Comp#2 - Playing around on logic

30/10/18

After the tutorial with Jim, I decided to ditch my score for violin, flute and piano in favour of writing for string instruments, and also to test my 'baby steps' assignment. My baby steps were intended for a group of four people, and encouraged them to explore sounds through playing, recording, evaluating, then notating with graphic notation. To try complete this as an individual, I decided to use logic and record myself playing the violin for four different parts. While I couldn't quite follow the steps completely, being one person, I found that composing in this way gave me more freedom to explore and record sounds and effects instead of putting notes down hoping that they would translate to the effect I had in my head. More than this, it was instantly gratifying - something helpful in the stage 4 music context.

I decided to explore the possibilities of harmonics and the idea of swells to create different atmospheres (stemming from my baby steps and my previous draft). I came up with a possible introduction, starting with the pure sound of natural harmonics in each part, then moving between harmonics and the notes being stopped, then adding in artificial harmonics to create more tension and release. In what I think will be the A section after the introduction, I decided to try building towards all instruments playing stopped notes instead of harmonics, leading toward my B section which I plan to be very lush (in contrast to the harmonics of the previous sections). While improvising the different parts in the B section, I had the same feeling of being surrounded by a wash of sound as when I was playing one of the aleatoric sections in Odysseus Live, which gave me the idea to make this section aleatoric. I will have to work out a way to come up with pitch sets that achieve the effect I want, and notate each part's changing pitch set at different times. After this aleatoric section, I think it might work to use the original cello melody from my previous draft in the violin part.

I also recorded some possible ideas for endings - alluding to the same sort of atmosphere as the beginning. At the moment the different sounds remind me of something to do with the ocean - so I'll just call it that for now.

Here's the result of my first session recording in logic, while the recording quality isn't great, I'm happy with the ideas and sounds I was able to explore in such a short time.

Draft 1 - various ideas:

Draft 2 - organising these into a rough structure for the piece: