Composition (2023 Q1): Lilypads
This one's written in retrospect, since I wrote this piece in a train ride from Liege to Hamburg with an internet connection too poor to document it here. It's a rare case of melody-driven composition that otherwise refuses to come to me, which put me in front of a different problem: I had to find a name. I landed on Lilypads, mostly based off the vibes, and misspelled because I'm pretentious. Anyway, let's get to the composition part before I give the impression that I don't know what I'm doing.
First, the theme of course. Most melodies that I come up with consist mainly of a few larger, striking intervals, connected by short segments that serve mostly to fill space. This is how it works here as well.
I actually wrote the melody part first until about bar 25, but I'll elaborate on the accompaniment, since it's already on screen. The tempo is relatively relaxed and I wanted to give the score enough space to ramp up a little later without having to write a second part that was too different, as I had intended for the atmosphere to run through the length of the peace, give or take a few embellishments. The left hand then is relatively simple, doing what I would describe as a gentle contrapoint to keep things interesting. It's a few variations of this motif, up to the second part where things start getting changed up a little.
In bar 16 there's a transition that travels from the base to the tenor and leads into the melody and from that point I give the accompaniment a bit more to do. Rhythmically it retains its structure from the first 15 bars in relation to the melody, but a little more complexity builds through the harmonics. It's nothing special yet though. The third major segment gets the staccato chords in the accompaniment which is my attempt to pull back on the rhythmic complexity in the accompaniment, which I thought would be wise, since I start layering the melody with itself in the right hand. This is, where things get the most interesting, I feel. Finally, the piece settles into a comfortable, reprise of the theme with simple accompaniment in the left hand.
And that is where it remains, give or take a few embellishments such as in bar 33. This was a nice short-term project done in a sitting, and it's got the added bonus that it's easily playable for once. Like always, the full score is at the bottom, along with an audio version.