Back to School in Boston
Quarterly Composition Compilation
December 2024
I won’t make this a travelogue, I won’t make this a travelogue, I won’t make this a travelogue…
OK fine! I’ll briefly mention some highlights from living in Boston!
-I love living in Boston! Love the people, love the humidity, love the squirrels, don’t love the traffic, love the food (but not the prices), love the history…there’s a lot to love here!
-Lost my front license plate somewhere in Ohio (a semi truck blew out a tire right in front of us, and one of the fragments tore it off. No other damage to the car thankfully…)
-Saw the “touristy stuff” in Boston with my parents (Freedom Trail, Aquarium, Bunker Hill, USS Constitution, etc.)
-Did more “touristy stuff” when they visited again a month later (Fall leaves, Madame Sherrie Forest,
-Went to several Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts for free (I get a free student pass from being a music student at Boston University 😊)
-Learned the names of about 200 new people (and forgot most of them lol)
-Watched the hijinks and exploits of the local family of squirrels while composing in my room. Also got in a shouting match with one of them (see video below).
A screeching match between myself and Mr. Squirr (sound on).
-Took public transit to school…and then decided to drive instead (30-minute drive during rush hour compared to 90 minutes on transit…yeah…)
-Attended masterclasses/presentations for 3 composition professor candidates, and submitted relevant feedback to the committee (I really hope they hire my favorite…)
There’s plenty more that happened (spilled Yam sauce in the car? Broken AC units? Chatham Beach trip? What’s even up with all the free-range turkeys?), but in the interest of keeping this a “Composition Update” and not a travel diary I’ll move on. Ask me later if you’re dying for the details.
Conducting
I got tapped to conduct my local Stake’s production/sing-in of Handel’s The Messiah at the beginning of December, and we began rehearsals around the start of November. It was a wonderful experience! We had an abbreviated orchestra (4 strings on each part, winds, brass, organ, and timpani), some phenomenal soloists (seriously, the quality of these singers was outrageous), and a great turnout for our sing-in “Grand Chorus” (comprised entirely of Stake members and friends). I also got to do a deep dive on the entirety of the oratorio and become familiar with those numbers that I didn’t know previously (if you haven’t tried to sing His Yoke is Easy, let’s just say there’s a reason why it’s usually cut out of sing-in productions). All in all, a very positive experience for me and hopefully for everyone that was involved.
Next semester I get to take a conducting class and finally get trained on how to properly wave a stick! Although practicing in front of my full-length mirror was extremely helpful, I realized that my lack of formal conducting training really handicapped my ability to effectively run the rehearsals and performance. So I’m really looking forward to this, and excited to learn everything I did wrong conducting The Messiah (but like actually, we’re studying it as a part of the curriculum and I’m excited/terrified to learn the “proper” approach to this piece).
OK, sorry for the detour but I promise we’ll talk about my compositions now!
Sorcery Slam!
I can finally reveal the full details of this project, and let me tell you how excited I am about it.
Actually, how about I show you the trailer and then tell you?
So my friend’s passion project is in fact a video game! Sam and Bryce have put in a considerable amount of time and effort into making this game, and I think it really shows. You can think of this game as being “Competitive Tetris” or (for those of you that know the game) a fixed-up version of Dr. Mario. With a medieval/wizard aesthetic, of course.
When he initially approached me about writing the music, I immediately had an idea of the style it should conjure – happy minor swing, period instruments, and a chorus of wizard-esque words – but had a bit of trouble getting it to line up with the constraints of the game mechanics. The “Orchestral Suite” came together very quickly – I composed the A and B sections of the theme, and from there it was a simple matter of variations and tempo/key changes – but trying to figure out natural loop points and energetic yet subdued vibes proved to be a challenge. Thankfully Sam was more than willing to entertain my crazy ideas and was extremely helpful when it came to the mechanics of music integration. The “final” product looks and sounds amazing - I did a playtest of the latest version a couple of weeks ago, and I think my jaw hit the ground when I realized this wasn’t a rough concept anymore but a polished product that is just about ready to release to the masses.
The game is scheduled to drop Q1 2025 (translation: sometime between January and March of 2025), and is currently available to wishlist on Steam. And we need your help! If you don’t already know, Steam has an algorithm that decides which games to advertise on the home page, but the only way to take advantage of that is to have enough people wishlisting/purchasing the game. So even if you don’t plan on purchasing or playing the game it would be super helpful if you at least add the game to your wishlist (and to make things easy for you, here’s a convenient link: Sorcery Slam! on Steam).
And tell all your friends and family! With a marketing budget of $0 the only promotions we can afford are by word of mouth, so the more people know about this the better. I really think this will be a fun game to play, and if things go well enough Sam and Bryce have more ideas and plans to make the game even better…
Summary: I was actually writing a Video Game score the whole time! Music fully integrated into game, game scheduled to release early next year.
Skyward Suite
This went a different direction than I expected. As I mentioned in the previous update, I planned to show this to my composition teacher for feedback and then try to get a premiere/performance. I did show it to him, but unfortunately he didn’t like it at all. ☹ I was feeling pretty sorry about my composition style for a bit until I realized that he specializes in writing a different style/genre of music (called Spectralism, if you want to know more ask me sometime or Google it), and so of course he wouldn’t like something that explicitly evokes film/video game music (funny story: at one point he told me that John Williams (my role model as a composer) was nothing more than a thief that stole other composers’ orchestration styles and ideas. So yeah). The interesting thing is that despite having some fundamental disagreements about composing, my teacher and I actually get along quite well and I’ve learned a lot from him.
Anyway, after that douse of cold water I went back to the drawing board and started drafting some new piece ideas and got really excited about one that involved AI and binary numbers. And he was too! So after some workshopping and conceptual work I settled on a piece for orchestra and electronics that I ended up working on for the rest of the semester. Intended to be a part of the Skyward Suite, this is an additional movement called Delvers that uses a synth patch played through speakers while the orchestra slowly (and menacingly) fades in and crescendos to the climax, then fades away. There’s a lot more to it (think: converting the largest non-Mersenne prime number into binary, converting the first 2,353 prime numbers to mod-12, panning, EQ, distortion, the whole gamut), and for those interested in the nuts and bolts I’ll post the program notes on my website at some point. Probably once I finish the rest of the suite, which leads me to…
…Taynix Trouble, or movement 2 of the suite! I’m planning to revise and revamp this movement to fix a lot of the issues that cropped up, and thanks to one of the visiting professor candidates now have a concrete idea of how to make that happen. The rest of the movements have largely stayed the same, although I made a few small edits to movements 1 and 3 right before school started.
I did submit movement 4 (Delvers) to the BU orchestral composition competition at the end of the semester, and if it’s selected will be performed by the BU Symphony Orchestra sometime in the Spring. In an ideal world, all of the movements would be premiered at the same performance, but if I’m being realistic they will likely be premiered at different points. Hopefully one day though!
Summary: I wrote a new movement (Delvers) and it’s really nerdy and complicated! Submitted that to a competition with potential to premiere in the Spring. Ready to start revising Taynix Trouble for eventual performance. Other movements still in various stages of progress.
Mando’ade
Wait, this one again? Yup, we have some exciting news here!
Partway through the semester I had the crazy idea of doing some light revisions to the piece and asking the BU Wind Ensemble director if we could record and/or premiere the piece sometime next year. When I approached him about it he surprisingly told me that we could definitely do that, but only I could get the parts ready within the week and send them to the curriculum library (to distribute to the musicians). So I dropped everything and spent the next few days churning out the revisions and part extractions, and got everything sent in with a few hours to spare. And a week after that they sat down to record the piece. This ended up being a wonderful experience – the musicians were incredibly talented and helped the piece sound better than I imagined it could. I’m currently in process of splicing together the recordings (as we recorded most of it in isolated chunks), but as soon as that’s done I’ll post a link.
I’m also planning to retitle the piece (due to tenuous ties with a certain popular television series), but haven’t figured out a good one that accurately conveys the feel of the piece. But I should have that finished by the next update, so keep an eye out for that!
Summary: Surprise this one’s back! Made some light revisions, recorded with BU Wind Ensemble. Currently working on splicing the recording and retitling the piece.
Looking Ahead
The nice thing about being in school is that I have a better idea of what projects I’ll be working on in the future, so here’s what I’m hoping to work on next semester:
Untitled Clarinet solo – this is for a collaboration with a local music academy, and I’m excited to work closely with my assigned soloist!
Untitled Sound Icon piece – we have a prestigious ensemble (called Sound Icon) that will be doing readings/recordings of student pieces in early February. The instrumentation is pretty weird, but I had started on some drafts this semester before discarding them. We’ll see if I decide to pursue this, but it’s on the table at least.
Taynix Trouble – I presented this in a masterclass and got some really good feedback on how to get this piece from “I like it” to “I love it.” Have some really fun ideas that I’m excited to try out!
Creation Symphony – Did some more conceptual work on this one, and getting closer to figuring out how to present the work as a whole and how to spice things up. There may not be much to show here at the moment, but it’s been on my mind a bit lately.
Final Musing
Hopefully this (extremely long) update didn’t obscure my big takeaway from this semester: I love living in Boston. I’ve been inspired by the change of scenery, the intellectual stimulation of being in school again, the wonderful people, and the many composition and conducting opportunities. I love being able to take classes and learn interesting things – even my most “boring” class of the semester was delightful – and I have learned so much that is helping me write better music. I’m looking forward to my class load next semester as I get to take some highly-anticipated (and much-needed) courses that I’m hoping will be directly applicable to my eventual composition career.
As always, thanks for reading this and I’ll see you in the next QCC (if not sooner 😉)!
Until next time,
-JW
