Untitled2

Hello everyone! Today we are going to look at a composition that I stumbled upon when looking through all of my compositions written to date!

So I have this folder FILLED with compositions. There are a lot of them and many will never see the light of day. Don’t be sad though, honestly I’m doing you a favor. A large portion of those compositions come from when I was in high school and had no idea what I was doing. In fact, my compositions don’t get palatable until halfway through my time at University. This composition I’m showing you today comes from that time.

So, your probably asking yourself, “why is this composition named ‘Untitled2’?” I’m glad you asked! The answer is very simple: “Untitled” and “Untitled1” were already taken and sometimes I just write music without thinking how it will turn out. In fact, I do it a lot. (this is probably why I have so many compositions that I won’t show anyone) Anyway, now that we have the origin of the name covered, lets talk about the composition!

This composition can easily be analyzed using two elements: Pitch and Rhythm. There is literally nothing else. I couldn’t be bothered to write anything else at the time because this is the only two elements that I focused on at this time when writing. You also wont find anything repeating the exact same material because at the time I thought repetition was boring.(I still think this but now know that it has a purpose) So, out of these two elements I’ll start with pitch.

I cant say for sure what I was thinking at the time with the harmonies because a lot of the time I would just go to a piano and play stuff and keep the stuff that I liked for harmony. I know in the beginning I was making the different voices converge in on each other. You will also notice that there aren’t more than 4 voices active at a time. The reason for this was the piece was written for 4 mallet marimba technique. I will say though it is pretty hard to play on marimba with this technique because I hardly leave breathing room for the performer to reset their hands. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about that, though I should have been. I was to busy being enchanted by the sound and pace of the piece. I will say though, it actually sounds alright with the Musescore sounds. I guess if you think about it the piece is best suited for Musescore to perform because I spent most of my time perfecting the piece by playing it back in Musescore. If there are any 4 Mallet Marimba Pros in the Audience, let me know in the comments how playable this piece is for you.

Alright, so let’s move on to Rhythm. Rhythm is probably the most interesting part of this piece. Despite the 8th note pulse remaining the same, the play back would make you believe that there are multiple different tempos written with various markings notating speeding up or slowing down. At the time I was writing this composition I didn’t really like tempo markings because they wouldn’t effect the playback, so if I wanted a tempo marking I would physically write it in the rhythm of the piece. It makes the piece an eyesore to look at but the playback is way better.

So, that about wraps up this post! If you have any questions about the piece or if you want a pdf so that you can try your hand at performing the piece, let me know in the comments below!