Reshaping

The comment from class the other day that really struck a chord with me was how the sections in the piano interlude seemed to be a bit random. I felt that the material I had presented was totally organic and all related. In a way it was I guess, however I made no plan with this piece at that point. I just played something I liked on the piano and expanded on it very freely. This was the first time I had composed this way in a good while....and for good reason (har har).

I think sometimes the best thing when writing a piece is a set of fresh ears. I would just get very into composing at the time, and I was just trying to make very beautiful sonorities and build and release the tensions gradually with the addition and reduction of notes and registers. This did give me some nice material, however form, and other technicalities (such as the piano register with the voice) were tossed into the ocean to be forever forgotten about.

With the new understanding of this, I went back and decided I needed some unifying factor, some compositional device that I will use if I get stuck. Since I had random accents, I decided to use prime numbers to decide where to place these accents. Each accent falls on the 2nd 3rd 5th or 7th eighth note of the measure. Each following measure would be decided on the previous, therefore the second measure can only have an accent on the second eight note because it is the 2nd eight of the measure, however it is also the 11th 8th note of the whole piece. HOwever I would not be able to have an accent on the 13th eighth note of the piece because it is the 4th beat in the measure which is not a prime number. Once 3 Measures has past I repeat the process.

This was one instance on how I want to use prime numbers. I don't stick to that method strictly for musical reasons, however it does generate a cool rhythmic feel. It's funny, it just so happens that my intervals are also based on prime numbers, (3rds, 2nds and 7ths). These intervals are the characteristic intervals of most of the chords I use, however they are fairly standard. It's no surprise either that the intervals I do use are prime, because only 2 intervals inside the octave dont have a prime number.

Either way......I plan to use this element to unify my whole piece, and use prime numbers to develop larger structures as well, and what I have revised so far I am so much more pleased with. The material is the same, just arranged a little differently so I am very happy with the outcome of Friday's class.