It's a bit late, but here's my annual Christmas arrangement!

I tried to get one out by Christmas but it just wasn't happening. And then yesterday it just came together. Better late than never.

Composer Todd Barton on The Seagull

The first play we saw in Ashland was called The Seagull. It was written by Anton Chekhov, a very famous Russian playwright. This is what the composer Todd Barton has to say about his experience writing the music for the play.

An End-of-the-Year Composition For Your Enjoyment

It's been a great year, full of excitement and fun, and challenges and new opportunities.

There have been those times when all I wanted was to escape from the world, to crawl into bed and hide.

There have also been those moments that I wish I could relive, that will always be in my memory.

This year has changed me, that's for sure.

I think, in a way, this song is a recap of 2011 for me.

Pictures by composer4christ


 

Merry Christmas!

I know it's a little early for this, but here it is anyway: My annual Christmas composition!

Annual as in I've been composing little gifts for The Director for the past 3 Christmases.

But this one's for all of you!

This year's Christmas composition is an arrangement I came up with a few weeks ago of The First Noel. I hope you enjoy!

The First Noel by composer4christ

Merry Christmas!


-E.F.C. 

You Know You're a Composer When...

• You have had to ask a family member to kindly stop whistling so you can compose
• The first thing you ask when someone mentions a new movie is “Who wrote the score?”
• You have more than one keyboard in the house
• You collect exotic instruments
• You can play many instruments just a bit
• Your iPod is filled with soundtracks
• You can watch a movie you don’t know anything about and correctly name the composer just by listening to it
• You save every scrap of paper in case it has music ideas written on it
• You write music ideas on library receipts and gum wrappers
• There is staff paper in your schoolbag
• You have created a brilliant song only to discover that it sounds a lot like something John Williams would compose
• You ask your choir director which instruments sound the best with piano, violin, tin whistle and marimba (in which case the answer is- nothing really)
• You have a song stuck in your head but you don’t know if it already exists or if you composed it subconsciously
• You talk your friends into playing your songs
• You want an orchestra for your birthday

And this is where I challenge you, my lovely followers, to to create your own list. What's your thing? Please share! And if you do, why don't you link back to this post?

Sometimes I Wish I Lived On a Private Island...

It's been an interesting day. I felt like composing something, but the world seemed to feel otherwise. First of all, my neighbor was blasting music from his open window (again), my dad wanted to play his guitar, and my headphones wouldn't drown out the noise. So I rode my bike down to the park and it was so peaceful and quiet that I was (finally) able to compose. So I jotted it down in my notebook and rode home.

And then I had to actually get it off the page. The second I sat down at my keyboard the man who lives across the street turned on his leaf blower. It was an E flat. My song was in D. Not a good combination.

Then my dad's phone rang.

Sigh...


But I finally got it into Garage Band! I recorded it once, then saved it multiple times. For one, I kept all the instruments as piano, for another I changed some of them to strings and such, and the last one I made techno. I shoved them all together. Enjoy, and please, please, please tell me what you think of it. I am anxious to hear read your thoughts.  After all- I can't get better unless I know what I need to improve on. And for the record, you guys have been really, really quiet. When I posted my last composition, I only got like 3 comments. That was super discouraging. Just saying.

Come on!!! I shouldn't have to beg for comments!


Anyway, here it is...

Adventure/Western- Orchestra, Piano, and Techno by composer4christ

Live Recording of the Lost Journals

I finally did it! I got a MIDI keyboard about 2 weeks or so ago which means that I can now record my compositions into Garage Band! I'm extremely happy about this because I can get the dynamics and the tempo changes and special things like that just the way I want them. And the piano doesn't sound all clinky like it does on Sibelius. It sounds... real!

So yesterday I made a decent sounding recording of this song and am here to share it with you all.

This is a monumental day, folks!

Live Recording of Lost Journals by composer4christ

An Update and a Song

Howdy folks! It is likely that by the time you read this post I will either be at the airport or on an airplane.

I am attending a 5 day choir festival with 7 other girls from my out-of-school choir! We will be working with 2 composers while we're there as well as meeting other choristers, performing in 2 concerts, and even participating in a flash mob! I can't wait!

So anyway, I probably won't have any internet access while I'm there, so don't expect anything from me until Saturday.


But while I'm gone, please enjoy this! This is my latest brilliant composition. I apologize  for the dreadful, fake-sounding instruments... But you get the gist of it I'm sure.





Isn't it lovely!?What do you think? I'm thinking it would sound better with a live orchestra. I don't know, just a thought...


Anyway, have a fantastic week!

Advice

This video was posted on Eric Whitacre's blog a couple of days ago. It's advice for aspiring storytellers, but as Whitacre said, just replace storytelling with whatever it is that you are interested in and it still makes sense.






One thing he suggests is to have personal deadlines. As I believe I've mentioned before, I don't get a thing done without a deadline.

So I'm going to make a commitment. I want to complete and post a minimum of 3 compositions per month. Does that sound decent?

After all, you can't get better at something if you don't do it in the first place!

This is a Very Exciting Test...

So please bear with me!

Observe as EFC makes a valiant attempt to embed one of her (ancient) (ammature) (ridiculous-sounding) compositions into this post:






Did it work? Please please please leave a comment! I shouldn't have to beg.


Wow. I hadn't listened to this in ages. It's much better than I recall, except I should've had more breaks in the flute part- it's just one long, long strand of notes with nowhere to breathe.

Thank you very much, Director!

On Procrastination and Inspiration

I've been meaning to post on this topic for quite a while. I'm sorry if this makes absolutely no sense. I just needed to get my ideas out there. Try not to get too dizzy.


Way back in February, I composed.

I was at school, in science class. While reading Dandelion Fire, the second book in the 100 Cupboards series, a song randomly popped into my head, and it was brilliant! I wrote it on the only piece of paper available: the back of a library receipt. It was incredible (at least, in my head it was) and I couldn't wait to get home so I could write it all out on Sibelius. I was so excited that I told The Director that she had had had to write that series into a screenplay just so I could do the score for it. (Besides, they would make a pretty awesome movie if done correctly...)

But when I got home, I was uninspired, so I let the library receipt sit there next to my computer all weekend (Since I was out of town) gathering dust. I resolved to write it up when I returned.

Well things happened and I became overly busy. The school play was happening and it was the first week of the new semester. Needless to say, I forgot about composing all together.

Every few days or so it would pop into my head one way or another and I'd always tell one of my friends, "Oh yeah. I composed something last week and I haven't written it up yet. I'm going to do that when I get home." That never happened.

I was reminded of it just last weekend and I was all inspired and ready to go. I even had my chicken salad!

I got all ready to sit down for a day of serious composing, and...


My computer was, er, under the weather.


Alrighty then... I guess I won't be doing it after all.

So here I am almost a month later. That library receipt has made its way into my binder of ideas. Sibelius isn't working for me and I think we'll have to reinstall it. Same with iTunes (which I don't look forward to).

See where procrastination got me? It reminds me of Pharaoh and his reaction to the frogs that were plaguing his home. He had the option to get them out of there, to be done with them. He was asked when he wanted them gone. He said "Tomorrow."

Quite honestly, this whole thing is becoming a frog to me. I kept putting it off like Pharaoh did and now it's only giving me trouble.

Now, I've had this happen to me before. If you were with me a couple of days before the premiere of Pirates in the Suburbs, you know what I'm talking about.

If you weren't, then know this: I decided to put off composing the score until about 2 days before the premiere. That's right, I did most of the score on the day before and the day of! It was stressful, it was tiring, and it made me never want to compose again.

But it was entirely my fault for putting it off. I could easily blame it (along with everything else) on The Director, but I'm not going to. Actually, I'm pretty sure the only thing that made me finish was the deadline. If it weren't for deadlines, I probably wouldn't get much done at all.

But why do I tend to wait until the last possible moment?

Much of the time, it has to do with inspiration. Normally, there are only two times when I'm inspired.

1. Directly after an idea gets planted inside my head (normally the first hour or so)
2. Directly before a deadline (Again, an hour or two before)

There is a bit of a creative dry spell, a gap of blah, if you would, between the time a project is assigned and the time it's due. For this reason, I don't write papers for school until the night before. For this reason, I never practiced speeches until right before giving them. For this reason, I waited until the last possible moment to compose the score. In order to finish something, I need a deadline. I need the stress. Stress is what helps to inspire me.

Since stress comes with deadlines, I've settled on a way to make sure I get this song written up once and for all.

Over Spring Break, which is this coming weekend, I have made a personal commitment to, first, reinstall Sibelius, and then, I will sit down and compose before I even think about touching this blog. Hopefully by then I will have also learned how to add audio clips to my posts so you can all hear my masterpiece.

So if you don't hear from me for a while (my Soundtrack Saturdays are scheduled- they don't count) you can be sure that I'm working on something (hopefully) incredible and (Lord-willingly) awesome and epic.


Wish me luck!


-E.F.C.