04-20-10 I made a single page with all three songs from this semester which has the audio files, scores, parts and song information. It is finished and I'm happy to say I put in all the required hours.
04-16-10 The song is done, now I just have to clean up articulations, dynamics, turn the drum part into something legible by a drummer, etc...
* Listen to possible final cut of Master of Puppets
04-13-10 I think Master of Puppets is my Opus, except for the last Opus I was working on, and the other one right now. But what I'm saying is that Master o' Puppets is coming along rather well. It is a beast of a chart in range but not too difficult of a read (I think). As I was deviating from the source material to throw in more jazz idioms I got to a part where I wanted a beefy Trombone bass riff and didn't even think of using the actual line from the song (which I ended up using). Arranging has the be one of the most fun things in the world, With composing perhaps being the easiest simply because you can do anything for any reason when you're composing.
Here is a Midi file, there are a lot of sections that are still just sketches of what will be but it shows where I'm going with it.
* Listen to Master of Puppets (or Pastor or Muppets, I'm still undecided)
04-10-10 I have the rhythm section done for all of Master of Puppets and it is now a 6 minutes 4 seconds song from start to end. Considering the source material is over 8 minutes I don't feel bad at all. Based on the bridge of the original song there is now a nice little Mozart-esque change in the middle of the song with Saxophones carrying a moving line with the trumpets playing melodies over the top with the drums coming in with a rock ballad feel before going back into the swing. It's similar to how Farm Out goes Funk-Swing-Funk, only this is Swing-Rock-Swing. I'm in the middle of writing out a bunch of horn parts for the part between the A section and the Mozart thing so I'm not quite ready to upload a sound bit or written parts yet.
03-31-10 You can now listen to the current progress on Rumination and Master of Puppets. I think right now it all sounds really superficial but I know where the charts are going so I feel good enough about that. I should also mention that I ended up rewriting Rumination because I found out that I had written everything as it would have been read in cut time, and with a funk shuffle I really didn't like that effect.
* Listen to: Rumination - Original Composition
* Listen to: Master of Puppets - Amazing arrangement of a Metal song
03-17-10 I should mention, Thriller and The Right One have both been added to my music downloads page located here.
03-16-10 I just finished feeding Asher his bottle and put some time into turning the basic outline for Master of Puppets into some chords. This is a swing chart.
* Master of Puppets: Staff sheet
I should also mention I spent some time today making minor updates, changes and corrections to Thriller so I'm going to count that as official Independent Study time.
03-10-10 Well, now I have three chards going at once, two arrangements of pop/rock and one original. I really want to supplement my future jazz band with a variety of current arrangement and one this third chart, Master of Puppets has been one I've been meaning to do for a while. I also need to get my hand on a lead sheet for a Duke chart I want to arrange (East St. Louis Toodle-oo). Maybe as the UVU Jazz band gets closer to having all the current charts down I'd feel comfortable taking some time away from normal practice to run through some of my compositions in a live setting.
I still haven't left behind my other stuff though, here is a little of the work that has gone into Jumper:
* See the Jumper chord changes
* Listen to a little of Jumper midi
03-06-10 So the other day I was singing a pop song in my head and it turned into a swing chart so I'm switching temporarily from my slow going Funk Shuffle to hammer this one out. I mentioned the idea to my wife Wendy and she said she was really interested in seeing how this song would translate so I think I'll just show her exactly how. Jumper by Third Eye Blind, which is a radio hit from about 12 years ago.
03-03-10 Hammering out the melodies and rhythm for the Funk Shuffle. Learned a lot about what a Funk Shuffle is supposed to be which is great. Remember, a Funk Shuffle has the Shuffle Swing feel although the drums and bass are being pretty consistently funky.
* Funk Shuffle: Movement before going into main melody floating over moving funk parts.
02-27-10 On my last chart "The Right One", my melody is catchy but not enveloping so I've been looking at ways to change just 2 bars of the melody. Despite that work I've been building the bottom of the my funk chart starting with the rhythm section and some big fat brass chords. This new song is titled Rumination.
* Funk Shuffle: Big fat brass chords
02-22-10 Well, I pretty much have my changes hammered out for my funk shuffle chart. I wanted to try to use more color this time around, getting some sus 4, b9 and augmented chords in there, stuff like that. I'm probably doing something wrong but it sounds right and this is the 21st century after all.
* Click to see final chord changes
02-19-10 I've been up late at night with Asher (born 2-12-10) and trying to hammer out my chord changes, I also started actually writing out pieces of the chart. With the chord changes I've gone through 2 starts already that I'm pretty much shelving but after popping out my keyboard I was able to make some real progress.
* Click to see chord changes draft
02-11-10 I took some time off of composition earlier in the week to prep for my GMAT. I've had a few ideas rolling around and I tried messing with a few tonight. I don't want to do another swing chart right off the bat. I was listening to some more modern Funk Jazz Ensemble stuff that my wife, Wendy, seems to enjoy more than the swing so I'm headed in that direction. I also have a Latin idea forming as well as something a little more progressive which would use a distorted guitar holding power chords with "some skunk funk" type of lines over it that I would like to call "evil jazz". It's kind of a mix up of "Tool" and "Bebop". I need to sit in front of a piano though so I can pick out my next melody/theme then I'll throw the style on from there.
02-05-10 "The Right One" is completed. I won't be uploading the finished parts onto the internet though. Sorry.
During the final edit I found I had an Ab7 chord that at least 4 times had an ugly little A natural sitting in the trombones. I never thought a flat 9 could sound so good. I also added rehearsal marks.
02-04-10 ...and four hours later the song is pretty much completed. I fixed up some more stuff on the "C" section, added parts for backgrounds to the solos, created the rhythm section parts and added all the articulations to the horns. All that is left is dynamic markings and final page formatting.
Wendy heard me working on it and asked, "isn't that done yet?", which was a good question for two reasons. First, she's tired of listening to it, and second, because I don't usually take a whole month to write one song.
* Complete Score without dynamic markings
02-03-10 I missed writing on this blog a bit last week. I changed the ending of the song again and finished up the sax soli as well. As the weekend came I was getting quite frustrated with certain life events and was ready to move on to a different song with a different feel, having the concepts all in my head, but I was not in the mood to figure out the chord changes ahead of time, so I willed myself to put that project off until I had the patience to do it right.
Yesterday while at the airport I was able to hammer out the "C" section of the song except I need to write out how the rhythm section will play into the "building". In essence all of the horn parts are written out so all I need to do now is add the dynamic marking, articulations, and minor clean up to complete the top 13 instruments of the song. Then it's all downhill getting the rhythm section parts organized. I had hoped to complete this composition in January but sometimes things don't workout the way you thought they would.
01- 26-10 So many changes going on now, 4 more measures thrown on to the front, Sax Soli lengthened for another entire A section and the ending with the A2 has been switched to an ending with A3 with the last 8 bars repeating after a brief drum fill. I also have a temporary last chord in the song that is just built off of a triad of the root chord. I'll need to add the pretty stuff there to but my 1st Trumpet it holding a high "C" so I can't make the top note any higher, maybe I'll re-voice it starting with a lower high note.
The sax soli isn't finished but I found some mess in there between the unison soli and the bones harmony behind it so I cleaned that up as well. I also cleaned up some wrong notes in the "B" section.
01-25-10 The "B" section is now completed and the 3rd "A" section is being transformed into a sax soli immediately proceeding the solo section. That way, removing the repetitiveness of the head I can reuse it with more vigor in the ending. My form now looks as follows:
Intro (now 12 bars rather than 8)
A1
A2
B
A3 (Sax Soli), solo break!
Trumpet Solo on A
Tenor Sax Solo on A,B softening into...
C section, based on intro, building with the use of dotted quarter notes.
A2 with ending
01-23-10 I filled my hours quota this week so... as far as my family is concerned I'm supposed to wait until next week to work on the project some. Nevertheless, I have been tweaking it a little bit and fixed up the sax chords on the "B" section although what I really intend to do on this "B" section really isn't clear. Should I throw more stuff on top of it, or cut out parts, or both, who knows? My favorite part right now is the second ending to the "A" section which leads into the "B" section so maybe I'll prolong that idea a little more with the new chord changes of the "B" section.
What I like so much with the 2nd ending of the "A" section is that it takes the arpeggios of the sax section in the A part and the "two 8th note, dotted half rythm" of four measures preceding the ending and combines them into a complex sounding build up. It's always funny how my favorite parts of a song tend to be a really small, insignificant part, often being even only one measure.
I also have a few parts of the "C" section started but not enough to really get an idea of what I'm going to do in order to bring it into the scream section.
01-21-10 I just got the charts I ordered in the mail. They are a Neil Slater piece and a Dave Eshelman piece I recently purchased so I'm feeling inspired. I'm writing the intro to my chart now as well as the "C" section which grows into a scream section, both based on the same chord changes.
Two hours later I have an intro I'm very happy with, I made it out of a part I threw away before but as of today had the idea to change up the rhythm to make it work. I also spent time working out the 1st and 2nd endings of the "A" section but not as much time in the "C" section as I expected. Lastly I did some general formatting. With the intro, I have the bass and drums solo for the first 4 bars, then with the horns entering for the next four, ending with the saxes and bones switching parts for the last 4 bars of the intro. I plan on writing it in for the drummer to use some variety in the cymbals but for written music sake here is the current intro.
01-20-10 I'm still going through the process of turning my melodies into harmonies, I ended up throwing out the trumpet harmonies because it just didn't do it for me. I'm considering doing an odd thing with the trumpets alternating each beat between unison and chords with ">" accents. We'll see.
I also decided to put the saxes into octaves on a part that is later doubled in chords by the bones. Still working on the "A" section. I do have the saxes melody for the 2nd ending and the "B" section as well but I need to harmonize it as well as add the bops and bits in the brass parts.
(Video Removed)
01-19-10 I've written out the melody through until it approaches the "C" section as mentioned below. I am of the mind set that it's a lot easier to fix or augment someone else's finished work than to create something from scratch so putting that into practical use, I'm going to complete the project to a respectable degree with no real pressure on myself, then review it once finished with the intentions of making it better as if I was fixing someone else's work.
I've been turning the initial melodies into chords (or unison), basically building the parts for the other horns in the section.
* Excerpt from trombone section
I also forgot to mention, sometime last week I was playing with titles for my song and bouncing some ideas off of Wendy (my wife) that didn't include anyone's name in it. My first swing chart this term is being called "The Right One", which is a much better title than "The Wrong One".
01-16-10 I've been pretty heavy into writing out the melody and variations along with the bits and bops. Right now I'm focusing on just the 1st Alto, 1st Trumpet and 1st Bone (It's a feature in Sibelius to focus on which ever instruments you want at a time.) Anything I decide to do "weird" within each instrument section (saxes, trumpets or bones) in being kept in a mental note. I believe this song will have a lot of variation building back and forth form unison, to tight cords, to wide chords. I'm also doing something with the saxes that is a sign of later jazz arrangements, which is a lot of arpeggio scale work. Basically the Trumpets are carrying the melody, with the 5th measure being 1 beat off from the melody in the 1st measure, with pops given by the bones and empty space filled by saxes arpeggios. I've made a conscious decision to not treat any of the 3 main sections as a combined unit (which means no big beautiful chords within the brass section with the Trumpet doing Soprano/ Alto and Bones doing Tenor/Bass) although once I reach the C section it may be a different story.
I should also mention, I am well aware of "young composers" tendency to put "too much" into their composition. I am aware of this, and I am not concerned with it.
01-12-10 Now that concert band auditions are over I'm free to spend some extra time reviewing Modulation, Tritones, Tritone Substitution, ii V I, altering Dominant cords, etc... and find some things to throw into my initial chord changes. Dr. Colonna and I had a earlier discussion about starting with writing the bass part then moving on the the melodic portions so I feel pretty confident in starting with my cord changes. he also said I needed to decide a style, is "swing at 1/4 note = 200" a style?
The form in general is as such:
08 Measure Intro
16 Measure A
16 Measure A
08 Measure B
16 Measure A
16 Measure Solo on A
24 Measure Solo on AB
16 Measure C section based on Intro, building into...
Some kind of ending based on A
* Listen to final chord changes
01-09-10 Welcome to my
composition blog. I am required to track my work and hours as I compose and
arrange music so here it is. Tracking my process will slow me down but it also
gives me a chance to give my insight to all my decisions and you, the read, has
to listen to it all.
I started off with a form study, using Warm Breeze by Sammy Nestico. I mean,
it's been a while since I really hit composition hard so I figured to get the
kinks out fast I could use some review. I took a look at various other chars as
well, Big Swing Face by Buddy Rich, etc... I'm mainly looking at the chord
structure underlying various section, taking special note of implied changes in
2nds endings (although no endings are actually written into the parts due to the
amount of rhythmic variation.) I'm also analyzing how the composers are doing
their intro and subsequent AAB sections.
I also start testing chord textures on the piano (not a real piano but a
flat roll out piano that I use for traveling, since we have no piano in our
home.) I'm trying to find something to match the way I want to work out my first
song, I end the session with baby daughter waking up and taking over the
keyboard. Later at night I spend more time getting my desired changes put
together.
