Composing From a Model: Part 1
In a couple of my previous posts, I examined Radiohead's "There There" and then built some compositional scaffolding using Radiohead's work as a model. The aim was that these compositional scaffolds could be used by high school students to create their own work. But of course, it only made sense that I should attempt the process on myself!
I should add this caveat before I begin though: one of the main things I talked about, both in my analysis of "There There" as well as Radiohead's wider work, was their use of tension at a macro-level. Tension and release is something that all composers should be familiar with, but there is definitely something special about what Radiohead do (see here). However, I decided not to specifically use the concept of macro-tension-and-release as a scaffolded activity. I definitely think it would be worth coming back to, but tension is an acquired taste. I think about the way that many jazz musicians talk about going "out" and they basically play in other keys, sometimes for minutes, before coming back to the "correct" key. It's all intentional, and for many people with ears that are used to it, the return to the home key creates a powerful (presumably chemical) high. But for high school students, particularly if they only listen to Top 40 hits or classical music from 1750-1820, tension will mean something quite different to them. Creating tension as a scaffolded compositional activity is something I want to come back to.
So now onto the actual compositional process.
Taking Stock
In creating scaffolded teaching resources for students, I did some initial work trying out my own processes to see whether they would lead anywhere. The very first thing I created was a drum loop using the Drumbot pattern sequencer, a free online step sequencer that was one of the teaching options I gave to students for their own compositions. I was quite happy with the first loop I created, and decided to stick with it.
Basically, at a fundamental level I had a groove in my head that I liked, and then I worked in the general parameters of using three sounds to create it (in this case a floor tom, a rim click, and a slightly higher tom). Once I made the beat like I heard it in my head, I added a different rim click on top of the existing one to fatten it out a bit. It ended up looking like the image below, and sounding like this.
The next thing I created was a riff using four notes (which again was part of my scaffolding for students). I found it a little bit difficult being restricted to so few notes, but part of why I made that decision for students was because so many popular and alternative songs have riffs that only use 3 or 4 notes. It's easy for something to be catchy when it's repetitive (although it's also easy for it to become boring). So this ended up being the first riff that I created.
The final part of my composition scaffolding involved creating chord progressions based on the notes of the riff. My notes were C, Eb, F and G, and from those notes and my chord creating method (see here), I came up with a whole bunch of chords, including:
C, Ab, F (F minor)
F, A, C (F major)
G, Bb, Eb (Eb major)
F, Bb, G (Bb6)
C, Ab, G (Abmaj7)
F, Gb, Eb (Eb minor)
G, B, F (G7)
The riff seemed to revolve around C minor, so I added C minor and F minor as other potential chords.
The first riff I wrote (with the idea that the riff and groove would be playing at the same time) was:
|| Cm | Cm | Abmaj7 Eb | F ||
And that was it! More to come.