Composition (2023, Q3): A Simple Melody

I neglected to get to this until the latter half of September, which was also very full of real-life stuff that involved me running back and forth a bunch. Usually, this is a bit of a detriment for the sort of stuff I publish here, because foot-traffic will stop me from doing the minuscule work of even writing down notes on the phone, but in the case of composition, this might have actually helped. Because of the short time-frame I had inevitably left for myself, I knew it wouldn't be anything challenging this time, which I'm content about, considering I've been making headway on other fronts in parallel. In the meantime, I'd be taking my night-time walks, which are a staple of these times in my life, whistling to myself to either figure out the next step, or to remember it, until I could properly write it down.

As the title implies, this started as a melody. This melody

There's little to say about it, because the process of getting here was very simple. This tune can carry a number of variations, which should buy me a nice short ditty for the violin.

As it is for the violin, I decided to introduce some chords, which will act as a melody running parallel to the primary line. The only other thing I tried to pay attention to is that it'd be somewhat easy to play across the relevant strings.

To close the melody, I decided to invert the motion and kept the previous stuff vaguely in mind.

Now, as a midi-file this sounds about as good as a midi-file is going to get, I think. What'll make up the real difference considering the involved instruments, is marking down the bowing. I run the risk of making it a bit more difficult to play, but I don't think I can make it unplayable at this point, so I decided to be a little bit bolder.

Having played a bit of it for myself, I noticed that I've slurred a lot of the whistles when I was walking up and down the neighborhood, so the glissando should also be noted down where it was appropriate. That's not always possible to play, especially when the chords are involved, so their appearance drops off slightly towards the end. It also forces me to omit the midi file as a listening sample, because the way my program interprets them makes very little sense.

I never seem be able to properly play stuff I write, which probably has something to do with practice. With the limited time, and busy schedule I had, this somewhat subpar phone recording with a handful of mistakes is the best listening sample I can muster, but it gets the idea across, I think.

Full Score
Zipped Audio