Assignment One Design Plan

I have now completed my basic 'blueprint' for assignment one. In designing the plan, I first planned my plan! In other words, I decided on a process which would allow me to bring together a coherent and useful design plan:

Process

Analyse given material. Research any unknown percussion notations.

Use and extend given material as A, and take and develop motive. Decide ABC structure.

Work out time per bar, to establish length and repeat of sections to fit the criteria of 2-3 minutes.

Place structure template onto a story, to give direction of thematic material and instruments within each section.

So then, I tasked myself with looking carefully at the given material, and colour-coded the bars (same colours are an exact or almost exact repeat):

Given Part

Two-bar introduction

1-5
6
7-8
9-10
11-14

I then worked out the approximate amount of time each section would need to be in order to have a complete piece of between two and three minutes long and decided roughly when I would develop existing material and when I would introduce new material. Finally, I imagined a scene that the music would be set to, and this allowed me to create the musical character for each section:

Intro Section (4s)
Bars 1-2 (given)

Scene - Demons appear

Principle Section (40s)

[A]
Bars 3-11 (given) (9 bars)
Bars 12-20 a modified repeat of previous (9 bars)

[B]
Bars 21-29 new rhythmic material (9 bars)
Bars 30-38 a modified repeat of previous (9 bars)

Scene - A dark cave encloses a roaring fire. The demons are feasting and dancing with depraved frenzy.

Musical Character - A quick and lively dance, primal in nature.

Subsidiary Section (24s)

[C]
Bars 39-62 (24 bars)

Scene - Calmness, demons resting with one eye open, finally getting frantic again leading to next scene.

Musical Character - Ominous and brooding, building to a climax.

Principle Reprise (1m24s)

[B]+[A]+[C]+[A]
Bars 63-131 (68 bars)

Scene - The demons have awakened, they dance with renewed vigor, more furiously than before...

Musical Character - Similar to Principle section, but more exaggerated.

Closing Section (18s)

[A]
Bars 132-149 modified A section to close (18 bars)

...each eventually burning out of existence.

Musical Character - Lively, but dwindling in texture.

I haven't decided instrumentation at this stage, from my previous exercises I've found that initial instruments often bear little resemblance to my finally choices anyway, so I'll let this side of the composition work out naturally during the writing process.

My next job is to do some further research on percussion instruments. I have Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration which is extremely useful alongside the accompanying CD's, which give actual clips of how the different instruments sound depending on how they are played. I will also make a start on creating the new material required for the composition, such as in section's [B] and [C].