April 28, 200916 yr King of the Danes I composed this in Locrian and Super Locrian Double Flat 7. I focused primarily on modal melody and did not consciously concern myself with harmony. The piece intends to tell the dramatized story of a young danish man who immigrates to Canada and his life as a working class father. Only the first 2 quarters are done; the 3rd and 4 quarter were planned to be written in phrygian and phrygian dominant respectively.
April 29, 200916 yr I like the opening in the strings, but after a while it starts to get very monotonous because the strings stay in the same range playing the same thing forever. There are parts that remind me of the scherzo in Shosty's 10th due to the rhythm and contour of the melody. I think that it would be much better if you could break up some of the "sameness" throughout the piece.
April 29, 200916 yr Author Thancks for commenting. The scherzo is the second movement of the 10th? I think you are right about the sameness; I will take your advice about staying in the same range with the strings. I was wondering at what point do you think it starts to get repetitive?
May 1, 200916 yr I'm a jazz guy, so I love these scales--interesting use of them outside of the normal functional context. You said that you didn't want to concern yourself with harmony--but for me the low strings (cello? bass?) are constantly dictating some harmonic context, and are downplaying what is going on above. Perhaps this piece would benefit from dropping the lower register all together and focusing on counter melodies, thereby dropping the harmonic rigidness the upper lines are constrained to due to the bass. Erick
May 1, 200916 yr Author Thanks for your insight Erick. I now see another perspective to this music. When I wrote this I had no idea that "classical" music is so greatly based on harmony or even really how harmony works. I was just going by my general conception of how classical music sounds. The lower register was the first part I composed, and then I sort of layered the other voices on top of it, which is probably why the lower register seems to impose harmony on the piece. I probably just improvised different melodies until I found ones that fit harmonically with the bass. But I would like to avoid harmony in order to focus on exploring the melodic characteristic of various modes. So I am intrigued by your suggestion to drop the bass in favor of counter melodies. Though, I'm not quite sure how I would go about that. The melodies I have here are mostly simple and sparse in notes; would I have to make them more complex? Should do I call and response, study traditional counterpoint, replace the bass or eliminate it altogether? I'm hoping you could talk a bit about what options would be open to me if I remove/change the lower register and work more on counterpoint. It's cool that once you say the bass is downplaying the rest of the piece I can hear that, it is a pretty repetitive and restraining part, but before that I kind of thought it was the foundation. Peace
