Menu
WEEKLY BLOGS
The journey of a growing multi-instrumentalist and her composing.
Well, it's here. It's been twelve whole weeks. It's crazy to think about, huh? I finished my project, maybe not in the way I wanted to, but I did it. Throughout my twelve-week project, I scrapped three pieces that I had halfway completed. I honestly regret deleting them, I could have finished those pieces but I had a hard time bringing an end to the piece. I seriously have mixed feelings about my final piece, it doesn't sound musically correct, but its a piece. I honestly burnt myself out for twelve weeks writing three different pieces, trying to find the perfect sound, I put myself down for things that sounded just fine. And in the end I settled for a piece that sounds kind of crunchy. I know that's a weird way to describe music, but I'm sure other musicians have heard that plenty of times. Its not necessarily a bad type of crunchy. I've heard plenty of pieces with some REALLY... REALLLLYY... Weird key signatures.
When I showed it to my family they said It could easily tie into some type of 80's Egyptian horror movie. And honestly, I see it. I seriously can't tell if I love it or hate it, but that's what happens when your making any type of art. Most artists, composers, have felt as if their piece was missing something, or they have a love/hate relationship with it. And that's exactly what I'm experiencing right now. I feel as If my project was a success, a crazy one, but I did it! I thought I'd never say this, but I'm seriously gonna take some time away from my instruments for a week or so. Its's exhausting spending almost every Saturday playing five different instruments for at least eight hours (not all in one sitting, but overall). If you've ever heard of crazy horror stories about these classical composers, It makes sense to me now. I wonder if they developed all these behavioral issues from sitting Infront of a book and pen all day. Throughout the twelve weeks I learned that I'm way better off just making covers, I have zero business writing music. Maybe I could, If I had more time (EX: during the Summer). I learned various techniques on several of my instruments, and I used techniques I already knew to incorporate in my piece. There was one personal goal I set for myself that wasn't in my original pitch (at least I don't think it was). And that was to compose a final piece/score using the software Musescore. Unfortunately I failed at that, I didn't make it a priority. I feel like if I wrote it down I would have stuck to it. I decided to write this AFTER I did my presentation so I could reflect on what I wanted to write.
0 Comments
IT'S HERE... It's officially one week before I have to turn in my project. I've had to put in a lot of work this week, but it's all going to be worth it in the end (hopefully). This week I've worked primarily in my manuscript book. I impressed myself this week by transcribing my trumpet solo to my alto saxophone. With that being said, I decided to turn my solo into a duet between my alto saxophone and trumpet.
I'm really glad that things are coming together, I just wish I would've come up with all of this sooner. I would have saved a bunch of time if I had thought of all of this before. It also would have saved me a bunch of anxiety as well. This week I really need to focus on incorporating my trombone and my guitar. I'm honestly a little disappointed that I didn't come up with a guitar solo sooner, but its fine. Instead of rushing to write a solo, I think I'll just pick some new chords and stick them somewhere where it sounds right (literally every musician ever). Needless to say, I'm really truly impressed with how this is sounding. I've learned so many techniques on my secondary instruments that are improving the overall musical aspect to my song. I'm so excited to see how this all plays out in this last week! (no pun intended, okay maybe it was intended). This week wasn't as nearly as productive as I'd have liked it to be. However, I have some pretty scary news... And I'm unsure if I mentioned this in my previous blog post... I completely scrapped my last piece... For what reason? I have no clue. If I had to give a reason, it would be impulse. But who doesn't like a challenge! For a more logical reason, other than impulse. I scrapped it because I found it extremely difficult to add transition points and It had zero shaping what so ever. If I had to describe it, it reminded me of a heart monitor flatlining with zero musical direction. It was very bland, and it sounded like music to a Taco Bell commercial from the year 1997 (Yes, I'm referring to the one and only, Taco Bell dog)... Is this considered roasting myself? I don't know...
To get to the point, I'm excited, but not necessarily a good kind of excited. I'm definitely worried about completely ruining the piece. I've been extremely careful about pressing save anytime I add or move a track. Besides being nervous about my project, I've also been working on my presentation for my project. I think I picked out a really awesome slideshow template, and I'm excited to decorate it to my liking. As far as progress this week I've gotten roughly everything I need to finish the piece. I've also managed to compose another solo for both my trumpet and alto saxophone. I really need to play my cards right and prioritize my project over everything. which is going to be hard considering that my other core classes are starting to get really difficult. But I know I can do it :) Week nine! How exciting!!! I have mixed feelings about this project nearing its end, I'm happy to almost be finally be finished, but it also lets me reflect on the entire project.
This week has been pretty productive! I've managed to write an entire trumpet solo, and I've continued to compose sheet music. Although, like I've said in previous blog posts, I'm unsure if I'll keep the final score. I ran into a few issues this week, one of which was losing my saxophone ligature. Hopefully I can find some time this weekend to stop by Counter-Point Music in downtown Mocksville to grab one. I've also been really good about playing my trombone consistently as well as my saxophone (until I lost my ligature, of course.) I'm super proud to have made so much progress this weekend, I took the entire day yesterday and dedicated it to writing my solo. I also managed to make a few album covers (although, would it even be considered an album? Even if it's only one song? I have no clue...) I managed to link my Instagram and Twitter account to my website as well, and I linked my Weebly website to my Instagram and Twitter too. As far as composing goes, I'm still struggling to incorporate certain instrument's such as my tambourine and alto saxophone, but I'll fit it in somehow. Phew, so it's been eight whole weeks already? It's definitely time I buckle down and push through the writing process. It's funny to think that I had an entire step-by-step process at the start of this project and now I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing anymore. But that's what makes this project a blast!
This week I mainly focused on transposing the beginning of the song into a software called Musescore 4. However, I made one huge mistake. I didn't think to jot down the notes I was playing, But with the beginning of the song starting off slow and going into an accelerando, It wasn't too difficult to decipher the notes. I also somewhat learned how to write sheet music for percussion, which was a tad bit confusing, and still is. I'm still on the fence on whether I should continue to write sheet music for the piece, but I'll figure it out as I start to wrap up my writing. This week I really need to work on finding transition points throughout the piece, or possibly add movements. It's really confusing for me because I have two really catchy melodies, but they don't fit hand in hand. So, I think listening to other types of music will help greatly. This week wasn't as productive as I would have liked it to be. However, I still made huge progress. With that being said I've finalized my genre of music (I hope), and I've also figured out which guitar chords ill be using. My English teacher Mr. Barker, gave me the amazing idea to incorporate my girlfriend into my project! I had a few ideas, like letting her play the maracas, or hit the tambourine, but with Rylie (my girlfriend) being a guitarist I thought that would be the most fitting to let her play some chords I picked out.
The chords I chose for my song are A minor, D minor, and E. So, the plan as of right now is to let Rylie play the chords for the song, and ill play the melody on my guitar. Not only has Rylie volunteered to play guitar for my project, but she's also been helping me pick names for the song as well. I feel like I have made decent progress, but I definitely need to pick up the pace. I need to start working with my other instruments as well as composing the final piece. To help with my composing I bought manuscript paper, So if I'm humming a tune that sounds fitting for my piece, ill jot it down. This week I ended up being a few days behind on my blog posts. So, instead of writing my blog post for the week, I was practicing my instruments. As of lately, I've been experimenting with my trombone by using a trumpet mouthpiece. As far as I know, not many people play trombones with a 3c mouthpiece.
I say that because when I started playing trombone I noticed a change in my trumpet playing and I freaked out. So, I put up a Reddit post (I hate Reddit and I only used it as a last resort.) After a few hours, I got a few replies, some of which weren't helpful at all. But there was one that stood out to me, someone recommended an alto trombone mouthpiece. My first thought was "Pft okay, who's paying for that...". But then it occurred to me, why not use a trumpet mouthpiece? And surprisingly it worked, not as you would think, but close enough. So yeah, there's a little background story on my trombone. Along with practicing my brass instruments I've also purchased a tambourine and some maracas! If you were to ask me six weeks ago about buying a tambourine I'd definitely say your out of your mind. I would have never thought that my music would need instruments like tambourines and maracas, but here we are. I had the random idea to get them because for some reason I thought of salsa music when I was composing. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but now I have to use what I have. This week has been pretty productive! I've worked a lot with testing out different instrument recording software. As of last night I played around using Mixpad but I didn't take a liking to it. Some of the reasons I didn't like Mixpad were because the effects appeared to be somewhat choppy. For instance, If I were to select a track and add a tremolo effect (rhythmically changes volume), It caused the background noise to also have a tremolo effect.
For some, this would be an easy solution by using a noise reduction effect. However, instead of actually taking out the static in the background of the track, it instead cut out complete chunks of the track. I tested different things with different sensitivity and phrase length settings but I didn't have much luck. So, instead of using Mixpad, I would like to instead experiment with Bandlab. I've used Bandlab plenty of times in the past and I haven't had many issues with it. Although, the last time I used the software Bandlab I was using it for recording vocals rather than instruments. In spite of that, there is one thing I know for sure. The software Bandlab has never let me down when it comes down to noise reduction. Though, I don't want to be stuck bouncing between two recording software Mixpad, and Bandlab. So I'd like to hear some recommendations to break the tie! (If anyone has never heard of Mixpad, here's a picture of what I was testing out) This week has been pretty crazy, I've continued practicing improvisation on all of my instruments, but it hasn't been easy. Every musician knows how difficult it is to play with a stuffy nose and a sore throat; that's just what happened to me. However I'm still pushing forward regardless of my terrible allergies. I learned this week that my alto saxophone has some type of issue that causes it to have a very strange tone.
I'm still unsure what is causing it to sound so strange, but I need to take it to my local music shop. I still practiced my alto saxophone regardless of its issues, and I've made some progress! I've also started trumpet lessons as of two weeks ago with my band director Mr. Brusseau, he's helped me greatly with my tone and articulation. If anyone was wondering why I haven't mentioned my trombone, It's because I plan on playing it last. Since my primary instrument is a trumpet (high brass), which has a smaller mouthpiece (3c-5c). It makes it very difficult to play on a low brass instrument such as trombone (12c-17c) consistently without completely blowing out my embouchure due to its larger mouthpiece. A 12c mouthpiece (trombone) and a 5c (trumpet) are two very different mouthpiece sizes. Although a 12c mouthpiece falls into the smaller range trombone mouthpieces. I've been working on playing some jazz scales on my Gretsch guitar as well as some chords for some nice bass support for the melody. I also had this really interesting idea to add a accelerando at the last few phrases of the piece. I'm very excited to continue making rough drafts these next couple weeks! This week I focused on playing my alto saxophone and improvising solos on my Gretsch guitar. I'm using various scales and tweaking partials to create a sense of growth in the solo. I've continued to practice my jazz scales on trumpet as well. I've also come to the realization that its easier to come up with music first through improvisation, and then to compose the music.
During band class this week we had some different college band directors come in to help us improve our music for MPA. I learned a lot this week about exaggerating accents when needed to help shape the music. It's always nice to have input from other directors to open your mind to other musical concepts. When the director decided to focus on the bass voices it gave me some potential rhythmic ideas to support the melody throughout the piece I'm writing. To really bring out each instrument throughout the piece I think it would be cool to pass of the melody to other instruments during the piece. I think I might create a polyphony so I can have two main melodies throughout the piece. |
AuthorI'm Hannah Baldwin, I'm a sophomore in highschool and I'm apart of my high-school Symphonic Band and marching band. I play multiple instruments such as trumpet, alto saxophone, trombone and guitar. I love composing music. Archives
April 2023
Categories |