- Видео 150
- Просмотров 90 255
Calvin Dvorsky
Канада
Добавлен 28 янв 2019
I make music. Sometimes it's modernist, sometimes it's experimental, sometime's it's pop, and sometimes it's something completely different.
I work in Steinberg's Cubase and Dorico.
My sound libraries include East West's "Symphonic Orchestra" and all the Halion defaults that come bundled with Cubase and Dorico.
I work in Steinberg's Cubase and Dorico.
My sound libraries include East West's "Symphonic Orchestra" and all the Halion defaults that come bundled with Cubase and Dorico.
Daily Study no. 137 for String Orchestra
Today's study combines some of the harmonic ideas I've been interested in lately, to explore a hazy texture.
The first main idea I used is major harmony (usually with added 9ths) with the b6 in the bass. Nearly every sonority here is based on this. I find these chords seem to "float" as the upper structure isn't related to the bass note, but isn't so disconnected as to sound too dissonant. The root and fifth of the major chord can be heard as the major 3rd and 7th over the bass, making it a kind of augmented major 7th chord.
The second idea is the melodic doublings. I've done plenty of these as parallel doublings, which I like using to alter the timbre of a melody, but here I used diatonic ...
The first main idea I used is major harmony (usually with added 9ths) with the b6 in the bass. Nearly every sonority here is based on this. I find these chords seem to "float" as the upper structure isn't related to the bass note, but isn't so disconnected as to sound too dissonant. The root and fifth of the major chord can be heard as the major 3rd and 7th over the bass, making it a kind of augmented major 7th chord.
The second idea is the melodic doublings. I've done plenty of these as parallel doublings, which I like using to alter the timbre of a melody, but here I used diatonic ...
Просмотров: 84
Видео
Daily Study no. 136 for Solo Flute
Просмотров 692 месяца назад
The goal of today's study was to write a harmonic piece with a single monophonic instrument. My process began by construcing a foundation in three part harmony. I then explored ways to express all three parts in the flute, while also aiming to keep the flute part cohesive and melodic. As always, these pieces are welcome for anyone and everyone to play! All I ask is that you share it with me, be...
Daily Study no. 135 for Solo Piano
Просмотров 2312 месяца назад
Today's study is an exercise in texture and rhythm for piano. Both hands are very active, yet independant, as the right hand plays a consistent 4:3 polyrhythm over the left hand. As always, these pieces are welcome for anyone and everyone to play! All I ask is that you share it with me, because I'd love to hear it done by live players!
Daily Study no. 134 for Woodwind Quintet
Просмотров 422 месяца назад
Today's study continues my exploration of the colourful possibilities of the woodwind quintet. The upper parts layer three instances of the same ostinato at different pitch levels and timings. The goal here was to create a "cloud" of colour without sounding too hazy. The three parts weave in and out from each other, reaching their melodic peaks (accented with grace notes) at different times. Be...
Daily Study no. 133 for Brass Quintet
Просмотров 822 месяца назад
Today's study explores an alternation between major and minor harmony of the same root. In the past I have always found this sound to be dramatic (like Also Sprach Zarathustra) or mysterious, due to its chromatic nature. However, I discovered that by adding the perfect 4th over the root, in addition to the root and fifth, I find that a lot of the drama and mystery disappear behind the tension a...
Daily Study no. 132 for Celesta
Просмотров 302 месяца назад
Today's study is a meditative piece for celesta. Somewhat continuing from my previous piece for celesta in study no. 127, this study is meant to blur the feeling of time, though with a very different approach. The ostinato in the left hand has two functions. Firstly, sustaining each key in such a low register is designed to cause the pitch space to become hazy. Meanwhile, the steady rhythm is d...
Daily Study no. 131 for Woodwind Octet
Просмотров 522 месяца назад
Today's study is a harmonic exercise, focusing on major seconds and major sevenths. My writing began with the four-note chord seen at the start, where two clarinets play a major second, and both notes are echoed a major seventh higher in the flutes. The resulting four pitches are octave-equivalent to a chromatic cluster, but I find this voicing to be remarkably less dissonant. As always, these ...
Daily Study no. 130 for Solo Harp
Просмотров 412 месяца назад
Study for harp today, my main goal was to write something I found expressive. It began with the two chords in the right hand, and the tension between them caused by the C natural and C flat. Next came the melody, where my note choices were very deliberate; wanting the tension found in the G flat against the C chord, and G natural against the C flat chord. For the rhythm, I wanted to subdivide t...
Daily Study no. 129 for String Quartet
Просмотров 822 месяца назад
Today's study is an exercise in harmony. My goal today was to write colourful and expressive four-part harmonies, while avoiding tonality and diatonicism. The melodies came first, and I designed these lines to feature chromaticism, and to use series of notes that do not fit into any diatonic scale. I also wanted to keep these lines as expressive as possible, and avoid sounding like there is no ...
Daily Study no. 128 - "Duet" for Brass Quintet
Просмотров 802 месяца назад
Today's study is an experiment in timbre. The piece is written as a duet between the trombone and tuba, where the trumpets and horn add colourations to the trombone's sound, by doubling its melody at various transpositions. It begins with the horn doubling up an octave, but as the piece develops, other transpositions are used, such as the fifth and major third, not unlike common mutation stops ...
Daily Study no. 127 - "Immemorial" for Celesta
Просмотров 482 месяца назад
I have long been interested in writing music that conveys a static moment in time. For the longest time however, I have really struggled to actually achieve this. While a static moment in time is characterized by a mood, and music is innately excellent at providing a mood, music also innately exists across time, and this has led to my inability to write music like this. However, after yesterday...
Daily Study no. 126 for String Orchestra
Просмотров 632 месяца назад
Today's study focuses on some complex tuplet rhythms. I hadn't seen much reason to write like this in the past, since I believed they add complexity for the performers, but not to the audience. So, I figured there was little reason to do it if other, more readable rhythms could provide a nearly identical experience to the listener. However, after a discussion with my friend Kat Farn, I came to ...
Daily Study no. 125 for Pipe Organ
Просмотров 462 месяца назад
Today's study is an exercise in counterpoint, using the organ trio texture, as recommended by Kat Farn (youtube.com/@thekathal?si=2Wd2OZjTJqqmxHPo). I have talked numerous times about my appreciation for three part harmony, but I have mostly used it in either chorale or melody accompaniment textures. So, it seemed like a good exercise to try to apply my three-voice style to contrapuntal writing...
Daily Study no. 124 for Solo Piano
Просмотров 702 месяца назад
Today's piece is a study on storytelling. Of course, the history of music is full of storytelling, but it's not something I do often with my writing. So, today the goal was to express a real world idea through music, rather than my usual absolute music. I chose to illustrate a kind of fear/anxiety in this study (rather than a specific story). The main metaphor here is in the melody part, which ...
Daily Study no. 123 for Timpani
Просмотров 442 месяца назад
Today's piece is a fun and rhythmic study on writing for timpani. Specifically, it is an exercise on writing around the timpani's limitations, as well as accentuating its strengths. This study is written for one timpanist one four drums. The middle section reduces the rhythmic complexity, and adds some space for the timpanist to retune the drums in order to create a melody. While it certainly i...
Daily Study no. 121 - "Subsonic Swing" for Two Contrabassoons
Просмотров 372 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 121 - "Subsonic Swing" for Two Contrabassoons
Daily Study no. 119 for String Quartet
Просмотров 922 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 119 for String Quartet
Daily Study no. 117 - "Refracted Waters" for Flute Quartet
Просмотров 732 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 117 - "Refracted Waters" for Flute Quartet
Daily Study no. 115 for String Quartet
Просмотров 1062 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 115 for String Quartet
Daily Study no. 113 for Trumpet Quartet
Просмотров 682 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 113 for Trumpet Quartet
Daily Study no. 112 for Flute Quartet
Просмотров 332 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 112 for Flute Quartet
Daily Study no. 111 for Woodwind Quintet
Просмотров 592 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 111 for Woodwind Quintet
Daily Study no. 110 for Clarinet Quartet
Просмотров 472 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 110 for Clarinet Quartet
Daily Study no. 109 for Trumpet Quartet
Просмотров 1052 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 109 for Trumpet Quartet
Daily Study no. 108 for Woodwind Quintet
Просмотров 553 месяца назад
Daily Study no. 108 for Woodwind Quintet
Oh, look! They unbillwurtzed the song
It's the last day of school...
Sounds like something right out of Runescape
Skillfully done 👏👏👏 I am super impressed actually.
Harmonies r fire
Decent
Everything okay?
Yeah, just taking a break from these now that classes have started up again. I thought for a while I could manage, but alas, these studies were cutting into time better spent writing full pieces.
@calvindvorsky I get that; I've also been busy recently with school. Great stuff, too. I love your compositions. Would you ever post some of those bigger pieces? Anyway, take your time with everything. Good luck.
This is literally your average Kirby OST
very attractive. Hope it gets done for real sometime! there's a nice solo celesta piece by Milton Babbitt as well.
2nds
secondsnds
nice but idk how playable it is lol
pretty :) you've certainly got a lot of pieces with undertale vibes
you always have such nice ostinatos
but i think it would've been a better ending to just have that chord play once :P
Very sweet❤
sounds that one section in undertale with the lamps that you have to turn on
ooo scrunkly
very nice :)
Jealous, Musescore can't make that harmonic notation work ;(
har money
hell yeah
Ii think these daily studies are a wonderful way to work.
see now your music's getting good :P
one of us one of us one of us one of us
The piece evolves very organically! Very nice
Seeing the chords, I thought it would've been atonal, so was surprised to hear it was jazzy.
spooky
bong boom
oh you like three part writing do you :P
contrabassooooooooon
contrabassoon go honk
ITS ORGIN TIME
mfw orgin
Increíble ❤❤❤
:D
Hi! its me again. Modes are my jam so I had to comment. First I wanted to say that I really like the endings of 115 and 116. They feel incredibly natural and still musically satisfying. Second, yeah Phrygian is tense. b2 + v diminished go crazy. My solution for that is often let the melody lead the tension and release while letting the harmony stick to chords/steps in thirds to support said melody and keep it rooted at the root note. Also (you probably already know this) when all else fails, pedal your tonic note in the base. Listener can't hear anything else as tonic if you don't let them :) Staring at the notation and listening too hard for what i feel as the tonic, I think I'm feeling mostly F# Aeolian. My best guess for that is the first held note being supported supported both by the start of the next portion of melody and the fifth in the chord in the bass makes that pull really strong. Also the B never gets a complete chance to be the tonic due to its changing third and relatively small importance in the melody, so it ends up just being the other fifth away from the F#, making that resolution even stronger. I think the closest you get to leaving that would be measure 17 (the first measure after the second 2/4) and the very end, where I am almost hearing C# Phrygian. Resolving the D natural down to the C# with a supporting chord would definitely lock you there if you wanted it, and the instance you have on the C# held note at the end kind of forces my ear to be like "fine, its the tonic", which is aided by the fact that it had come from F# tonic (fifth away) and a held G# (the other fifth) Overall though, I feel that resolution points are very important when writing modally. The B does and can feel strong due to its high presence in the bass, but without a melodic resolution with it (at least to my ear which i consider a miracle to have passed aural skills) it never really gets to shine as a true tonic. C# gets a lot closer thanks to being the start of the melody and the things mentioned above, but again I think that F# kinda steals the show here. Again, take everything I said as just a suggestion, and I could talk about modes all day, AND I still really love this piece. You're great!
Thank you! I really appreciate your insight, and now I'm starting to hear F# as the root too, especially for the last melody. It makes the modal switching go between Aeolian and Dorian, which seems more intuitive than switching Dorian and Mixolydian, since the 3rd stays constant (despite the fact that I rarely even used the note A). Though, I do still think that if the 2nd horn had resolved back to B at the end, it would feel like the tonic. Earlier in the piece, though, when the melody rises to F# in measure 8, I very clearly hear that as "moving to iv in C#", rather than a resolution. My brain seems to want to hear that as "melody developing away from the tonic harmony", even if the backgrounds didn't change. Maybe this is just be my ear being biased by the thought process I used while writing it. At the end of the day, I think that this shows how this study has no clear fundamental. My design was a C# melody over a B backdrop, so your ear splitting the difference at F# seems like a logical compromise. I find it endlessly interesting that we have different interpretations. It's kinda like another one of those "emergent properties" I've mentioned before. Perhaps here, the listener's dispositions to harmony can result in entirely different experiences, based on how they try to "settle" the ambiguous harmony. I wonder what note someone with little experience with modes would pick as the root, for instance. If someone were to pick, say, the most common note, I think that would actually be E, thanks to the third horn part. On a surface level, the constancy of that E seems comparable to what you said about using a pedal tonic, yet I don't hear it as the root at all. As for the endings to this one and yesterday's, I'm very glad you like them! I had to fight my habits quite a lot to avoid doing fermata endings again, this study especially. I think the mysterious and unresolved ending actually works well as a thematic parallel to the modal ambiguity, especially since it ends with the slightly more tense D#, rather than a D natural. As for yesterday's, the main reason I included that staccato layer was so that I could use it for the ending, lol.
I don’t know how much you are looking for advice/criticism on these but as a fellow composer (currently in college for music composition) I would like to comment on something. Whether or not you agree/do anything as a result is completely up to you. I’ve noticed on basically all of these daily studies that you always end on a nice satisfying chord, and often have full chord progressions and fermatas at the end, regardless of what came before. Sometimes it feels really out of place. I’m saying it here because I feel like this is a good example. The chord here to me feels out of place with all the moving eighths that came before. Maybe it’s the intent and if so ignore me, but I almost wonder if just letting the last eighth fade away, or turning the chord into an eighth not arpeggio, or doing a scale between your top and bottom point of the eights, or something along those lines would be a more natural ending for this piece, rather than block chords. Again, just my thoughts, take it or leave it. I love your music and admire your ability to always be writing in able to post something new every day. Keep it up!
Criticism is very welcome! I'm always eager to hear other people's thoughts. As a student of composition myself, feedback like this is invaluble as I continue to grow as a composer. I, too, have noticed that a lot of these studies end on some fermata chord, and how that's been getting repetitive. In some of my studies, I made a deliberate effort to avoid that (studies 42, 63, and 87 come to mind (60 kinda as well)), but it hasn't been much of a priority. Moving forward, though, I will aim to put more thought in how I vary the endings of these studies. As for this study in particular, I agree it is an odd pivot to end the piece on. My thinking was that after holding the last chord from the process, I wanted something to mark "the piece is over now". But, as you say, it would have been more cohesive to have the ending build on the texture of what came before, rather than change texture completely. Frankly, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I didn't need to put anything to mark the piece as over. The process is done, so there shouldn't be any more to say. It's like if I put an ending chord in study 63, it would completely ruin the effect that comes from fading away over the ostinato pattern. Anyway, I'm very glad you have been following and enjoying my work! Your feedback is very much appreciated, and I welcome you (and everyone else who watches my videos) to share any and all comments, advice, or criticism you may have!
OOOOOOOOOO
Oooo i like this onea lot, the syncoptations work really well :) (this kind of texture would work well on organ :P)
Thank you! Glad you like it. I definitely want to write for organ soon, I'm still looking for the right vst though
NEW STUDY ALERT 🗣️
Those bassoons overtones are so awesome.
Thanks! I love music with emergent properties like that
sounds like breath of the wild music
Holy moly you write something every day??? This is amazing!
Found you from the At The Airport Terminal Orchestra version video, I really like your dedication.
Lovely work!
this is awesome
I didn’t know i needed this
Thank you very much for writing glissandi that aren't physically impossible!
You're very welcome! I suppose it helps that I used to play trombone though lol
measures 13-16 would sound so cool in a performance, with single notes of the melody "panning" across the room based of the position of the flutist playing it. Fun one that makes me wish I played flute/had flute friends to convince to play this with. Also as a lover of modes, the Lydian usage, intentional or not, is epic
Thank you! I can imagine the quartet spacing themselves out more than usual to enhance the effect too. It's one of those very interesting effects that I think would work well live, but not so much when recorded. Glad you enjoyed the modal writing too!
This sounds amazing actually. Like something you would hear in a videogame but correctly structured as a piece (and bot background music). By any chance do you upload the sheets? I can't see it on my phone
I do plan on uploading the sheet music somewhere soon, I'm just still working out the best way to do it
congrats on 100 days! keep it up
Thank you! Definitely gonna keep going as long as I can
Congratulations on day 100! Your dedication is inspiring!
Thank you very much!