Unfinished Music - Learning the craft of composing one step at a time

In this episode, I introduce my Unfinished Music project, explain what each episode will be like and introduce 2 pieces of unfinished music that I'll be working on "out loud" over the next few episodes.

Website information + fade in Suite in D

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome to episode one. I've wanted to compose music since I was a teenager. Not just fragments or sketches, but real pieces of music. Music that means something, if only to me. I listen to many genres of music. I've played quite a few instruments imperfectly. And I've spent many years as a choral singer. I've even studied a little music theory. As a teenager, and from time to time ever since, I've tried composing, but I've never created something that felt like real composing. There have always been gaps in my understanding of harmony, in orchestration, in musical structure, and if I'm honest, a big gap in my confidence as well. In this first episode, I'm going to tell you what a typical unfinished music episode will be like. Talk about two other types of episode I'm planning. Tell you a little about the musical experience and knowledge that I bring to this journey. I'm not an absolute beginner. And finally, introduce the two pieces of music that I'm going to work on in the next few episodes. So let's get started. Unfinished music will document my attempts to compose music warts and all. Each week I'm going to work out loud on one specific music challenge. That challenge might be to write a melody, to create some harmony, to experiment with rhythm or any other aspect of composing. In every case, it will be a learning exercise done out loud as part of my attempt to create a new piece of music. Since this really is intended to be my learning journey, I'm also planning two other types of episode that will appear occasionally once I've got started. The first one is unfinished conversations. In those episodes, I'm going to be interviewing professional composers to find out how they approach composing, how they begin, what they find difficult, any hints or ideas I might be able to apply in my own work. I'm hoping from that I can learn something, and also I think it will be interesting to hear people who actually compose for a living talking about the art of composing itself as opposed to talking about their music. Secondly, in Finished Composers episodes, I'm going to be looking at composers from the past and exploring how they approach the craft of composition. For those episodes, I'll do some research in advance and then I'll share what I've discovered along with my own reflections on what I might learn from them. Turning to my own musical experience, as I said in the introduction, I've listened to, played, and sung music all my life, and each of those experiences has, I think, contributed something to how I think about music. From listening, I've absorbed the many different styles and sounds, and enjoyed the many different styles and sounds. From playing music, I've experienced the process of turning notes written on a page into sound coming out from an instrument. I've played the piano not very well up to grade two when I was a teenager. I've played the recorder, the clarinet, the violin, the piano accordion, the flute, and probably one or two other instruments I can't remember. Never as a master, just to be very clear. From choral singing, I've had the experience of sitting what I call inside the piece of music with the harmonies washing over me and hearing how many individual musical lines combine to create a single sound, whether they be voices such as soprano, alto, tenor, bass, whether they be percussion, an orchestra, a piano, a rock band, all different sorts of combinations create a different experience in the end for the listener, and I want to ultimately understand how to choose a mix that will represent what I want to do. As a teenager, I studied music theory at school, and I tried to apply it when creating my own pieces of music. Later, through my open university degree, which I did in my forties, and I spent some time analysing and writing about and listening to other people talk about musical works, thinking about harmony, structure, and texture. I'm not a musicologist, but I I got a little insight into it during that degree course. So all of these different experiences have shown me that composing music involves lots of different skills and techniques. So in unfinished music, my aim is not perfection, and I'm definitely not running a masterclass. I'm simply working on composing out loud, sharing both the enjoyment, hopefully, and the frustration, I'm sure, of the journey. Perhaps along the way I might even create some music that's a little less unfinished. So, now let me introduce the two unfinished pieces that I'm going to work on in the first few episodes. You heard the beginning of the first piece as the introductory music to this episode. I called it my suite in D major. It is indeed in D major, it's not a suite, it's probably about thirty or so bars of music. This unfinished piece is based on some notes that I made as a teenager. I mean, notes as in words as well as musical themes that I wrote down. Sometime in the past ten years or so, I took those notes and I began writing a piece of music based on them. Here's what the whole thing sounds like today, and please remember it's still unfinished, very much unpolished. How long it might be, for example, whether I've got the right instruments, and also then, of course, extending it from a simple opening theme into a much longer and more structured piece of music. But first, before that, in episode two, I'm going to work on a very different unfinished piece. In the early months of 2024, my 93-year-old mum was showing significant signs of dementia. It had been obvious for some time, but after a serious fall in January, she began deteriorating much more quickly. While on Orkney that Easter on holiday, visiting family, actually, one evening I began writing down words in some sort of poetic form for the first time in my life. Soon I had sketchy ideas for nine poems. For some of them I've only got a theme, such as Patch, our dog is is one of the themes. Surprise, surprise. And for others I've got a few phrases. And for song one of what has become my Songs of Life project, I wrote a set of words in one sitting. Then over a couple of further sessions I polished it into a completed poem. I think polished is an exaggeration, but I formed it into a com what I thought was a completed poem, the first poem I'd ever written, and almost immediately I wanted to turn it into a song. So song one is now called Slipping Away. And the words are about my mum slipping away piece by piece. Here's the opening verse. She's distressed and adrift. Every thought now a gift. Not long back, she was bright. She was doing alright. Now she's spiralling down towards uncertain ground. She's slipping away. I don't know what to say. In episode two, I'm going to try and begin turning that into a song. Welcome to Unfinished Music.