Tuesday, October 14, 2008

My final character piece was played on Friday in class. (Thanks to Chris Miller- the fill-in trombonist). It was great having Chris play my piece since he loves the trombone sooo much and gave me some really helpful feedback, such as one note I had written for the pedal range of the instrument wasn't really possible. However, he did say it was pretty idiomatic for the trombone- something I've been really trying to focus on, especially since the trombone is (for me) such an interesting and unique instrument.

I was pretty pleased as well with the performance o f the piece because nobody picked out what I feared would be its demise. Sometimes it's what people don't say that makes you happiest. The piece took form out of various ideas that I had discreetly. Trying to format them into a coherent whole was quite the undertaking. I'm still looking at how I can meld them in the best way possible.

I used a pianistic motive for much of the piece (thanks Kim for helping me!!) and it was suggested that this should develop and permeate more of the piece, which I will definitely try to amend.

1 comment:

Clark Ross said...

Re: "Sometimes it's what people don't say that makes you happiest," yes, it's true. I'm commenting a month after the fact (sorry!), but I just wanted to say that if you are particularly concerned about something in your piece, it's always a good idea to mention it to the class and ask them for any thoughts they might have on that specific aspect of your piece.

I have come to the conclusion that, while this is a very talented class, it's not a class that gives a lot of feedback to one another (with a few notable exceptions!), so, since that is the case, you sometimes have to ask for very specific advice, like, "I was worried that there may be too many ideas in this piece... what do you think?"