Challenge Number 5 was the relay race . Charlie organized us into teams of four, and we were to compose and pass off our chunk of music like a baton to each of our team mates. The result would be a 2 minute piece with each person having written 30 seconds of music.
Due to extenuating circumstances, two of our teammates were unable to participate, so Tom Snively and I “cloned” ourselves to make up for the missing teammates. This process began an email storm that was not unlike the one that Ryan and I had during the Table Tennis Challenge. We also ran into many of the same file sharing problems as well.
I started with the first thirty seconds and decided on choosing flute, vibraphone, harp, piano and cello, mainly because these in instruments sound decent on my playback, tend to to be common sound options, and I was unsure how the other team member were going to go about composing. Though my choices were motivated by an attempt to pick instruments likely to be universal to both classical and electronic styles of composing , in retrospect, I was lucky to go first because of my current lack of experience composing outside of Finale, and routing new (non acoustic) sound fonts through the program may have delayed progress on the piece further.
Musically, I challenged myself to get outside of a comfort zone once again by composing something a little less melodically flowing than usual, and tried to make it feel frantic/ race like, while leaving the end of my section open for the next composer.
The most difficult part of this challenge was getting organized with team mates. Not everyone was able to respond promptly, so it turned into a waiting/ guessing game for a bit. After it became apparent that Tom and I were the only ones able to participate, it was much easier to coordinate. Admittedly, none of us attempted to contact the other until I sent an icebreaker email a week and a half before the deadline (in a panic I might add). If one of us had a bit earlier, it may have solved a few problems in retrospect. However, life happens and I do not think anyone on the team should feel too guilty about this.
My favorite part was listening to what Tom came up with as a response to my submission. Working with composers who have a completely different composing style as you is a lot of fun, especially when you don’t know what to expect. What he sent was very imaginative and complimented the piece nicely.It gave me a bit of a rush because, as soon as I received his response, I wanted to begin composing mine. Unfortunately, I was at work and unable to get to it until the end of the day. Due to differing schedules, that also created a bit of a delay, and it came close to the wire as far as getting it submitted in time.
All in all, I think the result sounds great. Tom does a fantastic job at sound engineering and created the final rendering of our piece (thank you Tom). You can hear his music at http://tomsnively.com.
As always, please listen to the other team’s pieces for this event by clicking here.
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