Work continues

Due to the college being closed, this week has been a catch up on my proposal in an attempt to accomplish the task by this week. After reviewing my work so far I feel I need to step up on the composing side of things as we near the end of the first semester. Work has begun on the first of my four pieces which at the moment stands as a ragtime piece on piano. Since I have no access to Cubase outside of college I have started to use Sibelius in my compositions. Although this takes a greater musicological knowledge to accomplish and seems a slightly slower method by the end, I hope to have an accomplished score to add to my portfolio. By exporting the track to Cubase as midi I will be able to work within and outside of college helping to make a more productive project. I aim to have my first piece accomplished by Christmas break and be started on my second.

Composition begins!

So now that my proposal is well underway I have begun focussing on the development of my chosen project and have begun composing the first piece to my silent movie. This piece will hopefully have a chirpy, rag – time feel to it that will make the audience view the scene as a comedy (that is if all goes to plan). At the moment I feel the best method of producing material is via Sibelius where I can import the video into the software and work off the electronic manuscript the software offers. I feel that I have underestimated this task and will now have to press on if I am to reach my target of two finished pieces by Christmas. The following weeks will soon tell!

Project Entry 3

After Monday’s lecture I now have a more clear idea of my project and proposal. Since my last entry I have spent a large amount of my time browsing archives and YouTube for a relative video that I can use in my project. At first I felt strongly about using a clip from an animation however after looking through a vast selection of them I have came to the conclusion that attempting to change the mood by only the means of music would be an extremely difficult task. Now that I have researched this topic I feel that the strongest candidate for my project would either be early film footage (1900’s) or a scene made up of views and landscapes. My lecturer has analysed my proposal so far and it seems with a little tidying up I should have accomplished the first task.

Project Entry 2

With a few days until my next lecture I have began preparing my proposal and laying out my project into smaller, more straightforward stages. I feel that I have taken on a great deal in this module however, with the level of work now at degree standard a lot more has to be asked for in order to pass. One objective I am finding difficult is choosing an appropriate scene to compose the two contrasting pieces for. I already have a few ideas however at the moment there is not an outstanding choice. I’m hoping that by the time of the next lecture I will have a good idea of the chosen movie/animation scene that I will compose for.

Project Entry 1

After my second lecture this week I have managed to begin to piece together ideas for my production project that will both be in my capabilities as a music student and something I feel very passionately about. With these thoughts in mind the basis of my project will be composing music for a visual sequence whether it is a scene from a movie or short animation. This is the primary aim I hope to achieve however since it is now degree level I am working at I feel that to achieve a high grade there will have to be a larger field of study to bring to the table. With this mind and a degree of help from my lecturer I have began to look deeper into the realms of film music and have decided to discuss what extent music has on a scene of music. To tackle this task I hope to take one visual scene and either create two contrasting styles of music to go with it contrasting which results in showing to the viewer how much music can effect a scene. (Bringing my point across) If this example is not a possible candidate I would then like to explore the synchronisation of film and music and the importance that each feature has on a piece. Even though there may be an incredible piece of music and an astounding movie sequence they can sometimes conflict each other. Through this idea I would a like to compose some original music. It is still early days and I still have to asses each situation to see the possibilities of managing to pull of such a project.