Secondo

Time to get down to business.

I have a general idea of what direction my piece will move in, including some very specific points I'm eager to incorporate. As I said today in class, my piece will be in Rondo form: (intro)ABACA(outro). The A sections will all be based around the scale I came up with: C-Db-D-F#-G-Ab-Bb, with the whole idea that the "tonic" chord has no mediant. The B and C parts will be drastically different and based on other modes/scales. The instrumentation is: Bb Clarinet, Viola, Voice (Alto), Piano, and Double Bass.

The basic idea for the B section has been sketched out, and I imagine it will remain mostly as it was heard today (in the piano part anyway). Dr. Ross mentioned that a few parts seemed unusually tonal (as funny as that term sounds). It's true. There is always the option to leave those chords as is on the piano, and add other notes to it on another instrument, but there are a couple of sections that I think could use some tweaking. Planning on incorporating some sort of eb Phrygian melody over top, between the clarinet and alto. Mmm....counterpoint.

I'm pretty happy with how the progression turned out on the whole. Just to reiterate what I said in class: I began by writing a fairly standard progression in eb minor (with some not-so-standard progressions/chords included). I then reversed the progression and added notes here and there to "disguise" the original chords. Example: if the progression had gone i-iv-ii6/5-V-i, I would have rewritten it as i-V-ii6/5-iv-i, and "reworked" the chords. I got this idea from another song I wrote. After I wrote the chorus, I realised that it made perfect harmonic sense if you started at the end and worked backwards; I figured I could consciously apply this concept this time around.

Also noted: my work includes two stringed instruments. Therefore I shall probably write out their parts in d# minor. Not a big deal, but something to remember before the last second!

I considered borrowing text for the song, but had an idea already for words. Mental note to keep in mind that two players need to take breaths throughout the piece. I usually just take a deep breath at the beginning and plunge into it!

How very exciting!