I've been keeping busy with musical projects for the last few months. In addition to recording many more covers of some of my favorite video game tunes (a lot from this year!), I have also been busy composing. In this post, I'd like to talk about two of my pieces I have written.
The first piece is up on the website already: "Scene from a Crowded Dance." You'll be able to watch the performance of it on that page that happened earlier this month, and read a bit about the story. This story is part of a novel I am slowly working on. It was meant to be for NaNoWriMo, but it's going to be more of a world for me to escape to and write whenever I need. In any case, this is a piece attached not only to this story so I can be musically inspired while writing it; but it is also more closely related to a memory I had when I went to Paris in 2017. Strictly speaking, I am not the most social person, and I like to avoid large crowds whenever possible. We were at a loud and crowded concert, which I eventually had to have my friends help me leave from. It was a tough situation I wanted to try to explain in my story, but I am proud of how it came out in the composition and in the emotion the performers were able to play with. This, I can definitely say, was the first composition I have been proud of in the past couple of years. I think it represents the start of a new direction for me as a composer, both musically and emotionally. I'm finally finding my creative avenues to process ideas in mental health and social situations, something I've wanted to explore for a long time.
The second piece is not actually on the website yet, simply because it isn't finished, but I'm excited to introduce my new Piano Concerto! I wrote and entered the first two movements for a composition contest (in Paris, actually!), and while I was not selected as a finalist for the contest, I am still going to finish the piece anyway and have it on hand for future competitions or other opportunities that may come my way. I'll do a brief recap of the work here, and then link some videos I did on it below if you'd like to know more.
In 2014, I wrote a Violin Concerto called "Little Snow-White" for the Senior Concerto Competition at my high school. If it wasn't obvious enough, I based the piece entirely on the fairy tale, adding subtitles and character motifs throughout the sections. I was happy with how the piece turned out, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time practicing it and prepping it for the contest, alongside the Rimsky-Korsakov Piano Concerto. While I didn't win, the process of obsessing over learning these and practicing is something I will always cherish. Fast-forward six years, and I came across the Piano Concerto competition. I figured, why not do a sequel to this? I chose "Little Red Riding Hood" this time to follow. The contest dictated each movement could only be two minuets long, and there were to be five. I planned the whole piece beforehand, even if I just hyper-focused on the first two movements. The motifs are still there, and each movement corresponds with a different arc of the story. I might just let my behind-the-scenes video do the rest of the talking, but I can say I have since started the third movement (amidst various other projects - musical medleys for friends and family as Christmas gifts, for instance!) and it is fun to be able to continue telling the story. I expect to be working on this through the New Year, once I've finished these other projects. I'll do a more detailed post about the piece in its entirety. It's still a piece I'm very proud of; I'm just giving some space to clear my head before I dive back in with fresh ideas and the courage to go for the ending.
I hope you enjoyed this brief look at two of my recent accomplishments. The Piano Concerto is of course still on-going, but hopefully next spring the piece will be fully complete, and we'll see what life it could have. I might try and do a post here in-between about some other composition ventures; but for now, I will leave it here. Thank you for reading, and happy listening!
Both videos on this piece are on my gaming/cover channel, CityFolk66. You can find them here -
Listen to the piece - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiJtinpDG3E
Behind-the-Scenes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2HgubWaAI
Comments