Music Report

Creative Music Skills

Written Commentary for final composition.

For my final piece I decided to compose a minimalism piece.

My piece is in the Key of D and continually throughout the song it uses the additive and cyclic process to give it a feeling of minimalism. It’s grouped round a maximum of 5 notes which are used in different structures and layered to begin on different beats of the time signature. Throughout the piece Sections are played and fade out only to come together further on. All the tracks heavily rely on ostinato though the strings do change in harmonic content as the song progresses.

Electro acoustic Guitar track:
This track runs throughout most of the song started and finishing on different beats. It runs through the notes of D-F-A-G-F. The continuing rhythm alongside other tracks in the piece gives it a repetitive cycle, as if the track could never end. It fades in and out of the song at different times where appropriate and where it combines with other instruments to give a minimalism effect.

Classical string track:
This starts off the track, it starts off with a chord for each bar consisting of the root note D and its 5th A, moving to A and its 5th of E, F and its 5th of C, to G and its 5th of D. As the track progresses the strings change and it relies on a repetitive cycle from D-E-G-F-D-E-C-A. It gives the song depth and an emotional feeling, and gives the song a powerful harmony. It relies on ostinato though in parts of the song the first two chords are played with a added higher octave to give it extra depth.

Tremolo string track:
This comes in on bar 17 (34secs), it acts as a backbone of the song and again uses ostinato throughout the whole track and works in conjunction with the electro acoustic guitar track and the two piano tracks giving it a feel of minimalism. Throughout the whole song it goes through the repetitive cycle of D-A-F-A-E-A-G-A. It has an additive process of always adding a different note and returning...