Instrumentation

I've had fun documenting my thought process on writing Silence of Silvermoon.  While on one hand, it feels a bit like boasting, it's been an interesting experience forcing myself to stop and think about why I made the decisions I did.  This should be the next-to-last post on the subject, though!

Instrumentation!



One of the series of courses I took in college was Instrument Methods; the courses were really designed for students in the Music Pedagogy track so they could learn the basics of how to play and teach instruments, but the classes were also very useful for composition students as well.  It gave us hands-on experience in the limitations of different instruments, how they sounded, and what we could reasonably write for them.

We studied different instruments each semester.  One semester was spent on Clarinets & Saxohpones, another was spent learning to play string instruments, another course was on brass instruments, etc.   We moved much faster than a child just picking up music would for the first time would, as all of us already knew how to read music and were familiar with the theory.  It was actually quite fun, and made me a little sad that I couldn't afford to buy an isntrument as a child.

It did have the side effect of making my free time disappear.  My senior year, I had to find enough time to practice singing, piano, percussion, woodwind, strings, conducting, write music for two different composition classes, and organize practice sessions for my senior recital.  Oh, and let's not forget all the non-music courses I had homework for and being president of two campus organizations.  Plus I was sitting in on orchesta rehearsals whenever I could.   There was a reason I put off my wedding until after graduation. I'm glad I hadn't discovered WoW yet.

I do rather miss those days, and feel like there's still so much more I could be learning.  I consider instrumentation to be my weakest area.

I don't have a lot of trouble writting songs lines.  Since I wasn't able to buy an instrument, I had been singing in a choir of some sort since I was in elementary school.  Ten plus years of vocal experience hadn't made me that great of a singer, but it did give me an innate sense of how to write a decent vocal line.  That was something I didn't realize until college and I started reading textbooks pointing how to shape melodies to emphasise words in the lyrics, or giving helpful advice on what vowels were easier for singers.  The books would caution about using unusual intervals or large leaps without writting some support in the accompaniment to help singers find the right note.  That seemed rather obvious to me.   Then I'd get the chance to look at my classmate's music when they wrote for voice, and it would baffle me sometimes at how they'd break up phrases or expect a singer to magically pick a difficult note out of nowhere.


Then I'd look at my music and wonder what horrible things I was asking of my violin players.

Taking the method courses helped relieve some of that nervousness, to a small amount.  I have a much better idea of what instruments are capable of, but not nearly as much as I'd like.  So I tend to write conservatively.

A conservative nature was just fine for Silence.  I had pictured it as a piece of music that could be played by a small number of chamber musicians.  No piano, although it's the instrument I know the best.  I decided to make the main instrument a guitar.

I am horrible at writting for guitar.  I'm not very sure about how to write for chords.  I did not attempt it.   The part for guitar is the simplest thing in world, plucked single notes, largely arpeggios.   It is almost embarrassingly simple; I fear I may accidentally insult a guitarist with the question, "Can you play thing?"

Still, the guitar is the heart of the instrumentation.  It provides the structural support for the harmony and rhythmic momentum.  I had considered using fast triplets, but it seemed too rushed and the notation would have been messy.  I decided instead on calm eight notes for a more soothing sound, with an occasional dotted note to provide a moment of hesitation and a push forward.  Straight eighth notes throughout would have been boring.

I wrote the flute part next; I wanted a descant type of sound, plus something to fill the spaces between versus.  The flute initially picks up on the faster rhythm of notes used for "Silvermoon" as opposed to the longer notes of the beginning of the verse.  I say, 'I wrote,' but really, it wrote itself after the first couple of notes.  It was one of those beautiful moments in writing where the notes dictated themselves to me.

Next was the cello, to provide a solid base and balance out the tone.  The basics of it were easy to write, as the cello was mostly picking up the root of the chords.  I decided to have it borrow some of the elements from the melody to add interest, particularly in the opening two measures.  I like that it now introduces that signature step downward that characterized the melody before the voice comes in.

The tambourine was thrown in for fun.  There was no real thought process behind it except 'this sounds good.'

Overall, I like the sound that was created.  It's a very simple piece, but there's a unity of elements, and it reflects the somewhat hollow effect I was after.  I think that even if I were better at writing for instruments, I'd not have written something much different.