The Third & The Seventh
| Year | 2011 |
| Time | 1:05 |
| Size | 1.47 MB |
My latest electronic music project involved selecting a movie clip, erasing the audio, and writing my own score for it, similar to Drift. This time, my target was a one-minute excerpt (9:20-10:23) from Alex Roman’s breathtaking short film, The Third & The Seventh. The video features Roman’s CG renderings of architecture, including the Phillips Exeter Academy Library and the Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The realism of his work is made more impressive by the fact that every aspect of the video, including sound and music production (except the composition itself) is solely Roman’s doing. With his approval, I may soon be able to provide the excerpt accompanied by the music I’ve written for it.
I’m gradually exploring the capabilities of Cubase and my VST library, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra. This piece was more involved than my previous endeavors, particularly in its use of keyswitches for varied articulation. As a result, I was able to add effects like the visceral crescendos in the brass.
From a compositional standpoint, the piece is postminimalist. Despite all the artifice in the orchestration, it is extremely simple; it is based almost entirely around putting two triads together and seeing how they get along. Each shot in the video roughly encompasses a different pair, which imply dorian, lydian, or Neapolitan-to-dominant relationships. The meter and tempo remain remarkably constant despite my attempt to closely adhere to cues; they are underpinned by polyrhythmic ostinatos (three against two).
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Tags: brass, cello, chamber, electronic, horn, mixed media, orchestra, piano, strings, video, violin