures - the only thing I miss is smooth transitions between those ostinati and the sections of music that follow them (like at measure 105 you just stop the ostinato instead of somehow transitioning into the next section).  I like your idea at the end of restating the introduction - I just think the ending should be at 152 so that the piano and strings end together.  But that's just my opinion.  I really enjoyed the voicings and harmonies you employ.  Great job!

 

What's funny is that the video game sound is purely intuitive to me - it's never been my intention to compose "like" a video game yet my whole career people have said my style sounds like video game music. I've never gotten a "rock" comparison before (except for one time I actually tried to emulate it) - I love that, thank you - I eventually want to compose progressive rock music (or arrange my old ensemble music for a prog band) (or both) so that's reassuring. 

I agree with you on transitioning. The whole piece could be more continuous, and I think agree with you that the end is a little redundant. All things I will keep in mind in the future, I've thought of composing other movements for this....

Thanks for listening and I'm glad you enjoyed.

Dude...

This is one of my favorite pieces I've heard on this site. I remember you from back in the day lol, I'm glad to hear you're still around, and that you took your evolution of video game inspired music to the next level. It was truly a treat to listen to. 

This is right up my alley, as far as what I personally like to listen to and as well as the type of style that I write in. I love the way you move with your chords. Tonal style plus the great chromatic mediant relationships you deploy was awesome, and you have a great sense of blending with modal mixture. 

On 7/17/2020 at 2:58 AM, Rabbival507 said:

I believe you should have finished the piece here. It's a beautiful and energetic run, just give two or three "blast" chords and end it there.

What you have from this point on is a big waste of time.

 

I disagree with this. I actually like the circular form; it was cool to hear the intro brought back. I do agree that it's kinda long though, if you ended at bar 141 it would have been perfect imo.

Overall though, it was a wonderful display of who you are as a composer, and any gripes I have are nit picky and stylistic. Once again, I'm glad to see (hear!) that you're still around, and I look forward to hearing what you'll give us next. 

P.S. you mentioned there was a recording? Let me know when we can hear it!

Heya! We all seem to be sticking our heads around the corner and seeing what is going on here at least now and then. I remember you and several of the others. I spent so much time on here I don't think I can forget most of y'all. 

I adore the ideas you have in this piece. I think it is very effective. It is straight up my alley. I hate it when people make the comparisons of their "structured classical composition" to a "video game style" as if it is a bad thing or as if it means it should be viewed as lesser music or not to be viewed as being as legit by scholarly people or whatever the heck. It is very probable that there is a direct influence from your listening and playing and composing of video game things. I don't care one way or the other. It is legit regardless. I think compositional ideas are ideas no matter where they come from. I think that a composer has his own unique message to relay and his language is notated for musicians to play. If he feels he needs to speak his mind or express himself in a style that falls into some category that is preconceived to have these attributes than whatever ... that is your voice and your style ... these were just the ideas you had felt like expressing at the point you decided to go for it. I think it is this notion that people have had in the past that somehow these types of ideas cannot be mixed in strictly scholarly, institutional classical writing that has held back music from just being whatever gorgeous, exciting and righteous thing a composer could imagine. I have seen a lot of example of certain people taking whatever route they wanted and running with it successfully recently and in my opinion really broadening and brightening up what it means to write modern classical music. Like, how about we just get back to writing music! How about we take whatever ideas that make us passionate about any type of music and try to be as creative as possible. 

It's awesome that you completed a degree and made your way a little in composition. I totally understand having other things in life and different career paths then composition that prevent you from a prolific output. I never did really compose legitimately and It certainly doesn't play a role in anything I do to make money. 

I echo the sentiment others have expressed about any issues I think I would have with the piece. It does seem heavily to rely on the same progression and regardless of the different ways you have been able to notate different variations of it it comes back to the same root maybe more than I would like. I do have the same feeling about the continuity of the ideas with the transitions between them. However, I get the language. I get the ideas. I love the ideas. Still think it is a beautiful and brilliant piece. So kudos for running with it and coming up with what you did!  

This is amazing! I really like the piano moments with the arpeggios and yeah it does sound like video game music yeah I think it’s because of the lack of reverb and that it kind of stops sometimes someone might explain it way better than I do!

10 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Dude...

This is one of my favorite pieces I've heard on this site. I remember you from back in the day lol, I'm glad to hear you're still around, and that you took your evolution of video game inspired music to the next level. It was truly a treat to listen to. 

This is right up my alley, as far as what I personally like to listen to and as well as the type of style that I write in. I love the way you move with your chords. Tonal style plus the great chromatic mediant relationships you deploy was awesome, and you have a great sense of blending with modal mixture. 

I disagree with this. I actually like the circular form; it was cool to hear the intro brought back. I do agree that it's kinda long though, if you ended at bar 141 it would have been perfect imo.

 

Overall though, it was a wonderful display of who you are as a composer, and any gripes I have are nit picky and stylistic. Once again, I'm glad to see (hear!) that you're still around, and I look forward to hearing what you'll give us next. 

P.S. you mentioned there was a recording? Let me know when we can hear it!

 

There was supposed to be a soundcloud link in the OP but if it didn't come up for anyone else then here it is again. Not automatically embedded this time.

https://soundcloud.com/wxo/recoil

 Hey everyone, I couldn't have imagined such a positive response to my music! Thanks for hearing and understanding my voice! It means a lot, especially coming from users here since the users in this site were my first ever mentors as a composer, and have never ever steered me away from what I like to write. You've made my day everybody 🙂