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.
Mastery vs Novelty
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I've found myself watching quite a lot of World Cup coverage over the last few weeks. Not so much the football itself (beyond En-gur-laaand!), if I'm honest, but the discussion around it. One programme I almost always watch during international tournaments is The Overlap: Stick to Football, and recently they were discussing England winger Noni Madueke's performances. During the conversation, Gary Neville made a point that struck me as being relevant far beyond football. There's a common belief that the very best attacking players are unpredictable. The thinking is that neither the player nor the defender knows what is going to happen next, making them difficult to defend against and, thus, good attacking players. On the face of it, that seems perfectly logical. But Neville challenged the idea. He pointed to players such as Mohamed Salah and argued that the opposite is often true. Salah usually knows exactly what he wants to do: cut in from the right wing to strike the ball with his left foot into the far side of the goal. The defenders know what he wants to do as well. The problem is that he has practised and deployed those movements so relentlessly, and executes them so well, that stopping him becomes extraordinarily difficult. That idea stayed with me because I think the same principle can apply to composition. Many of us worry about repeating ourselves. We chase novelty, fearing that if listeners begin to recognise our habits we've somehow failed to be original. Yet when we think about our favourite composers, isn't the opposite often true? We recognise their music because they do have habits. They have favourite harmonic turns, characteristic ways of developing a melody, recurring orchestral colours, preferred formal structures and rhythmic gestures. They return to these ideas throughout their careers, not because they've run out of inspiration, but because they've become exceptionally good at using them. Those recurring ideas become signatures rather than repetitions. Of course, this isn't an excuse to write the same piece over and over again. There's a world of difference between developing a personal language and simply copying yourself. But perhaps originality doesn't come from constantly inventing completely new techniques. Perhaps it comes from knowing your own musical instincts well enough that you can keep refining them. After all, nobody complains that Ravel sounds too much like Ravel, or that Vaughan Williams sounds suspiciously like Vaughan Williams. Their musical fingerprints are precisely what make their music so compelling. As composers, we sometimes put enormous pressure on ourselves to be endlessly unpredictable. Maybe a better goal is simply to become so fluent with the things we genuinely love writing that they become difficult to imitate and impossible to ignore. Regards, Not to your liking? Unsubscribe below. |
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.
Over the past few weeks, we have explored the form, melodies, motifs, and transpositions that make up Åse's Death. Today I would like to turn to the harmony. Yet rather than beginning with the specifics and theory--Italian 6ths and secondary dominants--I would like to begin with a question. What if Grieg's music is doing more than expressing grief? A crossroads At this point in the play, Peer finds himself at a crossroads. His mother has died. He has been shunned by the community in which he...
One of the recurring themes in this series has been Grieg's economy of means. Repeatedly, we find him achieving more with less. If you are joining this series partway through, we have already explored: The binary form of the movement The arrangement of its themes The phrase structure of Melody 1 The motivic construction of Melody 2 Today I would like to look at one of the principal techniques Grieg uses to extend his material: transposition. Transposition and modulation in Åse’s Death More of...
One thing worth noticing in Åse’s Death is that, although the two melodies contrast strongly in character, they are not truly independent of one another. Instead, Grieg builds both from a very small pool of material. If you are joining this series partway through, over the past few weeks we have explored: The binary form of the movement The internal arrangement of the A and B sections Melody 1 and its phrase, idea, and motif structure Melody 2: Phrases and Ideas Today I would like to turn to...