Alrighty then Part 2! I'll try and get my usual 'What I learnt this week' episode out, too, but I got some computer shopping to do. Seriously. My computer booted randomly again today and had a completely different issue of only starting up in Bios with no option to change.

Not one to give up so easily, I decided this time to try 'restore to Windows 7' even though I'm on Windows 10. That made a BSOD 'Inaccessable Boot Device' come in but at least I could get to Safe mode after a few more restarts. From the first time my computer broke down a month or so ago I learnt that once you go into Safe mode once, the regular mode seems to work, so now I'm once again back, but for how long?? The motherboard is clearly on its last legs. Sigh.

ANYWAY.

So yesterday I was looking at problems and improvements to my past musical life, and today I present the second big piece (as in, over 2 minutes) that I actually managed to finish. (90% of my stuff is unfinished ideas). To be clear this mini-series is more for me than anybody else so feel free to leave an unrelated, spammy comment at the bottom!

Flight

For some reason, When I started all this, I made a folder for my music called 'The Chronicles of Duck', and I still have that folder, 15 years later. None better to represent the folder than this track, 'Flight'

The idea of this song was basically the experience of flight by a duck, perhaps the first time, I dunno. It starts off kind of blissful, looking over the horizon, before making efforts to get into the sky, feeling the wind in your feathers and, towards the end, the landing and heavy breathing. See if you can hear what I'm on about:

You may notice that this is a vast improvement from the previous track. There were numerous smaller projects in between that we can look at later that I'd write for Bach chorale classes, orchestration and so forth but there was only a couple of months between this one and the previous one.

The primary issue still persists, clearly: Structure. Practically every 10 seconds a new idea comes in, loosely related to the previous idea, tied in by the irksome glockenspiel ostinato pedal:

_{* 0:00 - 1:29. I think this is quite beautiful and should have been developed into new keys and instrumentation. The pacing is right, though.}

_{* 1:29 - 1:53. Not much point in this section but it could have been implemented far later in to the track as a breakdown in timbre since it sounds quite busy.}

_{* 1:53 - 2:02. Again, why so short?? Just a random development that you never hear again}

_{* 2:02 - 2:09. Yep, some pizzicato could have been fun if it was actually developed}

_{* 2:09 - 2:47. Ok this was right, but in the wrong place. Here I actually build up to and return to the original material, something I could rarely do, and if the rest of the song wasn't a complete mess, this would have been nice. I imagine this to be the peak of flight performance.}

_{* 3:00 - 3:58. Woah almost got a minute. I seem to make things sound pretty cool when I have an idea that can last a bit. This area demonstrates a bunch of skills that together sound incredibly amateurish but would one day be a useful set of tools. more on that in a bit.}

_{* 3:59 - 4:22. Attempting to change key. Twice! Not great but could be better and once again, barely 20 seconds before I run out of steem and have to move on}

_{* 4:22 - 4:59. About 7 ideas just thrown together here, eesh.}

_{* 5:00 - 5:42. Again, at least 2 ideas melded together but this holds my favourite moment of the song in terms of composition prowess}

_{* 5:42 - end. This is the 'breathing' section. I had the strings sustain a forte 'inhale' and a mezzo-piano 'exhale', and I can really feel the meaning of the song at this point. Finally.}

So what did I learn?

This song held a few milestones for me. I was figuring out how to modulate effectively, which would still take time to master, but a whole range of subtleties also shone through. For example, the whole opening sequence was playing with stress and interplay between solo instruments. at 3:30 I start playing around with more modal harmony, emphasising out-of-key notation to create something kind of ear-catching. This also experiments with orchestration of strings to a larger extent

5:00 in I breakdown rhythm to something much more fluid whilst using unique rhythmic emphasis and dissonance to my advantage, something that would become one of my main strengths in the future.

After this piece I started getting tired of repeated patterns, or ostinato, that I would constantly use to anchor my music in place rather than actually create something less nonsensical. A scapegoat, basically.

Tomorrow I'll show some of the shorter, perhaps unfinished pieces that are more developed and in my opinion cooler.