Since I started this documentation of what I have been composing and what I am composing at the moment, I developed a system of creating, shaping, constructing, inverting and transposing harmony. It is a long process, but it has demonstrated me that I can be more in control of the harmony I use, how to chain different chords, different harmonies, different poles, different transpositions all together. Although very vage and blear, this process has been shown, that it is possible to have a sort of image of my musical narrative, in terms of harmonic journey, and an image of the shape: where am I starting, where am I going and where am I stopping. Of course, there are still vage and blear moments, but those are solved at the moment of composing, following the warmth of the creation process.
However, in my previous compositions I have noticed a lack of rhythm preparation. A gap between sketching the rhythm and sketching harmony. What has been happening is that there is a strong sense of where harmony comes from and where it goes, but rhythm is always an improvisation, something I take from my intuition and not a single planning of it, which sometimes it can take me to good places but also it can take me to moments where I feel that I did not know what I was doing at the moment, and in real performances might seems that I reached to a place where is amazing, but could not control it, and because of that, that specific moment can be misunderstood, specially for musicians, performers, the audience and myself.
So, what I started to do in this new-final research composition was to sketch the rhythm as well. Investigate about rhythm, how can sketching it can make me create the same vage and blear image of the whole rhythmic journey as in harmony. In a first stage, I started to look at other composer’s works. Composers with strong sense of rhythm, as for example John Adams, Steve Reich or Judith Weir; and even jazz composers, as for example, Mark Turner, Jeff Ballard and Larry Grenadier.
My investigation took me to a place where I did not know what to do. I mean you can copy a rhythm and make indeed something with it, but how can you make it interesting for a certain length of time? I needed more than copying composers, I needed something that made me to create a core where I could use as basis of my structure.
I thought about the Fibonacci series and remembered that I used it before in Colours (closing in) when trying to assign a duration for the chords I was using for that piece. I thought that maybe Fibonacci was the right solution. So, I started exploring it, and for this piece I created a table using the series as it follow:
After, I started to create a solution for the first column (left column), reaching to the conclusion that I could sum third number of the Fibonacci ( 3 ) plus first number of Fibonacci ( 1 ). So, 3 + 1 = 4. With this mathematics approach, I succeed to have my second number for the column at the left of my table.
Then, I just applied this process to the rest of the column at the left side of the table:
5 + 1 = 6 13 + 1 = 14
8 + 1 = 9 21 + 1 = 22
This was the way I found to make the numbers on the column different from the numbers of the row. I used the third number of the Fibonacci series plus the first number to avoid repeated numbers.
After this step, I faced another issue which was how to make the rest of the table. I thought in following the rule of the Fibonacci and making as 1 + 1 = 2; 2 + 1 = 3 (…) but swapping 1 for the new numbers on the column, as for example: 4 + 4 = 8; 8 + 4 = 12 (…) however, I thought this will give me big numbers and how could I transcribe them to music?
1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 21 |
4 | 8 | 12 | 20 | 32 | 53 | 85 |
6 | 12 | 18 | 30 | 48 | 78 | 126 |
9 | 18 | 27 | 45 | 72 | 117 | 189 |
14 | 28 | 42 | 70 | 112 | 182 | 294 |
22 | 44 | 66 | 110 | 176 | 286 | 462 |
So, I developed other formula to fulfil the rest of the table making the row of Fibonacci and the column, I just created, more interactive:
MY FORMULA: To generate second number of second row = Third number of Fibonacci ( 3 ) + Second number of column ( 4 ) (=) 3 + 4 = 7.
After this, I used Fibonacci rule: 7 + 4 = 11; 11 + 4 = 15 (…). Then I repeated the same process to all the numbers and the result is as bellow.
1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 21 |
4 | 7 | 11 | 18 | 29 | 47 | 76 |
6 | 10 | 16 | 26 | 42 | 68 | 110 |
9 | 15 | 24 | 39 | 63 | 102 | 165 |
14 | 23 | 37 | 60 | 97 | 157 | 254 |
22 | 36 | 58 | 94 | 152 | 246 | 398 |
Although the difference between the table before this is not massive, I thought I could control my rhythm more effectively with this one, so I kept it.
Because I still had big numbers in my table, I selected which part of this table I wanted to use drawing a triangle.
After this, I started transposing this numbers into quavers (for some reason it was quavers, but it could have been crochets, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, etc) and created different rhythm patterns using different combinations of numbers.
A - 1 2 3 5 8 | H - 6 15 |
B - 1 4 6 9 14 | I - 4 10 |
C - 1 4 2 | J - 1 7 16 |
D - 3 7 6 | K - 2 11 |
E - 5 11 10 9 | L - 3 18 |
F - 14 15 16 18 8 | M - 5 8 |
G - 9 14 |
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And, all these means:
From here, I sort of started to realised that all this could led me to something I could use in my work, so I started to use variations of these crotchets and started doing long notes as well, thinking that as soon as I respected where the accents are, it will be fine.
After, I linked rhythm and harmony and now every pattern created has a chord or a combination of chords, and suddenly I have found myself composing my first draft of an idea.
Of course, in the moment of composing sketches are not everything. There are still many and many decisions to make that are impossible to predict when sketching or preparing a piece. However, that is why intuitive moments and the warmth of composing exist, is to combine knowledge and experience one have gained and acquired with the feelings, thoughts, and inspiration of the moment. Sketches are to guide you during your process, to avoid loosing your track on the journey, however there are no need to be afraid of taking other path, you still have the map (vage and blear image) to find the way till the end.