The Flight

So, The basic story behind this is the life of a lonely goose.

The Glockenspiel and the piano remain an ostinato figure for 90% of the piece, and represents the character 'flying' through the experiences and feelings.

The experiences and feelings are represented by the woodwinds and strings, as well as characters that the goose might meet on his journey.

I don't have a clue where the influence comes from, I sense some Zappa, some Nathaniel, some Steve Reich, some John Adams and some Dream Theater.

I'm not 100% happy with it, because I feel, in the duration of creating the piece I have improved to a degree where I found the Idea a bit outdated, but had to stick with it. So i'm about 75% happy with it.

Thanks in advance for comments an' all that

Heres the link... 'The Flight Finish'. Sounds are that great, just threw it together quickly:

SoundClick artist: Andy Mobbs - page with MP3 music downloads

The Flight.pdf

I like it... very original.

it like it too

dark@@

Thank you. That's 2 out of 2 so far =)

Yes very enjoyable!

I think you create very nice textures with these instruments. The ostinato figures, although consistent, don't get yarring. I felt you could use a bit more diversity in the form though. It stays a bit monotone. I started to lose my attention around the middle. I always stays a pleasant listening, but it lackes a bit of contrast I feel. Maybe even some constast in dynamics would do the trick for me.

Nice piece!

The last minute and a bit is inspired. I love the two little chords that just jump out at 5:05. It is rhythmically interesting and spontaneous in sections and I could listen to the ending of the piece 100 times and not be bored. It is very pretty.

Wow, I found this to be pretty interesting! The ensemble in itself is pretty unique and I think that orchestration-wise, this works pretty well. To be honest, I really did feel like I was experiencing many different emotions .. not flying, though :ermm: . I really don't have much advice since this isn't my cup of tea. I did really find it to be an enjoyable listen, but a tad bit repetitive with the timbre of the glockenspiel.

Good work! :D

What does this remind me of?

eh... I'll edit when I figure it out.

Very nice! Unique and interesting. The beginning was a bit repetitive (but beautiful, I love the piano part), the change at around 1:20 was refreshing. 2:02 to around 2:20ish was really cool, I liked the "bouncy" feel to it. I enjoyed listening, great job :D

Thanks guys, Really glad it's recieved such reception. All I need now is for Nirvana to come and say it's rubbish. And yeah, nate I like those chords, I wished I used them more when I came up with them. But it's opened doors to future compositions.

I think their brief excursions are enough in this piece but yes those flavours could well be used more extensively in future pieces.

Too complicated too quickly. I love the repeating ostinato and I feel you introduce too many timbres/pitch materials much too quickly. When you have a beautiful ostinato like that and introduce too many instruments, the effect of either the ostinato or added voices suffers. Whereas if you maintain the ostinato and only introduce one main line (with background material in the form of pizzis, like you do, but more of them, or maybe the woodwinds could hold beautiful long notes which add a nuance in the texture, but don't detract from the foreground material.) I feel the musical clarity would be much improved. This is because then you would have a beautiful balance of foreground, middleground, and background materials. The foreground would be a clear melody taken by the strings or woodwinds, the background would be pizzis and held notes in the opposing choir. So if you used strings to play the melody/main line you could have the woodwinds playing the background. You can combine these two choirs to make a more colorful main voice, but then you may have to watch for color competition when you introduce the background. The middleground in this case would be the ostinato in the glockenspiel and piano, since it is neither a melody nor mere accompaniment, but really the foundation/driving motive of the piece.

Honestly I felt the direction was a bit off throughout most of the piece, especially when many instruments were played. The only thing for me that held the piece together was the repetitive ostinato. And about this, maybe at one point you should just have a freeze moment, where you hold a beautiful chord and stop the ostinato, kind of like a climax generated by stopping everything instead of using everything. The piece obviously doesn't have to end by stopping.

For me there is one moment which makes listening up to that point entirely worth it, and for me is the reason I will render this piece with film score quality instruments. This moment is the heroic and beautifully orchestrated, I would say even "perfect moment" that occurs at exactly 2:28. Incredibly sublime moment there. You should develop that/continue/extend keep that combination going.

Less changes in the line/texture doesn't mean your piece will be boring, often times endlessly continuing variation is actually more boring than repeating something as sublime as that moment.

Good luck!

P.S. Please go on youtube or somewhere and look for the piece PHRYGIAN GATES by John Adams. I think you would love that piece.

You're more correct than you could possibly imagine. Since beginning composing at 18ish (21 now), I've always had this structure problem. I was never educated in these things, so the structure tends to come out a little un-planned, and always rushed.

I actually thought this was an improvement, I used to change the sound of a composition practically every few bars, but I did the opposite with this!

The middle, fore and background aspect I shall have to work on too, I had a rehearsal of this piece today and the levels did seem a bit off compared to sibelius.

I'm glad you like that moment so... immensly enthusiastically, It was my favourite part by quite a long way for a while, but again, the forces heres seemed a bit unequal in the rehearsals.

I'm about 12 minutes into Phrygian gates, and i'm LOVING it. It's a great example of your fore, back and middleground point.

So thanks a lot for your feedback, I should in theory absorb it like a sponge =)

The idea of back middle and foregrounds is something that is explored by Harrison Birtwistle. He gives effective unities to apparently complex textures and timbres by grouping instruments in ways in which the players share material that is similar or the same. Different groups of instruments may run parallel to each other but with varied material, creating a texture and layering of material that is very much stratified. The material played by the different groups is distinctively different but still linked tonally, so what appears on the page to be extremely an complex arrangement of notes and timbre is aurally extremely clear and well crafted.

You could try experimenting with some of these angles of writing to clean up the textures in your writing.

I don't really agree with Exanimous on a great deal of his points but as you know, I feel the whole thing could and should have been extended and an obvious way to do this would have been to slow down and better organise the accumulation of textures, timbres and pitch spaces.

You'll have to show me some specific examples of his that could be useful, i'm gonna check birdwhistle out now anyway though, my decoration does indeed need to be clearer as was confirmed earlier today!

I like your style.:)

Thanks, So do I!

Thanks, So do I!

*LOL*

But yeah, to a degree the earlier rehearsal did tell you something but don't forgot how muddily it was played in comparison to say a potentially finely tuned performance.

I think it's fabulous - particularly what you've done with kind of ambivalent-feeling textures.

Hi Andy, like I said, I would render your piece. The version I present here is strictly all piano, so you can see the voice conflicts/texture issues/line obscurity.

The Flight (piano version).mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Very nice Andy!

Although very repetitive the piece manages to hold the listener's interest. IMO the "lack of structure" as you say contributes to the piece and makes sure it is not to ordered. This makes it very interesting. Nice job.

Well, I wouldn't say 'very original', because it's just something like repetitive music, however I liked it :) Really. I have only one thing to say, if you let me to do that.

1. The changing. You feeled good, that you have to change something if you want to write a good repetitive music. But sometimes you changes are feelable before you do it, and that isn't good. Okay, you don't do that like in every 4 measures, you change key, but take care of this, if you think I'm right :)

First, I had strange feelings with the ending, but I understood it while I listened to it once again :) (I mean the whole piece)

I liked the tempo changing! :)

Good work.

And don't look at my 'I wouldn't say' part. I think, the repetitive music is not about the composers, or anybody's feelings. It's more than that. Maybe I'm not right, I'm obviously undereducated in repetitive music, because I write in my own rules and structure, but I like Steve Reich, or John Adams, and maybe, I can understand them. :)

Good luck!

Thanks for that guys (and exanimous again for the piano thing), gollam, I think I get what you're saying about changes, and I agree.

It's what I was saying about structure; although it feels like the music isn't 'too ordered', this can take away the 'feeling' of certain passages when I change too quickly away from it.

I'm slowly learning to extend sections to their rightful length!

Very interesting and unique. Nice work.