Audio Fantasy on a Theme by Samuel Sim [WIP]

I touhgt I would do somehting a little different. Instead of just posting the final result of my music, I thought I'd do a like diary type thing, showing you my process wehn I write or arrange music. So here we go.

The piece I am currently working on is a fantasy for Violin and Piano (possibly orchestrated later) on a theme by composer Samuel Sim from the 2009 BBC adaption of "Emma" by Jane Austen. Throughout the series of 4 episodes, and the co-responding soundtrack, Sim uses the same theme in many various ways ... somehting that I've always found it amazing that composers can do ... and somehting I've yet to perfect. This inspired me to write my own piece, similarly using the same theme in various ways and developing it further.

I had a little play around with the theme on my violin, somehting I will only upload if I am payed loads of mo- *shot*. Seriously though, if you want to hear 4 minutes of my improvising badly and making loads of mistakes, that's fine ... Anyways, it gave me a little bit of an idea of what I would be able to do when I developed the theme, and an idea of where to start, sort of.

So without further ado, I opened up Sibelius, my music notation software. As a classical musician, I find it very essy to work in sibelius to make Midi or Wav files for later editing, because I can read sheet music fluently. This also makes it easire, because due to me not being very confident in my playing to play midi directly in using a midi keyboard, I can write whatever I like, regardless of difficulty.

First though, I looked up the theme I am going to be using on the youtubes:

Spoiler: The Video

[video=youtube;59H8wXqqld0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59H8wXqqld0[/video]

So, after this, I opened up my new Sibelius document:

Spoiler: 1

This is always so daunting the first time around ... but I've become used to it ... *sweatdrop*.

I decided that I wanted a slow start, with a statement of the theme, but I didn't want the violin to come in with the melody right away, so I thought it best to do it in the right hand of the piano.

Spoiler: 2

After this, I thought a bit about dynamic markings ... beacause I like to do them as I am writing, so else it gets really tedious when I'f finished the melody to go back and write them all in. I also added some phrasing marks for the performer, to give a little direction.

Spoiler: 3

After this I thought about bassline. I thought having flowing quavers (8th notes to you Americans out there (they're called quavers (I don't care what you say))) in the bassline would be a nice accompaniment to the fairly slow notes of the melody, and would be easier on the ear than a chordal sequence.

Spoiler: 4

After this I thought: this seems a little bare ... let's add some more texture all up in here and put the violin on an inverted pedal! A pedal, for the uninitiated, is when there is a held or repeated note in the bassline of a piece, and an inverted pedal is when instead of it being low, on say a 'cella or bassoon, it's on a higher instrument, above the melody line, like on a flute or in this case, a violin.

Spoiler: 5

You may be wondering a couple of things. 1. The tempo marking was always there, just due to me cropping out the violin part for easier progression, you couldn't see it. Lento means slowly with a connotation of gentleness by whe way. 2. "Claw, oh why oh why did you use two minums tied together in that last bar? Surely you should have used a semibreave, you should be shot for improper notation!" I had a cunning plan. to break up the last bar, I wanted the violin to play a small trill. The trill might not necessarily sound how I want it, but I can always mess around with it in my sequencer once I sequence the midi file (if I plan to do so).

Also, as an introduction into the the next section - which is going to be faster like the Opening Titles iteration of the theme - I wanted to build some tension by having a slowdown or ritardando/rallentando (yes, that is where the infamous word comes from, the root word "ritard" litterally means to slow or become late - lovely linguistics fact for you there). Don't ask me the difference between a rit. and a rall. because honestly I don't know if there is one.

Spoiler: 6

And then I was done with this section, for the moment.

Here's what it sounds like at the moment:



That's all for now, and next time I'm going to show you my work on the next section, which is faster and will show you that classical music can have awesome basslines too ^^

Thanks for reading, and any and all questions, comments etc. are welcome.

EDIT: Oh dear ... there are many, many spelling mistakes here ...
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