Hey dudes,

I recently completed a small tidbit for one of my composer buds in Australia named Kevin Penkin.

He and I both share an early composing influence of Nobuo Uematsu, who many will know from his music in the Final Fantasy series.  We met when he contacted me about my podcast, Into the Score and we’ve been connecting on Facebook and Twitter ever since.

It’s always nice to give to someone who you know is doing well and he’s really getting some fantastic opportunities to showcase his great writing and I’m really happy about that.  So, I wrote him a piece – it’s small, but I feel that it captures a sense of connection over great distances.  Of course, you need not interpret it the way that I do and it may trigger something different inside when you hear it – we all interact with music in different ways and I really believe that that’s a beautiful thing

Here it is:

“Letters from Far Away…” – Kenley Kristofferson

Letters from Far Away

You can find his work on his website  - http://www.hibikiharuto.com or his YouTube channel and follow him on Twitter.

Cheers, mates!
Kenley!

Wow, long time since our last post, eh?

Lots of big projects on the go, so I promise that you’ll be seeing some exciting updates and behind-the-scenes work! But for now, a little bit on composing and some ideas that I’ve been thinking about.

One of the projects that I have on the go isn’t a musical one, but involves a lot of writing.  I used to just do everything in a word processor: Type it, edit it, push it out.  But over the last few months, I’ve really been into doing everything the ol’ fashioned way – with a pencil and paper.  As for recently, I’ve really put that into my composing too:

I’ve been putting everything into a basic SATB-framework (that’s “Soprano-Alto-Tenor-Bass,” or musical ranges from average-highest to average-lowest*) and, when you do that, you see where all of the voices are in relation to one another before you start doubling or transposing.  You see the relationship between the Soprano and Bass especially, seeing that, at times it moves in 10ths (octave+3rd) or in 6ths; sometimes in converging/diverging/oblique motion, or sometimes just doing two different things.

When you sit at the piano and just hammer the parts out in your head, you’ll get some weird harmonies or run out of space in your middle voices (because “what’s in your head” sometimes doesn’t work in practice), or you just voice things in an awkward way.  They sound good in your head, but all of a sudden, you have nowhere to put half of your instruments because you’ve mashed your Soprano/Bass too close together!

I know, I’m not writing Renaissance polyphony, but if you approach your modern writing with that SATB approach, you’d be surprised with what the music gives you.  THEN, when you write it in your notebook or sketchbook (Moleskine makes a great one), you have a chance to revise or edit before it even gets on the page.

NOW, the great challenge is this: Is what you wrote on the page what you hear in your head? When those two ideas work in tandem, the product can be simply beautiful That’s what I’m working toward.

Some homework/commentary for our creative types:

- How much do you prepare before beginning your first draft?
- How do you get your first ideas down? What is your method? (I love hearing how creators conceive/transcribe their first ideas!)
- After you’ve transcribed your first ideas, how do you move them into your first draft?

Discuss! Can’t wait to hear your ideas!

Cheers, mates!
Kenley!

*I say “average-highest” and “average-lowest” because I can still go up to Sopranino or down to Contrabass, but it’s not really useful for of my purposes and isn’t really convention for a lot of writers to use in organizing their parts.