Composition (2022 Q4): Sidewalk Taps

Merry Christmas! I got started late. As in, around Christmas. Why work leisurely for three months when you can make yourself sweat for a week? Honestly, part of it is that I'm not entirely sure what I wanted to write, but if I wait around for an idea to show itself, I'm not even going to make the three-month deadline. I originally had something stage-tuney in mind, but that's honestly easier said than done, I feel. My composition process is highly dependent on a concept not requiring a melody prepared. This time around, the tangible idea here was Trombone. What to do with it? I dunno. I don't really listen to trombone repertoire, I just had mentioned it to somebody and now I have to write it. Brass is nice for base, so I can easily go with starting it off in a walking base.

Walking bases aren't too complicated to come with, but not so easy to compose around. Because of how they work, you either have to make sure you have very versatile harmonics in the different segments, or keep an eye on the harmonics in the rest of the accompaniment. I thought I'd stick with the latter.

I settled on simple instrumentation: Piano and trombone. I wasn't going to open into a melody with the piano, if the trombone had a walking base and my melody game is as weak as it is. The issue here is that without a good hook, starting into a melody risks it blending with the base. To remedy this, I added a few bars of prelude, which just introduces the instrument with some directionless musings, then, when the theme comes in it'll stand in contrast to what came directly before.

This segment will constitute the main part of my melody. Characteristic is the tied note playing into eights as filler and the syncope in the left. The MIDI is being cheeky and swallows the way the syncope is supposed to just brush underneath the melody and not draw further attention to itself.

I wanted to have the melody run through a few variations before closing in something dissonant, but I think I'll add some bars of flourishes in between the variations. It'd give whoever space to do whatever they want before returning to text.

At this point, the trombone has been repeating the base pattern for about the third or fourth time, and I thought it would be high time to switch things up. So far the base has been on-beat most of the time, but since syncopation has been a central element of the piano part, I thought I might as well introduce it to the base as well.

I went a little easier on the piano in that segment, just so the syncopation doesn't get buried by it. The main idea is still there, but since a new baseline is introduced, the piano gets a more accompanying character here. That's why there's so much air in the left hand and it's repeated until the baseline has had it's moment.

Now I introduce a little movement in the piano again. At this point I noticed that the pattern with the triplets works much better and went back to the first page to correct it there. There's still meant to be a swing rhythm under here, but counting it as triplets is more accurate regardless.

I've figured out the end of the piece and just need a way to get there. Taking out the complexity seems like a good way to wind down to a place where the trombone can do a little solo, so I figured it might just as well take over melody duties here as well. I would have liked to go further down on the scale instead of going back up, but the program I'm using told me that might be problematic, so I took what I could get. No need to annoy potential colleagues by going off-scale.

This is the rest of the trombone melody and piano accompaniment. It's relatively simple in construction and I have the piano tapering off before the trombone is done. That penultimate bar is the solo, which may or may not be fun for the trombone player, we will see. It definitely caps off the piece, so the piano can just slam in that last chord.

This was two sessions as well. Obviously with more time I probably would have produced more bars, but for now that has to be enough. As always, here's a midi-conversion and the full PDF of the score. I don't reckon I got any better this time around, unfortunately. I can still eyeball the harmonics about as well as I could previously and my well of ideas is still somewhat dried up at the moment. Maybe I should consider getting prompts for composition projects as well?