Week 1 - Prepare // Mar 22nd
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of the composition challenge! This is the place to discuss the Week 1 livestream and post your Week 1 assignments.
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream for help with the first section!
Week 1 assignment description:
Write one short "imitation" piece modeled off an etude by another composer of your choosing by using key elements found in the "model piece."
(For inspiration and some tricks on how to do this, watch the livestream above!)
If you want to describe your process (optional), feel free to use the following template.
- Etude you are imitating:
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
- (Optional:) questions
↓ Reply below with your assignments and questions! ↓
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Etude I am imitating: Lagrima (I know, it's not an etude)
Things I found easy: I never thought of myself as "creative" or "musical" enough to write music, but I found that I could do this. Imitating a familiar piece helped me get over the fear of looking at a blank page and having no idea where to start. It also helped control me when I starting noodling without purpose or direction - it gave me a structure and anchor I guess.
Things I found difficult: A few times, I just found myself getting stuck, with no good ideas to move it along, so I just had to walk away and come back later. I also found Musescore frustrating, as I had never used it before (I confess to yelling at the computer screen several times).
If I have time, I might record myself playing this. How did other people create the sound file? Was that done on Musescore?
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Eric Wow! I personally find this piece to be very creative. You gave yourself some really good boundaries that produced a more serious and Bach-like sibling to Lagrima, well done! It is effective and well-written. Keep going!!
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Eric Impressive Eric - well done - love the title too! Yes I used MuseScore and just exported it as an MP3, although it sounds much better on the guitar
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Ashley (Ash) Lucero I always thought of myself as Bach-like!
Maybe I should do the Chaconne next? (jk) I have to say, it's pretty surreal having a world class musician actually listen to something I "wrote" and even saying something nice about it.
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Ron Thanks Ron. I'll try to figure that out later.
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Eric Here's a video of me playing it.
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Eric thanks for sharing your interpretation
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Eric beautiful piece Eric I just played it.
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Eric beautiful piece. Original yet close to the source. Love the sound
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Eric I really like this Eric. Tarrega meets Bach!
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Eric beautiful!!!
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Eric very nice, also liked its name :)
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Eric Good job! I like your imitation of Tarrega very much!
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Eric Thank you for the kind words, AND for providing us all a beautiful recording of your new piece! Just fantastic
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Eric Phillips This is such an interesting take on Lagrima .. sounds like a variation based on the piece. May I know why you titled the piece as Crocodile Tears
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Nipun Deshpande Thanks for checking it out, Nipun. In the first week of the Composition Challenge, we were assigned to write a piece that imitates a short study or familiar piece that we know well and enjoy. I chose Lagrima. It's called Crocodile Tears because that is an expression for false or fake tears, and Lagrima is the Spanish word for tear (or teardrop).
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Eric Phillips
Hi Eric, I’m aware "Lagrima" means Teardrop in Spanish, but fake is such a negative word, I mean imitation is still fine. I thought you titled your piece “Crocodile Tears” in a humorous way, please don't call your piece fake. I find its an honest attempt at modelling a piece, it nowhere feels fake to me in any sense.
And yesterday, I finished watching the 1st week composition challenge video its filled with great insights, not just compositional but also psychological. Planning to watching all of them this week.
Thank you Ashley (Ash) Lucero for doing these and thank you Martin for pointing me toward these compositional challenge videos.
Best
Nipun
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- Etude inspired from: Brouwer's second study
- Easy things: Finding elements to create the piece
- Hard things: Made those elements original and interesting, and manage to create the score!
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Blaise Laflamme nice creative work Blaise!
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@Blaise Laflamm Wow !! This is really cool !! Congratulations on the idea!
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Blaise Laflamme Love it! I’ll try playing that when I get home tonight.
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Blaise Laflamme
Very nice! And great video!
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Blaise Laflamme Congratulations, very nice
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Blaise Laflamme This is just great!! I love how you took some of the most characteristic elements of the study and almost inverted them by adding harmonics, and an expansion on the contour too. I really like the way you explored the full register of the guitar. Can't wait to hear more!
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Khiem Nguyen Marek Tabisz Eric José Espírito Santo Giuseppe Gasparini Ashley (Ash) Lucero Thanks all for the great comments! That was an interesting exercise to try and wrote. Somehow it's similar to what I usually do when I'm working on a new piece and try to find characteristic elements, isolate them, and play / improvise them in different contexts on the guitar.
