Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to this lesson on building a minimalist piece.

This is from our compose and rehearse unit where we are creating and combining minimalist cells.

My name is Mr. Croughan.

I'm looking forward to helping you build on your minimalist cells and developing them today.

Here we go.

In this lesson, you'll be building on your minimalist composition by creating cells that complement and connect well to each other to add to that texture and to that piece.

Let's begin by looking at today's keywords.

We'll start with cell, that simple musical pattern that can be a rhythmic cell or a melodic.

It's like an ostinato in minimalism.

Then a melodic shape is the up and down movements of pitches in music.

Duration, the length of a sound, like a note or a silence.

And then instrumentation; that combination of musical instruments that are used within a piece of music.

We'll warm up before we begin so there's a backing track there to help you.

Choose someone to lead your group.

This is gonna be really helpful to get us working as an ensemble and feeling the steady pulse.

When you're done with that, just have a stretch out.

Check your posture.

Do some yawns and sighing just to help yourself feel alert and awake and ready to go.

Pause now.

And there are now three more options on your screen for you to choose.

There's: Bate Bate Chocolate, H.

E.

L.

L.

O, and Rise Up O Flame.

There's videos and backing track there to support you, so enjoy working through those that you wish to use; remembering that we are focusing on that ensemble playing, so we're feeling a steady pulse together.

We're listening out for the dynamics at the volume we're singing at together.

Just make sure that you are performing and working as a team.

Off you go.

And if you're now ready for music, you'll have a warmed-up voice and ready to focus to create your ensemble work.

There are two learning cycles in today's lesson.

The first one is adding a second melodic cell, and then we are building our minimalist piece.

Let's start by adding a second melodic cell.

There's a piece of music called "Ellis Island" composed by Meredith Monk, and she wrote it in 1981, and it's for two pianos, a beautiful piece, and it was originally composed for a short film of the same name, "Ellis Island," and it told the story of immigration, the passage of immigrants into the United States in the early 20th century.

Meredith describes the piece of the two pianos as one stream, like clear flowing water.

I'd like you to pause here and have a listen and see if you understand where she's coming from.

Off you go.

Now when you listen to it, you hear the first piano and that plays the cell three times through the main melodic cell and then a second piano comes in and adds some more short cells underneath.

You can have a listen again and maybe just gently hum or this is for when you're hearing that second piano, just try and visualize the rise and the fall in the pitch.

Some of those melodic shapes of the second piano's cells.

Don't listen for longer than two minutes, but I'd like you to listen carefully, particularly to the second piano.

Off you go.

And we've heard "Spring's Embrace" recorded by the Paraorchestra, and we hear the violin that plays that main cell at the beginning.

There is, however, a second melodic cell and it plays three notes.

It plays the EFG.

I would like you to listen and see if you can identify which instruments are playing that melodic cell.

Off you go.

So that second melodic cell is played on the electric viola.

Have a listen.

(gentle electric viola music begins) (gentle electric viola music ends) (lively electric viola music begins) (lively electric viola music ends) And then the French horn adds to that, playing the same cell.

Listen to the French horn.

(gentle French horn music begins) (gentle French horn music continues) (gentle French horn music ends) And then the next instrument that also plays that melodic cell is the synthesizer.

Have a listen to the synths.

(soft lively synthesizer music begins) (soft lively synthesizer music continues) (soft lively synthesizer music ends) And then the final piece to play that cell is the instrument Headspace.

Have a listen.

(lively Headspace music begins) (lively Headspace music continues) (lively Headspace music ends) So the second cell runs across more bars of music and has a longer, slower duration.

So we think of how the violin feels.

♪ Yum, bum, bum, bum ♪ Those other instruments that we heard are playing a slower cell, four beats in a bar and the first note, that semiquaver there, is showing four beats long; that takes up the whole bar.

Another one takes up a whole bar.

Each of these notes take up a whole box.

They're worth four beats each, and then the G there is tied together to show an eight beat note, so we can see how that duration is much longer, so therefore it's played at a much slower feel than the violin.

I'd like you to sing and sign the melodic cell, singing smoothly, that mirrors the articulation of the electric viola.

So we've got mi, fa, so.

I'll pop the viola clip on now, and I would like you to sign along.

(gentle electric viola music begins) (gentle electric viola music ends) Now, I hope you discovered as you played that the articulation on that viola is quite different because the notes are connected together.

There's a legato feel.

They're played smoothly, and they're connected together, so the articulation is different to the sound of that bowed violin.

It's a smoother sound.

Quick check for you then: In "Spring's Embrace," how do the two melodic cells compliment each other? What would you say? How do they compliment each other? There might be no clear, wrong answer for this.

I'd like to just pause and think and share ideas.

Off you go.

Lovely, so you may have said things like: Well, they follow a simple, ascending shape.

They go from a lower pitch to a higher pitch.

Quite playable.

They both use those notes, E, F, and G, although the violin also uses a C at the beginning.

And then they both use simple rhythms. So your task in your ensembles is to practice your main melodic cell, your rhythmic cell, and your drone.

You can swap around for who's playing it.

What we want to do is make sure it works effectively and we remind ourself how it sounds, and we're going to then decide on adding a second melodic cell, and we're going to use notes that have a longer duration.

We are gonna take inspiration from the cell we hear that the viola begins playing.

So we've got one beat, but we're looking more for two, three or four beats to create that longer duration.

And then choose a melodic shape that compliments your piece.

Remember, we're still just using C, D, E, F, G, do, re, mi, fa, so.

Here's an example from the Oak ensemble.

These children began with the rhythm at the beginning and they put it in three beats in the bar which was: ♪ Tacka, dee ♪ (upbeat woodblock music) ♪ Tacka, dee, ta, dee ♪ ♪ One, two, three ♪ Then when they pitched it, they decided to put their melody as: ♪ E, E, E, D, D, D, ♪ ♪ C, C, E, E, E, D, D, D, C, C ♪ They added the rhythmic cell, so then that rhythmic cell was super simple.

It was just playing on the beats.

So then they had: ♪ E, E, E, D, D, D, C, C ♪ (upbeat woodblock music) and so on, and then they added the drone on the: ♪ So ♪ So it kind of had a constant: ♪ G, which ran throughout their piece ♪ ♪ With the E, E, E, D, D, D, C, C ♪ They layered that up, and then at this point, now we're asked to create this second melodic cell with longer notes.

They've used two bars.

Now if you think about it, notes with a longer duration that are longer take up more space in a bar.

If you've only got four beats in a bar or three beats in a bar, their first note here is three beats long, and then in the second bar they've got a one-beat and a two-beat note.

So to give you an idea how their second melodic cell sounds, they've got: ♪ One, two, three ♪ (upbeat woodblock music) ♪ One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two ♪ ♪ Which is E, E, D ♪ And that's how they've composed their melodic cell.

So what I'd like you to do is pause, make sure you can play your main melodic cell with your simple additional rhythmic cell and the drone, that takes up three of you.

But everyone's listening to think: How will we create that melodic cell, the second one that uses longer notes? Pause here and best of luck.

Right, brilliant.

Well done.

Review time then.

Do you think your melodic cell's melodic shape, the way that the pitch rises and falls or whatever, compliments your main melodic cell? Do they sound nice together? Is it pleasant? Is it the way you want it to sound? And does that cell definitely use longer notes than your main melodic cell? Then can everyone in your group play it? You want everyone to have a chance so that everyone feels that they are confident in each cell of your minimalist piece.

So if not everyone's had a chance to play, maybe here's a quick chance to pause.

Make sure everyone gets a go at playing that second melodic cell where everyone else is supporting with the drone, the melody, and the rhythmic cell, and then we'll move on to the next part.

Really well done.

Fantastic.

We're now building our minimalist piece.

We are all composers, and we're going to add a final cell to this piece.

We're thinking about the clarinet, and this is done with a flourish.

I'd just like to have a little listen to be reminded of this.

Here it comes.

(lively clarinet music begins) (lively clarinet music ends) So it has the main, sorry, the same melodic shape as the main cell, but it's played higher and it has a much shorter duration.

The semiquavers are: ♪ Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ♪ And it gives this wonderful fast and free feel to the cell, and we can call this a musical flourish.

Listening again to that whole piece, you can pause here if you want to listen to all of "Spring's Embrace." We're thinking about the structure, the way it builds up, and we're thinking about the rhythm.

In particular, what do you notice about that clarinet cell? If you want to listen to it again with the full piece, then pause here and watch that clip.

So the clarinet first enters just after a minute and a half through.

Enters before the Headspace instrument enters, but it doesn't play all the way through.

It's not a consistent.

Once it starts, it doesn't carry on.

There's gaps.

Its cell may start and then stop for a bit, and sometimes it plays slightly slower or sometimes it plays a slightly faster rhythm pattern.

So there's a nice bit of freedom here for the clarinet.

What your final task of today is, is thinking about what instrumentation you want this flourish to be on.

Select an instrument for your minimalist piece that can add that musical flourish.

Now, it could be rhythmic or it could be melodic, that is entirely up to you.

You're composing a cell that uses faster rhythms, so if it is on untuned percussion, make sure you can play it with some accuracy if it's a guiro or sleigh bells or whatever it may be.

How are you creating that musical flourish there? And if it's melodic, choose some notes that you can use to compliment your piece with that flourish.

Remember, we're keeping our ideas simple, but also we need to keep our ideas safe.

So make sure each cell that we've been creating is noted down, okay? Pause here and explore ways that you can add either a rhythmic or melodic flourish to your piece.

Remember, this cell may not be used constantly, but might come in and out when you choose.

Off you go.

And let's review your final cell, your musical flourish.

Does it compliment your main cell or either melodic or rhythmic, depending what you created? And does it use shorter notes? So it's faster that flourishes.

♪ Ba, da, ba, da ♪ Or whatever sound you've chosen for it to make.

And can everyone in your group play it? If they can, that's fantastic.

If you're still needing a bit of time for everyone to have a go at playing each of those parts, what's lovely is that more people are playing at the same time.

Two people can play the same piece as well, the same cell, or you might even have someone keeping a steady pulse.

If you have time, pause here to make sure everyone has a go, and I'll catch you in a second.

Very well done, everyone.

So in summary of your learning today, you know you can create melodic cells that complement each other.

They might have a similar melodic shape, and they might have different rhythms. Using notes of a longer duration, those notes that take longer, can create a slower feeling rhythm, and a shorter duration can create a faster feeling rhythm, And these can compliment each other in our minimalist piece.

And as composers, which you all are, you can select instruments for their timbre when deciding which instrumentation you want to add in for a new piece of music.

Really well done today.

Make sure you keep your compositions safe, and I'll see you next time.

Bye for now.