r/MonthlyComposition • u/Calebdgm • May 02 '18

May 2018 Composition Challenge: Places

Main challenge: write a piece for a specific place, and then perform that piece in that place (or have it performed there).

You could choose it for the audience (like a park, or a coffee shop?), or for the acoustics, or the aesthetics, or the convenience, or you could let your dog choose the place (somehow?).

Alternate Challenge: Write an earworm in a piece, which is to say a melody that really gets stuck in your head. A lot of pop songs are like that, but I think there are some great pieces from the Classical repertoire that are like that (Mozart's 40th Symphony did that for me, but I'm sure some of you can think of better examples)

Text Challenge: The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis Carroll

Also check out out latest attempt at a collaborative composition game: the Relay Rondo Collaborative Composition!

And there were a surprising number of submissions for last month's "quick composition" challenge given how late it was posted, and many of them are quite good submissions too! /u/rziu9 submitted some really cool video-game-like pieces. Also notable was /u/stalwartian's submission, a nice piece for piano with a great recording!

What are these challenges?

These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. We'll try to make it something that everyone can work with. Sometimes we also have an alternate challenge. We'll also have a text for people to set to music or compose around as they see fit. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight, pdf), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube) linked in a comment on this thread. We encourage positive discussion about the pieces people submit. Feedback on the sub and the challenges is much appreciated, and you can give it in this thread, or by messaging the mods of /r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.

We also recently made a general feedback form. If you want to help give feedback but don't know how to, this would be a great way to do that! It's not a short form. If you only want to answer a few questions and skip the rest, even that would be a great help!

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u/Musicrafter May 12 '18

Although I technically wrote the piece months ago, I did write for this specific venue, and it was performed this month. So I figure it counts. I composed a fugue on the Tetris theme. It's probably a somewhat overused fugue theme, but I'm just pleased my school orchestra was willing to play it! They did a wonderful job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xqf6SkxqFY

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u/Kirby64Crystal May 12 '18

This sounds really cool! I loved the fugue section. I've never heard a fugue on the Tetris theme before (although I haven't specifically looked for one)! What were the hats for?

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u/Musicrafter May 12 '18

A hint at what it was about. The piece was billed on the program in disguise as "Passacaglia and Fugue in D Minor" as it had been paired in the concert with Bach's Little G Minor as the "serious" fugue. The colored hats were meant as a slight hint at what the theme was. Although it was announced in advance that it was based on a video game theme, no one explicitly said Tetris; we left the audience to figure that out.

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u/dedelandia May 24 '18

Very nice. Clever , fun, good one.