SESSION 3

The original plan for this session was to begin by developing melodic canons. However when listening to the material already composed it became clear that a more decorative texture was needed to make clearer links to the sound-world of Boulez's Dérive.

We began with the Texture section of the Workshop 3 notes:

 

TEXTURE (you may want to refer to the texture page in the composing section of the site)   5. Sit in a circle and listen to the sounds of all the instruments one by one. Listen to the different kinds of attack and decay and notice that even two metallophones can sound different.   5.1 Ask each member of the group to find three different ways of playing the same note on their instrument.

We were then able to decide on the combination of instruments and their 'colour'/timbre for the chords already composed.

The Students then explored decoration of each note with trills and/or grace notes. They also tried oscillating for a time between two pitches or two chords in the series.

Example 1 St. Thomas More (a)

Example 2 St. Thomas More (b)

They were encouraged to use one or two of the playing techniques invented earlier in order to change the sound of the music, as well as changing dynamics to effect the overall texture as different timbres were allowed to come into focus and fade into the background again.

This led to the composition of new melodies which were embroidered with grace notes and trills:

• Example 3 St. Thomas More

   

  If there had been more time we would have played these decorated melodies in canon.

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