Sunday, November 2, 2008

New Song!

Aren't you all lucky... you get to hear a new song I've recently written. :) I've been working on it off and on for about a month or so. I finally got to perform in my most recent master class on Wednesday. This time I remembered to record me playing. So, I uploaded it to myspace videos. I tried youtube... but youtube only allows videos to be 10 minutes long, and mine happened to be 10 minutes and 29 seconds. I talked about for about a minute at the beginning... if I just hadn't talked. :P Oh well.

I talk much quieter than I play, so be warned. Since I have a bad habit of mumbling and you can't really hear everything I say at the beginning, I'll try to explain what they are all about here. :)

It's three movements: Verwirrung, Traum, and Maske. It's German for Confusion, Dream, and Mask respectively. It's like a progression of emotion when something dramatic happens to you. It could be like a death of someone close to you, breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, maybe even losing a pet. Just something that really hits you hard when you first hear about it. The way I portray it in these songs is initially you're just really confused as to how it could have happened and just angry about it. Why? How? It doesn't seem possible! That kind of thing. Things just don't make sense. A somewhat disjunct melody with some nice dissonant chords to throw things out of whack.

After that stage of confusion... the whole situation starts to sink in and you start to realize what really happened. It feels like a dream. You feel like the world is moving and you are just standing there in the background watching. As the second movement goes on, there are moments of just feeling the magnitude of it all... just plain sadness. It kind of moves from a dream stage to just a stage of mourning and sadness. You now know what really happened and have at least started to accept that it really did happen.

The third movement is settling into life coping with this new situation. You don't really move past it, but you put on a mask to make it seem like you have. The third movement is actually in the key of F minor, but I don't use any notes that would make it sound minor. It's just a mask... it's supposed to sound major and happy, but the reality is that I'm still in a minor key. I'm still sad and mourning... but I'm putting on the appearance that I'm okay. A happy melody that just keeps repeating with some slight variances. I keep telling people, "Yeah! I'm good! I'm happy! Everything's great!" Eventually I get tired of it, and the true emotions start to come out. Then it finally ends with me shoving the happy melody down your throat. "Yeah, it hurts... no I'm HAPPY gosh darn it!"

Not really the happiest of songs, but it was fun to write. :) Please tell me what you think!

2 comments:

Steve Pettey said...

What do I think? (I think I would really like to hear it in its uncompressed audio form) Sarah, I thought I told you to never make your reeds out of aluminum! :)
There are some really nice lines in there - you composed!!! I am so impressed and proud of you! I especially like the middle movement.
Write more and more and at some point write a book of all region etudes...it is November and I am drowning in a sea of malodorous Ferling studies...

Mrs. Hobbs said...

Cool song...You're quite the composer! You're not coming home during the summer or spring terms? You sound like me! But we'll miss seeing you. And little Mark will miss seeing his Aunt Sarah... so you'll have to drop by some time... but I'm glad to hear that you're loving both of your majors though. :-) We're proud of you Sarah!