composition — Blog — Christian Mietke

In the second half of 2023 my collective (https://acantunkollektiv.com/) and me decided upon our next project.
We wanted to do a project surrounding the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich in 2024. We quickly found an orchestra to collaborate with (Sinfonietta Dresden · Kammerorchester (sinfonietta-dresden.de)) as well as a dance group (Perform[d]ance e. V. – Zeitgenössische Tanzvermittlung (performdance.de)) for choreography and dancers.

As it is unfortunately the case with organizing concerts as a non-institutional, independent group, it is always unclear (until the financial situation is set tight) whether the project is going to happen, has to be changed a lot of might even fail. So I hope there is going to be recording later that I can share.

Regardless of the circumstances I still wanted to share my compositional approach give an analysis of my work in parts and explain how i turned this into a score.

The Idea

In search of an idea/concept I researched Caspar David Friedrich and found something I found very inspiring. In order for himself to find inspiration he traveled alone into the wilderness, exposing himself to the forces of nature, only taking a sketch book with him to draw in it.

It quickly dawned upon me to somehow recreate this situation only in a slightly more abstract way:

The orchestra is the force of nature

One single dancer is the lyrical subject

The next decision was to divide “the force of nature” into 4 big formal sections corresponding to (albeit a bit esoteric) Water, Air, Earth and Fire (in that order).

Since my piece was going to be the first we had the idea to already have music and dance happening whilst the audience is still entering. So I divided the first part into two sections: one somewhat improvised-free-form section (which I will analyse in this post) and a second one which follows a more traditional approach. The first part is mostly decided by signs gives by the conductor and can last from 8 to 15 minutes.

For this part the orchestra is divided into two groups: Instrumentalists with lighter instruments (like violins, viola, flute, etc.) are placed in the room around the entering audience, whilst the remaining heavier instruments remain seated at their regular position.

The first group is given material and gestures to experiment and improvise with (also with each other) whilst the second group will be gives signs by the conductor to play their corresponding parts.

Since the score is pretty big - too big for this format - I can only present little zoomed-in snippets, but I will try my best to keep it coherent.

Enough exposition, let’s dive into the main part.

On the first page, the woodwinds are instructed (in German) as followed: they are given pitch material and a little example of how to play with it but are free to break away from it. For them the other notations (like senza misura for 2-3 minutes) do not concern them as they are placed in the room.

Same goes for the upper string section.

Their pitch material can be summarized as followed:
Stacked 4ths with one of them being a tritone (C-F#)

Since the first part represents water, I wanted to use a harmonic landscape which in itself has an archaic feeling to it.

With the F# it also kept a somewhat “major” feeling to it since stacked 4ths tend to become “minor” really fast.

There are two elements: A long sustained chord with improvisations section, followed by a “con misura” section which is conducted in regular time. It begins with the former sections and changes back and forth between the two.

For the Horn and Harp I also gave improvisational instructions , though they stayed at their regular place in the orchestra.
The Horn will play long, sustained notes, whilst the harp will arpeggiate with increasing tempo corresponding to the dynamics.

There is a division and change in this “bar” which has to be synchronized by the conductor.

And at the bottom you have the celli and doublebasses play a very long sustained chord which will change at the same time the harp and horn have their material changing as well.

All Instruments stick to the harmonic system of stacked 4ths in some octave in one way or another (so far).

Following this idea of waves, of having two elements going from one to the other, I wanted to also apply the same process to the sound itself: by having it become “deconstructed” and “constructed” - “tonal” and “atonal”

This is an example following the first improvisational part. Now were do have a meter (4/4) and you can see a crescendo-decrescendo (and crescendo again).

Coming from a type of “non-sound” -playing on the bridge - and developing into a way more concrete, ordinario, Cmaj#11.

I tried to use a lot of extended techniques in combination with “regular” sounding techniques to further the contrast - but not always. Sometimes it stays a bit more in the “sound design” category rather than a “pitch” category or sometimes it is only very directly tonal.

This process will repeat throughout the first part.

Similar the horn is also instructed to take the mouthpiece off, flip it around and blow just air through the instrument (this technique creates a much more audible wind sound). First playing a fluttertongue effect and then going into single “breath attacks”.

This gesture happens at the same time as the strings in the example above do their gesture.

In the second iteration of this figure the horn plays as follows:

Again, with a development from air to a concrete pitch, but this time with a little twist: Whilst the player will try to play the low F# (C Score), he or she is instructed to sing a small melody on top (which might have to sung an octave higher if it is too low).

After the second repetition there is going to be a big change in tonality. We are coming back to a senza misura section, which will last 2-3 minutes.

The second group of instrumentalists does a dramatic shift away from the previous quartal harmony.

Since group one will still stick to their material (basically a G major scale) and group two will drift to a “Bbmaj7,#9,#11,b13” scale it will create a tonal disconnect between the two groups resulting in a much more dissonant soundscape.

From here the whole tonality will find its way back to the initial “Gmaj” tonality by going first to Eb and then back to C maj. Same process once again: going from sounds to concrete pitch (cello on the bridge, doublebass playing a flageolett glissando with a lot of pressure in the first gesture and cello playing a vertical tremolo - bowing up and down - and the doublebass playing a pitch with a lot of pressure).

Having arrived in Gmaj again we come to the last senza misura part.

This time it is only half as long and ends with the crescendo, ending the first big section.

This is also the point where the roaming instrumentalists are instructed to walk back to their seat by the conductor.

I will cover the second part of the “water section” in my next blog post where we will go into the next bit from the image below. So stay tuned.

For my very first blog post I will examine and talk about my process regarding this question.

Probably everyone playing a video game has encountered following event happening at some point: There is a big theme in the music, which is cool when hearing it the first time. It’s also still ok on the second go - maybe even the third. But after some time it will feel a bit stale. After all you can hear exactly where and when it loops - most likely right there where you put your big theme.

To circumvent that , I noticed, music in video games often shies away from showing themes and melodies and would rather stay on a rhythmical and/or harmonic layer exclusively (which in absolutely valid and I would argue in certain instances even warranted). But this leads to the music becoming bland very quickly and forgetful, as it is often the melodies that resonate with us.

So, what's the solution? Is it too repetitive or too bland?

One approach is to craft longer music pieces with evolving structures, taking players on an auditory journey that mirrors their in-game experiences.

The music would have to set up in a larger scope - often aiming at the 5 minute mark and/or going beyond that.

But sometimes that is not an option - sometimes the music has to be tight, constant: like for a boss fight!

(I'd also like to mention that music in the style of John Williams works well for this - his compositions for action scenes feature ever-changing music that provides a complex listening experience worth revisiting.)

I was faced with this during my writing of the music for the game “Pentaquin: Deeds of Twillight”
Pentaquin: Deeds Of Twilight bei Steam (steampowered.com)

I want to share with you my process and my thoughts, which is by no means a comprehensive analysis and guide.

Initially, I tailored the piece to match the atmosphere in the usual fashion - though in hindsight, this approach may require adjustment based on lessons learned.

I chose to begin the piece straight into the action: no big introduction, no swells, cymbals or anything similar.

To make it loop better I decided to begin a melody at the very last bars, which is supposed to carry over into the beginning of the new loop - so essentially it was longer than the piece. Bear with me here as this is later solved in FMod without any cutting of overhanging tails is required.

I should also note that the accompaniment and general structure remained consistently the same very end, as it is in the beginning. The highlighted Melody is played by the horns in big marcato gestures.

This made the loop very smooth, but what about melodies within the piece?

I wanted to approach it in a “modular” fashion so I thought about how could I achieve it and also fit it into a workflow without having to essentially write the same piece several times with variations but also keep it small on the footprint for later implementation via FMod.

I used Cubase’s Lanes function to create a second track within the instrument track to write a alternating melody in there. And - as mentioned - in hindsight, I should have begun working like this:

Writing parts where you know that it won’t be affected by change in a lane and leave it empty for parts where you know it will have a modular part. Those you can then write in the other lanes.

So I had to remove melodies from the main track and copy it into the lane (but perhaps this approach still works for you)

First I would export the “skeleton” with lane 1 (don’t forget to solo the lane) and second I would export every other lane as a solo track setting markers just about before the melody starts and where the reverb tail ends.

This eliminated concerns about reverb tails and avoided the need to cut or copy anything into short clips.

Now I had a big “main” audio file and a few small melody modules. Time to implement!

I began by closing the loop with a transition phase at the end of the music clip, allowing the beginning to start immediately and the ending to fade out smoothly - with overlapping melodies.

Loop begins before the reverb tail (and overlapping melody)

Next, I added the melody modules to their corresponding places in the piece, exporting them synced to the bars in my DAW for easy integration into FMOD (after setting the tempo and meter there).

This is how the project window looked like after I imported all the files. There are only a few variations, as it is not going to repeat too often, but it is a technique that is way more expandable.

Look at the beginning. Here I put 3 different Multi Instruments. When composing this part I gave 3 Instruments (piccolo, flutes and trumpet) each their own variation but by them separately being chosen it creates up to 6 possible variations.

Here is a short clip of the beginning:

That is basically it.

This way I established a workflow for myself that lends me a lot of flexibility in writing variable music, which can be applied to pretty much any point in the piece:

the overlapping elements at the looping point
melodies within the piece
it can stretch even a bit further and change larger parts of the ensemble including instrumentation, rhythm and harmony
or be even more modular and be divided into a lot of small “chunk” that each get chosen by the game engine either randomly or by player input

My process: Writing a piece for orchestra and dancers Part I

How does one make a good loop?