What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Suffolkcoastal]

Thanks S-A

As the Musescore program has a slightly better quality sound, I've copied a link to my composer page on Facebook, which can be accessed by the general public, and which contains updated MIDI playbacks of all 60 of my compositions. Please feel free
to listen & comment if you wish. I hope the link works! https://www.facebook.com/MDRobertson1964/

[richardfinegold]

Chopin, Prelude #4

[Joseph K]

[RichardB]

In case anyone is interested my 4th Symphony was completed a couple of days ago, after what has been a difficult year so far, 6 months is a long time for me to take to compose a 35 minute long work.

It's taken me a while to get around to this! Well done (the MIDI orchestra is still a bit "wooden", but I guess these things are improving all the time...) - the part I liked most was the quasi-mediaeval counterpoint at the beginning of the third movement, and a couple of memorable percussion moments which made me wonder why they're so infrequent.

I've been working for most of this year on a piece for flute and ensemble which I finished this morning. The accompanying ensemble focuses on dark and low sonorities - flugelhorn, trombone, percussion, harp, piano, cello and contrabass. It came about when an Australian friend (who apart from being a robotics engineer in his day job was also bookkeeper for the Elision ensemble and a member of its board) who was diagnosed about a year ago with an aggressive cancer and decided to commission a new work for the ensemble as part of his legacy. The music took much longer to write than I was expecting, partly because this has been a year of upheavals with moving to a new country and all the complications that go with that (thank you all, Brexiters!), but working on it has taken me in some new directions, in terms of expressivity as much as anything else. The starting point was the chord that arrives at the climactic moment of the first and last movements of Mahler's 10th symphony (which is heard quite clearly at one point, although with a very different instrumentation), and the form of the piece is also a kind of shadow of the last movement of that work (also a farewell, and an opening into new musical possibilities). As I've mentioned here before, making a "completion" of the symphony has been in my mind for quite a few years. I don't think it's going to happen, except in my head, and in compositions like this that relate to it more tangentially.

[Joseph K]

I've been working for most of this year on a piece for flute and ensemble which I finished this morning. The accompanying ensemble focuses on dark and low sonorities - flugelhorn, trombone, percussion, harp, piano, cello and contrabass. It came about when an Australian friend (who apart from being a robotics engineer in his day job was also bookkeeper for the Elision ensemble and a member of its board) who was diagnosed about a year ago with an aggressive cancer and decided to commission a new work for the ensemble as part of his legacy. The music took much longer to write than I was expecting, partly because this has been a year of upheavals with moving to a new country and all the complications that go with that (thank you all, Brexiters!), but working on it has taken me in some new directions, in terms of expressivity as much as anything else. The starting point was the chord that arrives at the climactic moment of the first and last movements of Mahler's 10th symphony (which is heard quite clearly at one point, although with a very different instrumentation), and the form of the piece is also a kind of shadow of the last movement of that work (also a farewell, and an opening into new musical possibilities). As I've mentioned here before, making a "completion" of the symphony has been in my mind for quite a few years. I don't think it's going to happen, except in my head, and in compositions like this that relate to it more tangentially.

Looking forward to hearing this....

[Joseph K]

Donna Lee - YouTube

[Joseph K]

Billie's Bounce - YouTube

[Joseph K]

Well, I can tell that everyone here is just clamouring to hear yet another video of mine, yet another Stella. I play this tune at least once a day, every day and frankly for a long time felt like I was no good, but recently felt like I had a bit of a breakthrough, however modest...

Stella By Starlight - YouTube

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I can tell that everyone here is just clamouring to hear yet another video of mine, yet another Stella. I play this tune at least once a day, every day and frankly for a long time felt like I was no good, but recently felt like I had a bit of a breakthrough, however modest...

Stella By Starlight - YouTube

I enjoyed that as well as the Billie's Bounce version - something of George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept in this approach, or maybe you've been investigating Billy Bauer? Since you deploy obliquely to the chord structures one way you could loosen ties might be to ignore structural deadlnes, which could make for more of a continuity. Just an idea, mind!

[Joseph K]

I enjoyed that as well as the Billie's Bounce version - something of George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept in this approach, or maybe you've been investigating Billy Bauer? Since you deploy obliquely to the chord structures one way you could loosen ties might be to ignore structural deadlnes, which could make for more of a continuity. Just an idea, mind!

Thank you, SA! Though I'm not sure I fully grasp what you're saying in the second sentence...

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you, SA! Though I'm not sure I fully grasp what you're saying in the second sentence...

The chromatic approach you advocate can potentially overlap structural markers, in other words de-couple away from where harmonic movement might suggest resolution, thereby enabling more improvisational autonomy from the underlying changes and thereby greater weight and continuity to the improvising process than the tune structure would suggest to a more cautious mind!

[Joseph K]

The chromatic approach you advocate can potentially overlap structural markers, in other words de-couple away from where harmonic movement might suggest resolution, thereby enabling more improvisational autonomy from the underlying changes and thereby greater weight and continuity to the improvising process than the tune structure would suggest to a more cautious mind!

Indeed. I think I still need to practice more and refine my concept before swimming in those deep waters, so to speak...

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed. I think I still need to practice more and refine my concept before swimming in those deep waters, so to speak...

Indeed, and it probably helps if there is more than one person in the room getting lost at the same time!

[Jonathan]

I've decided that, with the publication of the shell that's named after me and the fact that it says in the bit about who the species in named after that I am an amateur pianist, I'd better start practising properly again! There's the perfect opportunity next month to show this as there is a piano in the hall in which the British Shell Collector's Club (of which I am vice chairman) have the shell show. I've decided on the last few pages of Liszt's Grossekonzertsolo from the 'Stretta' to the ending. It's a good mix of various techniques and should give my fingers a work out.

[Joseph K]

(3) Blue Bossa - YouTube