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Okay so here's my first kind of 'major' piece I've written for my degree. It'll be performed by a professional ensemble in May, and I'm sending off the score this week. The brief was to write a piece of maximum length 12 minutes, for an ensemble of maximum size flute/clarinet/perc/2 violins/viola/cello/bass. After a bit of agonizing over what on earth I would do, I did what usually works for me and just sat down and put some notes out to see what happened, and then went from there. The piece is kind of loosely following around a character as he explores a world. I haven't put too much more thought into the precise story than that, except that the first movement is introducing the character, and the second and third are two little adventures of his, with the third ending in his triumphant return. I kept a fairly light tone throughout, which seems to be a common thread for all my compositions. Some of my tutor's suggestions that I put in were expanding the first movement slightly, experimenting with string harmonics, and just some general score tidying. He liked the ending and I do too - his comment was that it sounded like something a composer might have written a hundred or so years ago, but in a good way. The piece is fairly tonal, almost to a fault at times, so mostly my concerns were with trying to keep it as fresh and interesting as I could, in my own ways. Mainly, that involves trying to vary up my chord progressions and harmonies. I had particular fun towards the end of the second movement where I literally was just putting in whatever I felt like in the strings. The title has no significance whatsoever, except that I wanted it to evoke something childlike and innocent. I originally had 'Tinky-Winky' instead of 'Timmy' but my tutor thought that was going too far, and it would seem like I was going for a jokey piece, which was not quite my intention. Recording is a slightly dodgy/quirky/stuttery Sibelius output but it's mostly okay.

Hey! This is my piece called Screw the Violin! for 2 Violas, 2 Cellos, Double Bass, Marimba and Percussion! It has lots of Metal/Djent idioms splattered around! You can listen to it in the soundcloud link! Hope you enjoy!

Is there some place online (not YouTube!) where I can listen to the various bowing techniques in strings. For example, for someone who does not play a string, it is hard to understand the difference in marcato from spiccato fom martellato.