Context

Sonnet composition

For my Sonnet composition I was given the text as well as a late video which were the main influences for the sound of my piece. My tutor advised that I should base my composition on one chord and keep it very minimalist in order to allow the main focus to be on the words. Therefore I based my main theme on the A minor chord and the A minor scale  as my sonnet was based on quite a sad idea.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?
  O none, unless this miracle have might,
  That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
After reading this I felt that Shakespeare was trying to convey a deep message with a very dark feeling. Therefore I used a synth bass throughout the piece to create a feeling of tension. On top of this I used an arpeggiating piano and dark strings ( as requested by the media students) to further explore this mood.
 Following some advice from my teacher, I added reverb onto the track to create an eerie feeling. Overall with this piece , I tried to explore the message that this sonnet conveys by creating an enhanced experience which helps the viewer of the finished piece really become enveloped in the video.
https://youtu.be/xpogFS5WWa0 – Here is a link to the video that I wrote my music for.

Awards ceremony

Our instructions for the award ceremony composition were to create some interesting background music for a video that would be shown at an awards ceremony. After watching the video through a couple of times, I decided to use quite a basic set of instrumentation. The next step was to decide on a key and a harmonic structure. I then created two different harmonic structures which would be used to add contrast to the composition and make sure that it didn’t get boring. As the music was being written for an awards ceremony , I decided to try and create a feeling of tension mixed with a more relaxed idea. Therefore I split my piece into 3 sections which although were all different , it can be summarized as being written in ternary form. The first section began with a solo piano which was then joined by the full band ( this included a drum kit, a classical guitar, a bass guitar and a synth). My second section then dropped down to just keys before building back up with the bass and then linking back up with the rest of the band. The piece finished with a solo piano playing the outro.

This is the video that my music was synchronised to.

Band composition

The first step we took as a band was to decide the style in which we wanted to compose our piece. As we had already been playing mainly songs from an indi/rock genre , we decided that this style would suit our instrumentation and our collective mindsets the best.

Firstly, we established a harmonic structure that we tested out acoustically. Our main problem was the fact that we tried to fit too many ideas into one song, therefore we began to tweak the piece and scale it down.

Our song structure consisted of an intro – played by piano,verse,chorus,verse,chorus,bridge,verse and outro.

This had been narrowed down from our original idea of including a pre chorus before every chorus.

Here is our original idea compared to our final idea

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Te6YX9yC7CcMSMi9qmpjSIOinRjnXKTL/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cQ0367nW_r8-ugdh1JbmECt_CWIsZ463/view

Here is an image for the drumbeat that I composed. This covers the general idea for the verses and choruses however I did play some ghost notes,fills and double kick drums here and there.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pk4u27allzXO4n6AFoz7BkIzReZbEyS7/view

During the bridge , I mainly just did rolls on the crash on the first beat of every bar, before playing a fill at the end of the bridge.

I didn’t play in the into or outro in order to create a textural contrast in the piece. Our piece was at an incredibly fast tempo of around 180bpm therefore my main focus was keeping the piece together and not trying to show off with a lot of different fills. I felt that this approach fit the atmosphere we were trying to create in the best way.