Final Class Presentation - Project 1

In today’s class theory position candidate Andrew Staniland worked through my piece with me.

I found his comments very helpful, and here are the ones that stuck out for me;

First were the comments on Range. Dr. Staniland said I was very successful in my use of range in the trumpet. I had lower percussive stuff and juxtapositioned it later with long melodic phrases. With regards to the mallet/keyboard instruments, he said that I could explore more with those instruments. They all have large ranges which I can utilize.

Secondly is the Philip Glass aspect.
At the start of my presentation I said I asked myself “what would Philip Glass do?” Well Dr. Staniland said that my piece was minimalist, but there is so much more I could do to make it Philip Glass'y'.

First was to use planned modulation. My piece starts on a c minor chord. He said I should extend the chord into keys. So I start in C minor, then move to E-flat minor, and then to G minor, or maybe throw a major in there. One key to Glass is to never come back, always move away.

Second was to use added rhythms. Make triplets turn later into quadruplets and such.

Thirdly was triadic modulation, whether it be common-tone or chromatic median. Glass uses this technique frequently, and when Dr. Staniland played some examples, it exactly sounded like Glass.

Back to comments on my work:

Dr. Staniland told me to take all this stuff previously mentioned and to take another look at my piece. Some guidelines he gave me to make my piece sparkle include:
- More frequent modulations or highlights of different keys. My harmonic language is a little too static for its length.
- He mentioned I need to either trim the piece or develop some sections more. For the length it is there is not enough material.
- He was impressed with my multiple rhythms and my constant division of the metre between simple and compound. He said I should continue with using it, it gives some parts an underlying layer of interest; different material to focus on.
- Lastly he said he liked my piece the way it is, but if I had the time I could improve it greatly with a slow sustained B section perhaps.