Sunday, August 25, 2024

Sketchy Post

As these last few days of summer drift away (faculty meetings start tomorrow for me), I had an unexpected experience a couple of days ago. I accidentally composed a piece! Ok, it's less than a minute, and it's quite derivative (of itself), but I still kind of like it.

The very short story is that I was trying out a re-install of Finale notation software (punchline: re-install did not solve my problem*), and so I just started entering notes kind of mindlessly. After I had three simple bars in three-part counterpoint written, I used some Finale copy/paste/invert techniques, and basically had something I kind of liked within no time. I have since tweaked a few things over the past couple of days. My main tweaking goal was to make it a little more naturally pianistic, but I ended up liking the way this requires the left hand to roll a few things.

It is very simple - somewhere between the worlds of Bartók and Poulenc - with no accidentals. Other than that, I might as well let its 50 seconds speak for themselves. I haven't really given it a title, although it does conjure up something of the feeling I have as summer vacation draws to a close. Perhaps it will be the beginning of something...


* also, the notation you see in the video was not produced in Finale.

UPDATE: you may hear it now in organ dress: