Composition

A Waltz Study in F minor is a short waltz I put together over the course of just under two hours last Sunday (9 Oct 2022) afternoon. 

You can download the score as a PDF:

Alternatively the MCSZ is available on MuseScore if you want to edit it: A Waltz Study in F minor.

In a recent review of my familiarity with different scales I realised I am particularly weak in A♭, which is a bit of a problem as it features in the Trinity grade I am currently studying.

I set about to write a short study piece in A♭. 

Prior to my music studies I had always written waltzes off as middle of the road schmaltz that belongs in old films. I had no idea how diverse the genre was nor did I understand how there are several contemporary pieces that I quite enjoy that are waltzes. 

Rhythmic ideas are definitely not my strong suit and so sticking to a highly prescriptive style such as a waltz really helps lighten the compositional workload.

In terms of what goes through my head while writing something like this, I have some guidelines that I use:

1. I generally try and stay away from root chords..
2. I resist trying to modulate between the basic majors.
3. Given the choice, I’ll probably choose a minor key over a major.
4. I generally modulate between major and minor keys. 
5. The circle of fifths is an indispensable guide that I keep open at all times. I constantly refer back to it for what is and is not allowed when modulating between keys. 
6. I have found that I generally like an inversion spread across octaves. I also like thirds spread over octaves (i.e. G2+B3) as it creates a resonance that I find quite pleasing.
7. My teacher observed that the contemporary classical pieces that I like are always full of space. I have adopted that as a part of my own style. I really don’t like ”busy” classical music (i.e. Yuja Wang).
8. I like a bit of syncopation.
9. I particularly like leading into a melodic device from the last part of the previous bar. I notice this in a lot of EDM I enjoy. A good example of this is the vocal track in the Spencer Brown remix of Will We Remain?

For the left hand, I started with A♭ second inversion and experimented with keys local to it on the circle of fifths. Somewhere along the way I ended up making Fm root the start of the chord progression – and in doing this I completely lost sight of the original goal to create a piece in A♭. I’ll give myself half marks at least for sticking to the relative minor. 

I ended up settling on: Fm -> A♭ -> Fm6 -> C7 and just cycle through that for the entire piece. 

Once the chord progression was laid down I moved on to the melody. 

There is nothing sophisticated about what I’ve written here. The melody is entirely diatonic to Ab/Fm and just wanders around the first five scale degrees of Fm. It is repetitious, but in a good way. Guy Michelmore has a great video on composition in which he talks about repetition and variation. 

I posted a draft to the Piano Learning Adults of YouTube and @mel_lem  provided some commentary that led to a few modifications, mostly around the subkey to use for the fourth chord. I ended up going in a different direction to her suggestion but it was thoughtful and helpful feedback. She also pointed out the piece was not in A♭. 😳

I was in two minds about resolving the piece on A♭ but ultimately stuck with it as it gives it an ever so slightly unfinished, but positive/uplifting tone for the final resolution. 

I reviewed the score with my teacher and she suggested repeating the main motif again one octave higher, which I took onboard and added. I do feel a bit like I am abusing copy and paste but when you pull apart a famous piece like Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi you realise that repetition and variation is everywhere. 

So that’s it in a nutshell. I enjoyed putting this together and would love to see your interpretation of it. 

I will endeavour to compose things more frequently than once per year. 😃

Background

June is my first composition and created as part of assigned work from my teacher, Julia Kourtidis. I’m writing my thoughts down as a point of reference for future David, however the mechanics of composition for beginners, explained by a beginner, will no doubt be useful to others.

If you’ve stumbled here from the score or Google, here’s the recording:

The score is available for download: https://musescore.com/davidconnors/june

Julia’s instructions were to:

• Get some footage – anything really (she suggested video of my dog sleeping)
• Set it up on your iPad at the piano
• Tinker while watching that and see where it takes you

I have taken a fairly argumentative stance on improvisation in the past when asked to try it – and I chalk that up principally to my length of service in the IT industry. IT folk know how to interpret and solve complex problems – but right-brained creativity is pretty thin on the ground in my neck of the woods. 

It is somewhat of a running joke that I am learning the piano backwards. I sometimes pull off quite difficult things while I struggle immensely with things that other students would find trivial (don’t start me on how much time I’ve sunk into a couple of the Trinity Grade 1 pieces). True to form, I composed, scored, and recorded June and then went and made a video to match. Opposite to instruction however I got there in the end. 

Inspiration

While I did not make the video until this evening, I did have a firm ‘minds eye’ concept as a starting point: Peel Island and the story of June Berthelsen. I’ve been to Peel several times with friends and the children and it is hard to Google the history of Peel without stumbling upon June’s story. 

Peel Island functioned as a lazaret (leper colony) up until its closure in 1959. June was interned on the island from 1956 to 1958 after being diagnosed with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) and wrote “The lost years: A story of leprosy” as an account of her time there. 

She had a rough life (a still born child, another that died shortly after birth, and diagnosis with Hansen’s shortly after adopting two children and finally having one of her own). Notwithstanding this hardship, she tells a good tale and created a fair bit of mischief on the island – mostly to relieve her excruciating boredom. 

Putting June together

The piece is composed in D minor. 

I started out by experimenting with different arpeggiated patterns to try and noodle out a progression I liked. Initially I chose Dm root triad → Am root triad → G root triad. I decided that G was too happy given the subject matter and so changed it to Gm. If you play the resulting progression it is not even close to where I ended up. 

Next step: I would be in trouble with the piano police if I didn’t use any inversions. Conveniently, G second inversion shares a root with Dm. I swapped A out for Gm somewhere along the way – and that is pretty much the left hand for the whole piece. 

For the melody I had an idea of using accented single notes in the way that Federico Albanese does his “synthy bits” in Carousel #3 – that idea lasted three notes and I only realised I abandoned it once I’d finished the piece. That’s a shame – I would have liked to have seen where that landed. 

For whatever reason, I’ve become fond of pieces that use odd beats to lead into the next bar so that ended up being a recurring theme. 

The whole thing fell into place over the course of about an hour. I spent a number of hours after this trying to enrich it and extend it – always CTRL+Zing back to where it is now. 

In terms of scoring, I’ve come to appreciate that less is more when it comes to dynamics and other annotations – the first stab at this was littered with dynamics markings in a way that only a software engineer could. I cut that right back (and I barely stick to what I have left in the score anyway). 

The audio was recorded this evening on my Kawai ES920 using the SK-5 Grand sample set rendered to USB as a WAV. The video was stitched together using Premier Pro. 

Any comments, questions, please drop me a note!