composers

/composers45

A place to share original compositions, works by favorite composers, theory, analysis, and all things related.

Hi everyone,

"Imaginative Aural Mechanism", my new ambient/electronic music album is now released on Bandcamp.

Please join me for the listening party session in the next hour at 08:00 pm WIB (Western Indonesian Time) on Bandcamp through this link:
https://ranggapurnamaaji.bandcamp.com/merch/listening-party-imaginative-aural-mechanism-ranggas-new-album

Kindly enjoy~
Just picked this up the other day and listened to it today.

Composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, wrote a violin concerto specifically for violinist Isaac Stern.

If you’re not familiar with this composer, you’ve likely heard his piece ‘Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima’ used in films like The Shining, The People Under The Stairs, Twin Peaks, and more.

‘Threnody’ is known for its relentless wall of dissonance and atonality. The violin concerto was composed later and returned to a more tonal leaning, but utilized the textural and gestural techniques developed in his more extreme earlier works.

The violin is the main focus throughout the entire work, but the orchestra does all these insane impressionistic things to highlight the melody and shift gears. Sometimes it sounds like bells, sometimes a bunch of car horns, constantly making gestures that feel physical like someone swiping a paint brush across a canvas.
Currently writing a very long and verbose post about my recent compositions for this little album release.

They act as a major turning point in my perspective as a composer.
From LW Art Challenge II. Theme and variations🎹
From LW Art Challenge III🎹
Writing mid-IQ music channeling mid-IQ neo-barbaric impulses under the guise of catharsis—music to which one’s own supporting family won’t lend a courtesy ear, let alone with any chance of commercial success—is its own self-flagellating, self-fulfilling prophecy, a daily practice to which I’ll continue to submit like the Mormon prophet who faithfully maintains the lie until his bill comes due, his meekness fulfilled and wholly inherited by the earth, naturally succumbing yet never consciously realizing the true magnificence in the ritual of the worms.
I don’t consider my self a pianist. It’s mainly a tool. So it’s always weird when I realize I just sat there and played the piano for an hour. lol
Listening back to my piece from the first challenge.

The LW Art Challenge was originally born out of a desire to compose an album that explores the possibilities of MIDI piano.

Though these pieces act like studies, they are complete compositions under the banner of an overarching theme. The theme comes from an exploration of my own impulses and observing how they manifest in society.

Each piece is directly inspired by a phrase from various pieces of media and philosophy.

Instead of working in isolation, I wanted to extend an invite to my friends here to make something based on the current phase prompt I was using each month.

Most of the compositions I’ve written during these challenges, including a few more, will be on an album that will be released soon.

Raw, off-kilter, and some beautiful moments. Inspired by heavy metal, informed by the rules of counterpoint and contemporary composition techniques.
https://x.com/lonewick_/status/1802032987879653378?s=46
Excerpt from 'Study No. 24' from 'Studies for Player Piano' by American-Mexican composer, Conlan Nancarrow (1912-1997).

49 Studies were over a forty-year span (1948-1988), and this one was somewhere between 1961-1965.

[video by Jürgen Hocker]
Intermezzos between the works use a form of a technique called 'temporal dissonance': rhythms that lead you to expect consistency but are just slightly off. Some notes are slightly longer/shorter than others.

There is risk of this technique being perceived merely as a bad attempt at playing a consistent rhythm. For this reason, I've emphasized some of the differences a bit to hopefully come across as intentional.

What's funny is that no matter how it is perceived, the effect of cognitive dissonance is achieved.
☑️ Include Audio Tail
Currently mastering my little album🎹🎚️ Been trying to find the time to make it happen. Looking to get it out within the next couple weeks.
Complexity not for its own sake, but as a natural progression from simplicity.
You often hear people saying things like, “Music isn’t what it used to be,” or other phrases to the effect that music is no longer “good”.

What they are really saying is that the music they are spoon-fed by a single narrow entity isn’t spoon-feeding them the music of their taste anymore.

There is more music being released on a daily basis than ever before by insane multiples. That means, by default, there is more “good” music coming out nowadays than there ever was in all of history.

Nearly anything you can possibly imagine is being made right now. All you have to do is get off autopilot and type a few more words into your search bar.
Listened to the ‘Love Supreme’ album in full, then this one was suggested next. I love the choatic, disjunct, out-of-the-box approach, particularly in Ellington’s playing. He gets really dirty in some and cleans up in others.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL-NbN8uTOijEsoYqLkgqDYeAaN1OLGRo&si=JS_Yvi_S4qkF917V
I really enjoyed the recordings!

I also listened to this album that was suggested next. Really nice guitar music by Tidiane Thiam.
https://tidianethiam.bandcamp.com/album/siftorde?from=footer-cc-a2841108068
"Recorded in a wide range of settings – during all-night sessions in and around the village, while paddling on the river by canoe, and at various locations deep in the surrounding forest, including the mythical homes of the ancestors and animal spirits, these tapes are not only a stunning artifact of indigenous ethnomusicology, they also reveal the deep connection between sound and the shape-shifting animism of Wakuénai (Curripaco) society."
https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-shape-shifters-field-recordings-from-the-amazonian-lowlands-1981-1985