Hello. My name is George Marshall and I am the founder of Any Old Music. I am a composer with over 10-years of experience, having completed work on 50+ projects for video-games, films and the concert hall. In 2020, I completed my doctorate in Music Composition. My PhD was on constraint and how it emerges in creative projects. For example, team discussions in video-game projects. If a video-game team presented a mood-board and certain briefs, these constrain and challenge the composer to compose in a particular way or style. Less quantifiable than, say, the application of serialism, but probably just as (if not more) constraining and creatively directing. It was during my PhD that I realised that there would only be two outcomes for me as a composer: I became a professional composer who needed to compose lots of music in not enough time. I became an amateur/hobbyist or semi-professional composer who needed to compose less music but still with not enough time. With this in mind I eventually opted for something more along the lines of semi-professional, but with an ambition of setting up Any Old Music as a means of helping similarly time strapped music makers. Particularly those in the second group, the hobbyists and semi-professionals, whose composing competes much more for time against other aspects of life. Composition is incredibly rewarding. You never stop learning and developing as a composer. Furthermore, many of us boast renegade autodidactic personalities to a certain extent. My hope is that Any Old Music’s self-paced composition courses can help composers to continue growing, by learning through creating and doing so in their own time.
A look inside my arranging sketch
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Sometimes you just don’t get it right Or at least, that’s what I thought I was going to discuss in this email. Having revisited my first attempt at arranging the Winnie the Pooh theme, I think I may have been unduly hard on myself. The first effort wasn’t bad at all, and I now find myself wondering whether it could work as a contrasting version of the theme in the new arrangement, or whether I should simply strengthen the orchestration of the newer version, which may be scored a little too sparsely for an amateur group. Perhaps by the end of this email I will have made my mind up. Revisiting ideas: why creative work often improves through comparison Comparing these ideas offers a useful glimpse into how an arranging sketch develops. My hope is that it demonstrates something important: ideas rarely arrive perfectly shaped, and creativity often means revisiting, reshaping, and reconsidering what we have already written. Exploring multiple possibilities is not just part of the process: it is one way of defining creativity itself. Creativity is a divergent act, even if Schoenberg and others might prefer to describe it as convergent. Listening and looking: the arranging sketches so far Below is a Google Drive folder containing four files:
If you begin with the first sketch, you will notice that it is shorter and incomplete. Comparing it with the later score reveals a substantial difference: the newer version is fully laid out in the structure and duration I am aiming for. I have also added a piano staff to help work through compositional details such as the introduction and coda. Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11EG8BFZZWU456fBNGS_C-HAd44QRWcTu?usp=sharing Simplifying the first verse: reducing texture to make space You should notice that the orchestration of the first verse is dramatically revised in the later version. This was not because I thought the original orchestration was poor, but because I wanted a less texturally busy verse: something that would leave space for the countermelody contrast that appears later at the dal segno. However, I do wonder whether a little more support in the accompanying voices might be helpful, because:
And concert bands are most commonly amateur and welcoming groups with players of vastly different abilities. What do you think of the orchestrations? Verse 2 and the chorus: refining instrumental roles and texture In the first sketch score, there are basic ideas for the second verse and the beginnings of a chorus. In the near-complete version, these sections are fleshed out with some refinements. For example:
Some ideas remained unchanged:
Creating contrast: sketching a modulatory variation In the newest version of the score, I have composed a modulatory and varied version of the verse. Returning to 3/4, I initially sketched the texture by giving the woodwinds the rhythm I wanted without finalising the notes. That is why you can see chord symbols written on the brass staff I used them to correct the harmonic shaping of the woodwind and saxophone writing. Introduction and coda still to be written As you can clearly see, I still need to complete the beginning and end. I would like the introduction and coda to draw on motifs and fragments from across the arrangement. At the moment, the coda is more developed than the introduction. From sketch to full score: a built-in review stage Some things will inevitably change as I move from sketch to open score. However, I expect the process to involve more revoicing and redistribution than large-scale rewriting. This is one of the reasons I like working through a sketch score phase: it creates a natural “hard stop” in the process: a built-in moment to review and verify ideas before committing them to a full score. Closing thoughts: revision as part of the craft Revisiting this sketch has been a useful reminder that arranging (like composing or orchestrating) is rarely a straight line from idea to finished score. Sometimes the first attempt contains more value than we initially realise. Other times, the second attempt reveals what the first was really trying to become. Both versions are part of the same creative process. Next time, I will likely share how I move from this sketch into a full score, and what changes inevitably appear once the music is distributed across the ensemble. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have comments, questions, or observations about the arrangement: feel free to reply to this email. Hearing how others approach these problems is always illuminating. Regards, P.S. Incase you need the files to my arrangement again, here they are: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11EG8BFZZWU456fBNGS_C-HAd44QRWcTu?usp=sharing |
Any Old Music
Hello. My name is George Marshall and I am the founder of Any Old Music. I am a composer with over 10-years of experience, having completed work on 50+ projects for video-games, films and the concert hall. In 2020, I completed my doctorate in Music Composition. My PhD was on constraint and how it emerges in creative projects. For example, team discussions in video-game projects. If a video-game team presented a mood-board and certain briefs, these constrain and challenge the composer to compose in a particular way or style. Less quantifiable than, say, the application of serialism, but probably just as (if not more) constraining and creatively directing. It was during my PhD that I realised that there would only be two outcomes for me as a composer: I became a professional composer who needed to compose lots of music in not enough time. I became an amateur/hobbyist or semi-professional composer who needed to compose less music but still with not enough time. With this in mind I eventually opted for something more along the lines of semi-professional, but with an ambition of setting up Any Old Music as a means of helping similarly time strapped music makers. Particularly those in the second group, the hobbyists and semi-professionals, whose composing competes much more for time against other aspects of life. Composition is incredibly rewarding. You never stop learning and developing as a composer. Furthermore, many of us boast renegade autodidactic personalities to a certain extent. My hope is that Any Old Music’s self-paced composition courses can help composers to continue growing, by learning through creating and doing so in their own time.
We discovered a couple of weeks back that Edvard Grieg’s Ase’s Death is a binary form composition built around two melodies, with each section having its own material. In section A there is melody 1 (T1), and in section B there is melody 2 (T2). Today I want to look at how Grieg constructs melody 1, breaking down its phrase structure, the sub-phrase structure that I will call ideas, and the motifs that comprise and distinguish those ideas. Here is a PDF that includes annotations and analysis...
One thing I have never really liked about some theory, analytical, and pedagogical composition books that deal with form is how they present it. They will often tell you that a piece uses ternary form. Or sonata form. Or, as we discovered with Grieg last week: binary form in Åse’s Death. This week's annotated score/analysis: Arrangement - Åse's Death.pdf The Problem with How Form Is Often Taught However, for the student, this can create false understandings, misconceptions, and...
The longing son, weeping for a dying mother: Åse’s Death is one of the most moving moments in Grieg’s music. Yet the music avoids the melodrama we often associate with the Romantic era. Instead, it is restrained and respectful: music that mourns quietly while still expressing deep emotion and yearning. Background: Peer Gynt Åse’s Death is the second movement of Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, drawn from the incidental music he wrote for fellow Norwegian Henrik Ibsen’s play of the same name (first...