Composition and Technology

Reflections for Week 2...

There were so many possibilities for my official blog post for class this week! The lecture, the readings in the text, and the assignments provided a lot of information about composition, notation software, and improvisation.

I appreciated the explanations of MIDI in Chapter 2, especially in regard to MIDI In, MIDI Out, and MIDI Thru. I now use a MacBook and haven’t had nearly as much trouble, but I remember trying to get Finale to play nice with my Windows machine about 10 years ago and spending hours trying to get my keyboard, my computer, and Finale to work with each other. It took lots of time (and frustration) to figure it out each time I wanted to do some work on replacing missing parts or creating parts for non-traditional instruments for my jazz band. The book did a good job of explaining that communication process.

My main focus for this post is a reflection back on a unique concert experience I put together for my band and our audience a couple of years ago. As a 5th through 12th grade music department, we decided that we were going to have a composition focus for our December concert. Our high school director had the students in his groups write their own compositions for the concert. Some wrote solo pieces while others wrote ensembles. The director in charge of the fifth and sixth grade bands did some group composition with her groups. I decided to go for broke and involve the audience. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but after some internet searching and a little experimentation, I found a way…

I gave my band students an assignment where I asked them to compose a short piece of music. I gave them 5 rules:

• Start with the clef needed for your instrument.
• Put any sharps or flats you need in order to write in the key of Concert B-flat for your instrument.
• Put the time signature needed in order to play four beats in each measure.
• Write an eight measure piece using any of the notes from the Concert B-flat scale.
• Feel free to use any musical symbols you normally have in your music (slurs and other articulation markings, dynamics, etc.).

I collected the compositions a couple weeks later, selected four that would work in any order, and transposed parts for everyone using Finale. We spent some rehearsal time playing them in different orders and experimenting with a website called polleverywhere.com. I set up a poll that assigned a letter (A-D) to each of the four student compositions. I had the students use their phones and other devices to vote for which piece we would play first, second, and third, which would also automatically decide which one was the final piece. We worked out the kinks in rehearsal, which led to a great concert experience.

For the concert, I set up a PowerPoint presentation with the four compositions in concert pitch and the texting information required to participate in the voting. The band and the audience could actually watch the results live on the screen, so there were interesting reactions in real time to which piece was “winning.” The audience chose which piece was first, which was second, and which was third. The band then played a song that had been written collectively by some of the members of the band and arranged by the audience. It was a great way to combine composition and technology, as well as the band and the audience, all together.