This journal is intended to record, discuss and archive a collection of personal projects that were done by myself. It will contain photographs and scans of paintings, books, documents, research work, and several others that were done by me. These can be found by links that go directly to the "DAPHA Projects" Facebook group. I hope that you find the content in the group enjoyable.
Showing posts with label Music Composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music Composition. Show all posts
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 29th August 2022)
Dear Diary,
This was a composition made from the inspiration of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, the computer lost a copy of the score. I believe it was over twelve pages. There was not much planning as to what this piece was supposed to do apart from describing the fear and seriousness of the infection.
The painting was done within a day on Thursday 13 August 2020. Six hours in total were required to do the full colouring. In this illustration, I used the flowers in the ground as the coronavirus, and when the pollen and petal blow through the air it spreads the virus.
The girl holding the flower in her hand would represent a person carrying the virus and being unaware that they were infected. It seemed to me that the same girl ended up looking like Carla from my “Magical Creatures” novel. However, the design for the dress came from thinking of our country’s president Ms. Paula-Mae Weekes.
Listening to the recording, my mind was suggesting that what was presented should have been a beginning or introduction for the composition but too late now since the score was lost.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 29th August 2022)
Dear Diary,
Here is another piece of Classical Indian music. I decided to use Raag Bhairavi which is another scale: the second and sixth degrees of the scale are lowered by a semitone. This is also illustrated at the beginning of the video. Again, the tonic (or ‘Sa’) was C.
I used flute and harmonium as the major source of melody. The tambourine and tabla were given independent rhythmic patterns and were assigned as ostinati. However, the loud gong and bowl gong was replaced by a harp that was used to mimic the sound/feel of a swarmandal.
As much as I wished, the software could not do the andolan or swing. Hence, use of more acciaccaturas was used as a substitution apart from instances where the true acciaccaturas were required.
The drawing and painting were both done on Thursday 23 July 2020 in the afternoon at home number two. The full colouring took approximately two and a half hours long.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 29th August 2022)
Dear Diary,
This was my first attempt at creating a piece of Classical Indian music. The raag of choice was Bhairavi with the scale's second, third, sixth and seventh degrees lowered by a semitone. I tried to illustrate this with the notation at the very beginning of the video. The tonic (or ‘Sa’) is C.
The two main instruments were the flute and the sitar. A tambourine was added to create a rhythmic pattern and this pattern was used as an ostinato. Since I did not know how to write for the tabla, I made an independent rhythmic pattern for the tambourine that gave the difference between the sound of the big drum and the smaller drum.
Since Musescore does not operate under the Indian Classical style of music, there was no way to create a tanpura effect. Instead, a loud gong was used to indicate the beginning of a new cycle in teen taal. A bowl gong in between would also be heard.
During the composition at 0:47 in the video, the use of call and response, or question and the answer was utilised. I did not want the two instruments doing the same melody. I wanted them interdependent like some sort of conversation. Most likely it felt like Trinis talking and finishing what the other person was saying.
The dates of the drawing and the painting were not recorded. The painting was done on a night immediately after the day of the drawing. The next day after painting the elephant I saw a very gruesome and hurting story from CNN about people killing elephants in a foreign land. A mommy elephant and the young children were killed. I wished I had inserted the little baby elephant when I saw it in my mind but I did not know how to draw it.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 29th August 2022)
**painting
Dear Diary,
The date above is the upload of
my “I Believe in Jesus Christ” video to YouTube. It was around this time after
mommy’s funeral I began to hear the lady singing again. She gave me the first
two lines and I made that the first verse.
Some days after, while staying by
Aunty Zida’s, she gave me the chorus. I decided to take the entire melody and
arrange it for a full steelband. When I did this, it felt right and it was
amazing to me. I just panic that the music would not be good enough.
Seeing that it was a YouTube
video, I wanted to make a painting with Jesus. I still did not want to take one
online. I had rather make my version of it.
Link(s):
“I Believe in Jesus Christ” –
YouTube Recording.**
Date for Entry: (Friday 1st – Saturday 2nd November 2019)
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Tuesday 22nd March 2022)
Dear Diary,
The dance department at DCFA had their “Festival of Movement” concert. It was a two-day event from seven in the night. Everything was done twice on both nights. The Indian Classical Ensemble was supposed to perform our piece of “Aigiri Nandini” but I saw on the program that they had labeled the piece as “Ardhannarishvara”.
Only on Saturday night, I was able to go into one of the dance studios to see them dance to the composition I had done called “Dance of Nature”. In one of the dance rehearsals, I got to meet Ms. Paul who was the teacher for the class I did the music for. She had realized who I was when I gave her a copy of the “Aigiri Nandini” that I had done for the Ensemble. Also, another group I am playing music with for another of her classes. We were given an extra assignment as an option to write something for the dancers and I did it. Since I was the only person to complete the full song, it was taken immediately. There was one student attempting music for the earth dance.
The coordinator Mrs. Olivier did not want us to enter. I snuck in to hear the music of my own composition that night. I was not pleased with the ‘collage’ effect they did with recorded dances. It felt like all the hard work was in vain because I had sat down and calculated each step. The others in the Indian Classical Ensemble found the crowd took forever to enter the room so they left and went back downstairs before I got in.
In composition class, Mr. Sharma would have said almost the same when he asked me how I found it to be. I was congratulated by Mr. Reid when he met me in school in the week leading up to the event. He said he had heard the composition I did. As I chose to ignore the visual and look down to the ground, I took in the sound. For me, it sounded like there was too much bowl gong in use. I did some adjustments to the piece over some time. This was a good experience hearing the piece on a loudspeaker for the first time.
The Indian classical ensemble performance was done after the Intermission. I met Mr. Sharma and Miss Karen on Saturday night after entering the dance studio and some of the others from the composition. Our performance was done first after the intermission. It did sound a bit weird as Miss Priyanka was telling Miss Paul after the first night. I agreed. The rest of the show went well on both nights. Mr. Maharaj was not there. I think he was out of the country for that weekend.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 21st March 2022)
Dear Diary,
I had been looking forward to this course for several semesters since my first year of the certificate program. It was finally here and I happily took my first-row seat as usual. There were several pieces of homework to be done as assignments for marks and a lot of other activities that had made this semester SUPER interesting.
The first assignment was presented in class tonight. We were asked to find a partner and play one of their ideas for the class. The person I teamed up with was Tinesha. We got a tenor pan to the empty Pan Theatre to try out the ideas. Hers was simple to sight-read out but she seemed surprised when I got them correct.
When I gave her some of mine, she couldn’t manage so in class I ended up playing all the ideas instead. It took a lot of time to go through the assignment. I might say the whole class when feedback had to be given too. I apologize for the condition of the document. It was chipped up into pieces to save on paper to archive.
We were asked to develop at least one idea (from assignment 1) and one of his partner’s ideas. Instead, I took one of my idea for assignment one and created another of my own.
It was very late in the night before class was over. I was not that well. Mr. Sharma and two other students tried the piece out when I could not make it to play it. It seemed as if the assignment itself was not good enough. My idea was to make something simple. I was thinking of a preliminary piece that might be done for an exam. In the portfolio will be a further discussion on this failed attempt.
I took about four days doing over something from scratch to meet the requirements of assignments two and three to use it as required in assignment four. I was able to make an introduction, the first section, and a second section.
Section C was not ready because the time was spent/expired and the class was about to begin. That night, only Mr. Sharma, Brandon, Milano, and I were there in class. Not many were present. Everyone else was not there. They seemed to appreciate and support the long runs in the song. Mr. Sharma supported the piano part and commented on the 'slim' use of writing in it to "make it real easy". This gave me the confidence to continue with the rest of the piece.
This piece was presented to the class on another date later in the semester. At that time the entire class was present. I was able to get some comments from Anton mentioning the key changes and the pauses at the end of a section. He compared this piece to the "Dance of Nature" piece for the same comment. It seemed as if all the runs in the piece had made everyone speechless? No one else commented again.
ASSIGNMENT #5: MUSIC WITH TEXT – “LOVE IS ALL I NEED”.
* Thursday 17 October 2019 *
**pick of score
There was an assignment that asked us to use a poem and create music for it. During the summer vacation that went, it was a Friday evening after the second ‘Law and Gov’ class that I heard to sound of a different lady singing in my mind. The music given to me was Rehearsal Section A. I did not have a manuscript paper with me in the car, so I took a copybook and wrote out the lyrics before typing to figure out the correct rhythm. I had a lot of hard trials trying to connect back with that lady in my mind for the rest of the music. It was not so easy.
I did not know what Ella Fitzgerald looked like in real but the sound of the lady in the light silk blue coat sounded like her standing on the club’s stage. The setting for me seeing the woman was in a dark club with a music band. I could not see the woman’s face but from the five seconds I got from hearing Ella’s voice on YouTube, it matched. It seemed scary but I continued to see if I could get help.
My experience playing the piece in class was a silent one. I did not have many words. I was hoping that Anton would have been able to teach me something. Mr. Sharma had met up with me after a thesis meeting on a Friday evening to help me change measures 78-79. I added it to my journal and did the entry for it.
Link(s):
“Love is all I Need” - Score.**
“Love is all I Need” - (Recording).**
ASSIGNMENT #6: “DANCE OF NATURE”.
* Unknown/Forgotten Date *
Mr. Sharma told us about a collaboration composition that the DCFA dance department wanted to do with the composition class. He began to explain that the dance was divided into three sections to represent the elements of Earth, Water, and Fire. We were allowed to work in groups of three doing one element each or to attempt composing the entire piece individually.
Just by the options being given to us, I knew immediately a group attempt would not work. I knew if I had to come up with this composition (or if I chose to), I had to do it all on my own and work out the obstacles. Because it was now a piece of music to be done for a dance. I was not sure if the dance was a group performance or a solo.
Some weeks after, some of us in the class were introduced to Ms. Paul who was the teacher for the dance group for this composition project. This was the first time experience for me where music and dance were done. She had three ladies in the dance studio. Each one of them did an individual element. Some of the class students were recording the dances. I took the time to look at the dancers one after the other and special attention to Ms. Paul when she counted in the dancers and the instructions or corrections to the dancers.
There was a dark and rainy Sunday after coming back from steelpan practice at church, I began working on the composition. I could not rely on anything but what came to my mind and my own discoveries in composing. After three and a half hours of starting, I had thirteen instruments in use. This work continued for some more time, about less than three weeks. After completing the water, I had a medical challenge that became worst and I had to go to the doctor. I could not walk well for two weeks but had to force the pain in school for those weeks.
Sometime after I was better, I was able to complete the piece. I went to Isa to get two copies of the full score. One was for Mr. Sharma and the other was mine to keep for personal archives. We had a short hour meeting in the office to review the composition with Sir. He had the composition played on the loudspeakers in the office and told me that there is a big difference between hearing the music from the computer and in a large area. The music was then emailed as an MP3 to Mr. Sharma and he sent it off to Ms. Paul since she had already left for the day.
The piece was also presented in class by Mr. Sharma on the next class we all had to meet. Something about the composition happened but it was fixed and ready for the dancers to use. We had the idea to have the composition done as a live performance but it did not work out. I had all of the parts created and even an Indian music notation score for the sitar in case Mr. Maharaj was to join us. Challenge arose in the process of that score since the key changed so many times. Also, I had to face the occurrences of empty measures. I recalled Mr. Maharaj telling us in class that Indian music is not intended to have any rest for long in between. At some points notating rests was a challenge since sustained pitches also used a dashed line and different rhythmic patterns brought up several challenges.
The class listened and someone else from class had done music for the earth element. He had shared his creation two weeks before but the other two from his group didn't start. Mr. Sharma told us after playing my composition that he had decided to use my composition because the time was "getting close to the "Festival of Dance" concert and [it] was the only completed piece."
The Indian Classical Ensemble had to perform for the same concert on both nights (Friday and Saturday). Only on Saturday night, did I get to see the performance with the composition. It was not done exactly as expected. I saw that they had taken the MP3 and made a 'dance collage'.
The three elements were videotaped and then scrambled into pieces while the music ran in the recording. I felt cheated in a way because I had calculated each step that the dancers moved in the studio on the day of our in-class recording. Every turn, every move, every step or articulation done by the dancer was timed accordingly so that it would suit the dancers one after the next. In class the week after the concert Mr. Sharma shared a similar comment based on what he was expecting after asking me in front of the class how I found it was. I am still very grateful for the opportunity.
There were five different exercises given to use by Mr. Sharma and it was labeled as Extra Assignments on the UWI's My-E-Learning platform. He said that we could do all five to replace one of the assignments.
I personally did them all because I wanted to have the extra fun. However, it was a lot of hard work involved. I also needed to have a good strategy. I decided that since there were five different worksheets to complete for this assignment, I would complete one worksheet a week.
Each worksheet per week would be worked on each night on the piano. By each Saturday, the pieces would be reviewed in their entirety and then scored out on Musescore by the Sunday evening. I knew it would work and I felt very proud that all five worksheets were completed by the sixth week of class. Presentations for these worksheets could have been done in class at any time.
Link(s):
Extra Assignments: Worksheets.** [Request By Email Only.]
Extra Assignments: Scores.** [See Final Portfolio.]
Extra Assignments - (Recording).
FINAL PORTFOLIO.
* Unknown/Forgotten Date *
At the end of the semester, a portfolio was required to be submitted. This project would be marked in place of a final examination. In the completion of the assignment, I was proud of all the accomplishments throughout this course.
My "Dance of Nature" composition was taken by the DCFA dancers for their "Festival of Dance" concert. I was also happy that I was able to break the page record in portfolios. Mr. Sharma said that the most amount of pages he had to grade was 80 pages. I presented 126 pages for marking. All pieces were introduced with a short description and a reflection.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Tuesday 15th March 2022)
Dear Diary,
It was a weekend in the same month that I was contacted by a Hillview acquaintance of mine. He asked me to do some work in music for a friend of his but the task/challenge given to me was from the perspective of songwriting. The goal of the challenge was to take the song Congo man and create new lyrics and use the same melody. I knew I was not good at songwriting but I was still willing to make try.
For this individual challenge given me to do, I had to study “Congo Man” for a proper first time listening to the entire song. Next, I tried to take the first verse and come up with something. I decided that I should focus my attention on one specific topic because I kept the idea of how calypso can discuss any topic. I was not sure if it was a good idea to do different topics for each verse., or if I should have done one overall topic for the entire composition.
The chorus was done over as well. I was asked to do three verses but instead, I had given eight verses to whoever was to get this creation of mine. I also am not sure if this was used for some competition, pastime, or may be part of some course assignment for UWI.
A lot of this had to be based on my experience doing sonnet writing. Some of it seemed to be uneven to the rhythmic structure of “Congo Man” but I’m sure the person(s) would have been able to fix it if they did that or had someone else move the words around.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Wednesday 26th January 2022)
Dear Diary,
During my vacation time, I got the idea to visit the “Animal Farm” novel from Form Two. I did not read most of it at all but what I do remember the strongest apart from the animals was the anthem that the character sang. I recall Mrs. Mahase asking for some of us to create a melody just to see what we might come up with. Since I had finished the Fundamentals of Pan Arranging course, I decided to get the words from the internet and come up with a melody first.
It was easy coming up with chords to use for the other background instruments. Only when it was finished did I have a confident feeling about it. It sounded as if it was workable to the task that Miss asked us to do long ago. Since I created this version, I did not get to share it with the literature teachers at school. I know they may not be able to guide me in the music aspect but I wonder what comments may come from the literature part.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Wednesday 26th January 2022)
Scene 1
Dear Diary,
This month the composition challenge was to select one of three photographs that would inspire you to make the music. My decision was painting number one. I felt something calm and easy. I wanted to do something with the harp and soon my mind began to call for the flute. Playing back all that I did, it sounded empty and that was the reason why the tambourine was inserted.
Seven pages were gone in three to five hours after church. I was really proud of this piece because it was a wish to make something soothing. I took that opportunity through this challenge. The question remains in the effectiveness of the piece and if the assignment met what was asked for. I must mention the difficulties of trying to paint over the same image.
Over some days, I wanted to have some sort of steelpan going in the song. Unfortunately, that ended up as a nightmare. Another painting was created for this separate operation. I wanted to have the one I did before. Both of these compositions were submitted.
Link(s):
“Melodious Forest” – Score.** [DOCUMENT LOST.]
Recording of “Melodious Forest”.
UPDATE #2.
The review came back and was posted on YouTube on July 1st, 2018. I really appreciate the lesson on the harp being able to play only seven notes at a time in the way they are set up for a piece. Comments on the second piece made me wonder if Matt knew about steelpan. Other important messages from the feedback were:
“Six-four allows for a lot of melodies, especially in a really slow tempo. An ensemble in lutes is only limited in the possibility for colour, at least when it is for a wind quintet or chamber orchestra and because of this we would have to create some contrast and variety. Otherwise, this sound gets tiring… Flutes in a very high register often tend to stress the ear.”
“On our Facebook group, I recall Joshua saying that he didn’t have much time to compose this. I think we wish we all had more time to dedicate to composition but when the time is really limited, why not try a piece with fewer resources. Having so little time and so many instruments on the scores, and having so many empty bars in front of you, is bound to get overwhelming.”
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Tuesday 25th January 2022)
Dear Diary,
I decided to participate in the April challenge. It was posted on April 4th 2018. This challenge came from a lady named Barbara. She took care of a boy named Max during the period of ailment. The challenge as I realised was to be compiled all submissions and create a gift for Barbara for her birthday. I am happy to say that the painting I made was used as the cover of the CD they compiled the songs on.
For this challenge, we were allowed to select one note alone for the letter R in B-A-R-B-A-R-A. I used four instruments in his process. In the review of the music recording, I’m still a bit shy over it. It did not sound like something I should have submitted. I was still convinced by an aunty to continue it. I see in the feedback they did not go to the second section which was really messy but fun, lolz.
Painting was another difficult thing to do. No ideas were coming to me. It ended up making me send in my submission close to the deadline again. I decided to draw an angel lady standing on the base of the mountain with other taller mountains around her. There was a larger river to the far end of the scene when I saw her.
Actual Date of Online Entry: (Monday 24th January 2022)
Dear Diary,
I once belonged to a Facebook Group for music composers and came across a challenge to create a piece of music. Since it was music and composition, I just had to click the link and go into the literature. I became familiar with the name of the person responsible for it. His name was Matt Ellul and he was deeply into music. I created a two-page document with all of the instructions so that I could begin working on it once the inspiration came.
Over some time, I began to see the image of a lady out in a forest in the middle of the night with a girl sitting on a bench. The painting I did to recreate it was not even close to what I saw in my mind. I realized that the woman I drew was an older and grown version of Carla from the “Magical Creatures” novel I was doing.
In the composition of the piece, I did not have a strategy or any plan or idea. I allowed the music to sing itself into my mind and then tried hard to notate it out onto the Musescore grand staff. It had to be piano as the required instrumentation and a minimum of one minute.
There was a four-bar phrase given to use that was to be used to end the song. Somehow, my mind was using it as a motif and I questioned if I was using it to do some sort of Rondo Form. I had to convert the grand staff from harpsichord to piano off and on. The sound of the piano did not do much justice to the notation. Because of this choice, I suppose this was the reason why Matt ended up commenting that it “is introduced immediately but is an introduction to a new theme. and as you hear, that theme slowly evolves into familiar territory.”
Several persons were submitting their compositions to Matt. We had a deadline to meet by the 3rd of April 2018. Once that was done, we began to see persons sharing recordings of their pieces in the comments section of Matt’s post in the two or three groups that I was in.
This was the first time I decided to use YouTube for music sharing. I had no experience at all. Honestly, I did not research how to do YouTube video upload either. I also did not know at the time how to create an Mp3 from Musescore. I sat with my phone and had the house closed in tight to record it from the software playing at a medium volume but thankfully the audio was good.
During one of my waiting times for class to be in Studio 4 at DCFA, I thought that it would be VERY unacceptable to send a video with the music recording and a blank screen. That was where I got the idea to do the painting for the piece of music. I hope that this goes well. It is not to win anything but we did it for the love of music creations.
[UPDATE]
As this was my very first piece of music on YouTube, all other compositions of mine in the future taken on the same approach. There would be a video with the recording and a painting to represent what is happening in the music.
A few weeks to come, after the submission, there was a YouTube video with the same name as the composition challenge. As soon as I woke up, I saw the video ‘floating around in the group’s section. The video was shot and timed. Not much feedback but I was still happy to try out the piece (see 15:00). In some years after, this piece was taken for my novel as one of the music compositions.
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