My Musical Compostion!!!

I recently had the challenge of composing a musical piece. I took into consideration all the readings I've done lately on composing, and I tried to find something that inspired me.

The challenge? I had to write a composition in non-traditional notations, for at least four people, that lasted about 5-7 minutes. :)

I thought for a while, and I was listening to music, and memorizing lines for a one act, that I am currently rehearsing for, and it came to me. I remembered this one show I did in 2008. I looked at it and found the scene I did, and it happened to be the scene that at the time, we the cast, recorded. WE chose to record this scene (particularly written in the Laban Technique) so that we could express the words with movement instead of Acting them out. Laban has nine words that are involved in this technique: Flash, Flicker, Float, Wring, Dab, Burn, Press, Punch, and Slash. I decided to use the song that we made, combined with the song: Latika's Theme from the movie SLUMDOG MILLIONARE. :)

The concept of my composition was to convey this image of days where your life is out of control, and you feel that you can't control life and the things happening around you. Whether it be as simple as a lot of homework and projects are due to things like, your job is overwhelming, you've got taxes to file, and things to do for your family or friends that just seem to be crazy. Then the next song of Latika's Theme was to convey the calmness that FINALLY does arrive when life is done being overwhelming.

I then added things like a hole punch, a flash light, a nail polish bottle, a cell phone, a box of tick-tacks, and a vending machine case and prize to add more levels of sounds to the piece. WHAT I didn't take into consideration was that my sounds were all VERY SUBTLE, and with the music...didn't work as well as I wanted. SO, if I was to revamp the piece, I'd get things that made more noises.

In class, I presented it, and realized that I had a completely different thought when I was working on it. It seemed to sound better in my head, and even though I was working with the objects at home, in the class room it sounded all different. It's hard to explain, but I do wish I had used different objects.

The composition I did, was very hard for me to compose, this project was out of my comfort zone, but I hope I did okay. :) I feel like it went as well as it could, and I feel like I'm a lot more open to trying new things with composing music. I really enjoyed this project, however, hard for me...it was a lot of fun! :D