20 Accelerations in nature

Edit: crazy, I thought this one went through when I was hanging with Alice today...hmm
Didn't get around to posting this yesterday, but finished putting something together today for it. I'm trying find some ways of getting video in jitter to respond to to movement. This one was a bit of a failed attempt at making video in jitter output data based motion to change Ableton's operator. I didn't really get the desired result...but neverthelesss it looks cool?!

Daggertooth

Technically in the US it's another day, so another post!

I made some time to work on my fish movement by working during class! Lol.

This fish is called daggertooth. I drew it:

He is both menacing and silly. The daggertooth fish will stab you with his daggerteeth. But still he is a flopsy-fish, a fish-friend.

Score and midi link: http://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/21/daggertooth/

password: MoMNovember2017

Elegiac Suite - for Flute

I've had the time to finish up the Elegiac Suite, which I was posting here as a piece for Cor Anglais. I redid it as a flute piece, basically because I know a lot more flute players than Cor players, but the music is so simple it really will work for any wind instrument (bring on your kazoos)

Elegiac Suite:

Score and Audio here: dropbox

Can ya catch all the quotations? The Schumann one is, in my opinion, the most shameless - but if you all don't find it, I'll feel better about its inclusion.

hi friends! orchestral thesis

My schedule has been pretty prohibitive of composition lately. :( It means that things are taking longer to write than usual, because I have less time to work on them. I really wanted to finish a short movement of my fish piece and share it with you guys here!!! Soon. Over Thanksgiving break I hope to post up a storm of fishes!!!

I've had to de-prioritize fishes to work on the MSM orchestral thesis.

I thought I would share the second movement with you guys, while I'm doing all of this editorial stuff! I'll share about the first movement on my next post-- it's a bit of a different animal, and takes some explaining.

Here's the link to midi mock up and score: https://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/20/orchestral-thesis-for-mom-november-2017/

The password: MoM2017

Much love to everybody!

Canons for String Quartet

Here is a piece that I needed MoM to finish. This piece was a commission from AYO, for use in their chamber music programs - such a cool project, as I have many many fond memories of playing chamber music at camp! That being said, I've accidentally (like always though, so is it accidental?) written something quite difficult, so good LUCK to whichever quartet gets this in the mail.

Canons for String Quartet

Score and Audio here

15 second harp

If you don't know what 15 second harp is, check it out! Olivia is a lovely person and a great harpist, and currently is soliciting 15-second-long duets for harp and tuba. Today's MoM is also my 15sH.

19 Simple Phaser

Hey! After reading Alice's post, I thought it might be useful to make something that you can quickly hear a phase with, so I threw this together on Max tonight. It's got one of the Max samples loaded into it, so it should just be good to go as soon as you hit the toggle and turn on the audio.

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Day 18: Idea

Hey guys,

Over the last two days my right arm's been really bad. Even with left-handed computer use, I can't really get to a point where it's not sympathetically tensing. Like a back-seat driver, used to being dominant, ya know. Anyway I am terrified of RSI and the damage it may do to my output in the long run. I think I just need to take the pressure off with a few things,  including MoM, for a few days and try and hardly use the computer/piano/phone/pen at all.

Heres an idea for a piece though. A simple chord progression played in hushed, sustained semi-quavers on piano (Vatche?), recorded three times, the player with a click thats a few bpm different to the last for each recording. And with eternal repeats, they would go more and more out of phase in the actual phase way. By no means an original idea, but I'm excited to experiment with the chords bleeding into each other.

Finally, Happy Birthday Christine, you aquatic burst of light.

18 Longer phrases for precise ritardando

Hey,
So today was just a bit of an experiment. I normally work with polytempo structures inside of short phrases of like a bar or two, but today I thought I'd play around with a 64 note rit.

The steeper the curve the more dramatic the rit (right slows down at a faster rate):

I didn't have a great deal of time to put anything too musical together on it, So I just stacked all 11 of these 8 bar ritardando on top of each other to hear what it sounded it like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Have a great weekend :)

Orchestral Thesis Piece

Today's is DEFINITELY not a 'one-a-day' composition. For our masters' degrees, the thesis component is a piece for orchestra, and Christine and I have been working hard (?) on these pieces, in advance of their deadline on the 28th.

Mine is done, although it needs to be renotated as a better score, flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones 1&2 on the same stave, and so on. This is going to happen some time after my lesson today, but I'd LOVE some feedback, as I've still got 10 days to work on it. Please tell me what you think!

Peter Looked:

This piece is an orchestrated excerpt from my monodrama, The Mermaid. For those of you who have heard it, you might remember this as the interstitial music, describing a lover whom the central character has tried to excise from her life. He looks for her, and eventually falls out of love. This piece is trying to describe the combination of cathartic joy and loss, what she internalises from the experience, and something she's not quite ready to accept in her life, even though she wants to.

On a side note, the performance of these pieces in Feb will be inside a humungous church, with very washy acoustics. ALSO, the percussion on the track is buggy as hell

Score & Audio here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mghuu0omxxoolyx/AABnZr23i7c1dXRHRvhdcJR1a?dl=0

some deep sea sketching

Worked on my fishes yesterday/today.

The lanternfish makes up 65% of the biomass at these deep levels of the sea. Unlike other deep sea fishes, they look fairly harmless and almost cute.

image credit: Emma Kissling [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Lanternfish is going to be the lush center movement of this piece, as it's the only fish I'm including that isn't terrifying. I have some chords, but I'm not sure how I'll use them yet!

Matador (parts 1 and half of 2)

Here is the start of a new project, based on a libretto by Lewis-Allan Trathen. Brag, we're working on a longer-form opera type piece together, and this was a poem he sent me early on, not exactly related to the final idea. I'm working my way through it (I'm about half-way there) and I think I'm going to add some percussion and a double bass to the final version. I'll try and get a midi-mockup for when it's done... but GOD do I hate the way Sib performs this piece.

17 Counting and playing fluctuating tempo

So today I had a go at trying to play the fluctuating 2 bar tempo groove I posted a few days ago. Today's post is just a log of the things I noted while practicing this.

The first thing I wanted to mention is that I had genuinely had a lot fun trying to play on it. I enjoyed the challenge and feel its totally possible to feel (as in a human-like rhythmic interpretation as a groove) computer-precise accelerandos and ritardandos between accents placed within of a bar

This is the notation I used, the spacing is still weird and unprecise, in fact the second last accent is out by quite some way, but hopefully you get the idea.

Below is the piano roll. I actually ended up reading this while recording, as the playback has the bar to show where you are in the bar as a kind of visual score.

The rhythmic division of the fluctuating tempo inside of the the consistent tempo is this as follows.

bar 1
7 notes decelerate from 141bpm to ~93bpm in the space of 5 semiquavers at ~90bpm
3 notes decelerate from ~93bpm to ~83bpm in the space of 3 semiquavers at ~90bpm
5 notes decelerate from ~83 bpm to ~59bpm in the space of 7 semiquavers. at ~90bpm

bar 2 (a reflection of the first bar)
5 notes accelerate from ~59bpm to ~83 bpm in the space of 7 semiquavers at ~90bpm
3 notes accelerate from ~83 bpm to ~93bpm in the space of 3 semiquavers at ~90bpm
7 notes accelerate from ~93bpm to 141 bpm in the space of 5 semiquavers at ~90bpm

The bpm numbers are now totally different as I've slowed the master clock down for practicing from ~90 bpm to 64bpm.

I approached my practice on thispretty methodically, in a similar way to how I approach improvisation on irregular meters. Here's the summary of what I did.

- practice clapping, counting and improvising in straight 4/4-7/8 with drums from track (represented as the clave in notation). Though the notation is more accurately 4/8-7/16, I'm just counting 8th notes as pulses.
- listen to melody playback through ableton over and over whilst drinking coffee.
- practice and memorise melody. I intentionally left the Ab phrygian tonality. Thinking Bb phygian on tenor sax means lots of side keys. For me that kind of forces your hands to be more accurate or something, I dunno...
- get the runs in time to each accent, progressively added more as you go.
- record and listen back.

So the first audio example is me playing with the synthesiser and drums in my headphones, the second (at 0:22) is me with only percussion, and the the third (0:44) is me playing with no synth, but a tambourine playing the fluctuating tempo. I was happiest with the last take, and included it with and without the synth playing precisely along with me.

Next week I'll be trying to get some new melodies happening on it. woo

Day 16: Extra Comfort Music

I've added higher voices and I'm stoked with how it all turned out - get ready to be comforted, friends. Hard.

alicechance.com/comfort-music

16 Quintuplets

Just having a bit of a practice today.

I want to make my beat sub-divisions of 5 as strong as they are for 2, 3, 4 and 6. I was practicing improvising on the attached audio moving between different sub-divisions. I would've posted audio of myself playing, but it sounded crap and I've run out of time for today :( Will try again over the weekend though.

helllooooooooo

I think this might be the last of my Sara Teasdale contralto pieces. I tried to push myself into faster and more rhythmically interesting territory, rather than doing my usual slow sad thing. :) I might want to add clapping or a hand drum to this also...

Madrigal - Police, police!

I didn't post yesterday, but I did see Thomas Adés' The Exterminating Angel with Christine, which was totally amazing. There was chilling use of police sirens and martial drums, and it's only half a coincidence that I wrote a piece called 'Police, police!' today.

Day 15: Comfort Music

My whole day, including the writing of this piece, was affected by watching the announcement of the postal survey this morning. I wrote this for anyone affected and hurt by it in the last few months, (including myself I think, but not as much as some.)

You can make and serve Recipe 3 at alicechance.com/infinityfordinner

ps. I recorded higher parts but I also think this piece is enough how it is. Planning to experiment with the higher parts tomorrow.

15 Musical Fractal Zoom on the Lost Woods Theme

Day 14: Composition Portfolio

Hey everyone, my submission today is my composition portfolio

Would especially like feedback on the formatting of my scores because I've been told before that I need to make them look more professional and more publishable.

Looking forward to having a catch up tomorrow on what everyone's been writing in the last few days!