Program Music

A Collection And Creation Of Program Music

[thevarmintsproject]

Update

Well, it’s been a while! This blog is no longer posting since the project is finished, but I will keep it up anyway to keep the work that is on here. In the meantime, I am using my main blog @redtheprincess . 

All music related posts are under redtheprincess.tumblr.com/tagged/music . This includes my own compositions as well as other music related posts.

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Final part of the Varmints project: The Way Back

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2nd part of the Varmints project: Noises and Varmints

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Part 1 of the Varmints project: Home

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Varmints, Part 2 &3: The Way Back

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Varmints, Part 1 ii: Noises and Varmints

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Varmints- Part 1, i: Home

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This piece started out as the very opening to the whole project, but somehow I found that the more I listened to it while reading the book, the more I found that it better fit the part after the Varmints had built their city. Of course, this left me with nothing to use as an opening piece, but I found that if I stuck to my original plan of repeating motifs across the pieces I had a few ideas which I could use to compose my opening and complete this last piece.

[thevarmintsproject]

Update: I Fixed The Problem

I have fixed the problem with the sound libraries on my Sibelius.

I was lucky enough to find a download for the Sibelius 7 sound pack on the internet (and luckier still that I did not download a virus). The process I followed after went as such:

1. Extract the file using WinZip (unlike most programs, this one's free trial never ends) and save it.

2. Open the start menu, and type in %appdata% to find the Roaming folder. Then find the Sibelius Software folder. In here you should find a folder called Playback devices or something of the like. Open this, and copy the extracted file into the folder. 

Congratulations, you now have a less cringeworthy sound pack to compose with!

[thevarmintsproject]

Something Distressing:

My Sibelius 7.5 trial ran out, so now I am forced to use the old Sibelius 6.5 Student version. 

What's so bad about that? At least you can still access your compositions and work on them. The sound libraries. Imagine you are on a journey, and you travel by riding a horse. Your horse is strong and beautiful, it functions wonderfully, and you can proudly say it is the best horse in the land. Now imiagine one day that your horse can no longer go on, so you must trade it for another horse in order to complete your journey. Unfortunately, the only option availabe is an inferior creature which, while it is able to reach the same goal as the first horse, it won't do it half as well and you'll be strapping in for an uncomfortable ride. That is how the transition from Siblius 7 to an outdated version feels like. When I first listened to my piece using the old sound packs, it was such a shock that I almost threw my headphones through the computer screen as the blood chilling sounds of the old sound library mangled my music. The piece sounded completely different. I may find progress difficult now that I have a very different sounding piece.

[thevarmintsproject]

Transposing Scores

A problem I have when creating pieces like this project is that I tend to not be able to stick to a key when composing. In other words, I had created the first piece in G minor, but somehow ended up writing the second piece in E minor. How could I fix this? How could I make these pieces fit together without having to rewrite a whole composition? Well, the solution was simple once I found the handy transposing tool on Sibelius. In the home tab at the top of Sibelius, there is an option for transposing your score. 

HANDY HINT: Make sure that you have selected all of the score that you want to transpose, unless you want to end up with a mess. 

Clicking on this button should bring up a box (if this does not appear then you have most likely forgotten to select your score) in which you choose the key you want to transpose your score to. And that's it! Your piece is now in the desired key.

Thankyou Sibelius 7, for all the simple solutions you provide to my compositional troubles. 

[thevarmintsproject]

The Product

I have decided that the best way of presenting this project is in a video format, where the music will accompany will accompany a slideshow of the pages in the book. That way I can display how the progression of the composition matches up with the progression of events in the book. I will probably end up uploading this to Youtube, and embed a link to this blog, since I've found that the video function on this site is somewhat limited (in that takes forever to load and there is a limit to how much can be uploaded).

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Notes: Part 2. 

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Notes: Part 1. Some of the original ideas I had mapped out as I read through the book. I expect these to change somewhat as I do the composition, but for the most part this is what I expect to happen in my composition. 

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woah ok so I put this song into Audacity and reversed it and

[thevarmintsproject]

Although my original plan for production consisted of using only Sibelius for the creation of the pieces, and only using Audacity to add reverb and change the quality of the sound. (Note to self: upgrade Sibelius so that I can use the Sibelius 7 Sound Pack, as my current version's sound pack sounds gross and inferior.) However, playing around on Audacity revealed to me that there is so much more that I can do with it. While this excerpt of reversed audio does not sound like much (especially structurally), it opened my eyes to a new way of coming up with compositional ideas.

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Playing around on Sibelius, I came up with this tune. While still a draft, I think this may be the beginnings of an opening theme for my piece, where the book opens to a peaceful, natural setting.

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Advice

Dear Mr Walsh,

Hello. Some time ago I attended the performance of The Arrival at the Darwin Festival. I was beyond impressed, in fact I found it quite inspirational. 

The reason that I am contacting you now is that I wanted to use the same kind of concept for a school music project (i.e. I would like to create a score to go with a book). I was wondering if you have any advice for me on how to approach such a project and create a composition? 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Yours sincerely,

Helena F.

Unfortunately, at the time he was touring overseas and could not respond to my enquiries. However his colleague was willing to give me some advice about his process. I learnt that he did have an initial storyboard for how he wanted the music and images to interact, but from there on it was quite an 'organic creative process' and would change as he wrote. He would also often create excerpts while on holidays in places he loved, using his keyboard or computer. 

A great piece of advice she gave me for my own process was choosing a book I feel passionate about or had a connection with may play a part in how I compose for it. 

I did end up choosing a book that I had a connection with, and learning about Ben Walsh's creative process has helped to realise what kind of direction I should take in my own.