getting ready for the concert

I am almost ready for our concert on Saturday, I just have some small adjustments to make. I finally finished my second piece, after the comments last class I really had some good ideas to finally finish it. I smoothed out transitions and hopefully made everything seem seemless. Although I still have not fixed everything yet, there is a part that I still feel uncomfortable with. It is a small melody line near the middle of the piece, to me it seems awkward and out of place but it seems it is too close to the conert for me to be changing a lot of things especially where I want to change some important things in the first piece. In my first piece I am going to change some of my accompaniment, and I think after these changes it will put my piece over the top.... I hope. There were a few comments in class today that suggested it would be nice to change the accompaniment. Hopefully all will be done in the next day or two so my piano player will have time to learn the score and perform for Saturday.

Piano solo #2

I am presenting my second piano solo tomorrow and I am not really sure that what I have written really works. I tried to take a bit of a minimalistic approach to this one, and I think I have just made it too boring. I have found that writing minimalist music is tougher then it seems, even though there isn't much material it is hard to write. I find I don't really know where to stop in terms of repeating things, and consequently I don't know where I should keep going with ideas. I am looking forward to getting some comments to see if I can improve on it, or to see if I should just trash it. Hopefully the comments will help and I can add to it and really make it a cool little piece. We now have an up and coming concert on the 30th so it is going to be a rush to get these parts out to Dylan who was thankfully able to play my pieces for me. Not much time but lots to do.

Piano solo #1

I presented my first of three piano solo's in class on Thursday, and was for the most part I was happy with my work, and the comments I received in class. As per usual it was a huge rush to get my work ready to present on Thursday so not everything was exactly how I wanted it sound, but I also didn't have enough time to really experiment; so compromises were made. My piece was more or less based on the c minor scale, but the 7th was raised to a b natural and I left out the d in the scale. I agree with Dr. Ross when he said that it would be interesting to add in some accidentals. The way I went about planning my piece was on a series of chords that were played in the left hand and then the melody would obviously play on top in the right. In terms of adding accidentals I think I will be strict with the progression in the bass but definitely add some new things to the melody. Another comment that was brought up in class was directed toward one of my transitions.....or lack there of. A fellow student made the comment that going from one section to another didn't really flow as the section previous; I agree with my classmate and plan on creating a better transition. For myself I find that transitions can be one of the toughest parts of a piece to write. I wish it was something that just came naturally, the ability to write transitions.