Escaping being Stuck in a Rut.

I have, for a few months now listened to the delicate rhythms if a stream in springtime and wondered how on earth I can possibly try and reflect that in music. I was searching for a sound that I wanted to re-create in a score, but I had no idea how to go about writing it. I had experimented with semi-quavers and tuplets,triplets, quintuplets and demi quavers, I had no success because whatever I wrote was either physically impossible to pull off, or, I didn’t get the sound quite right. Cue a far more qualified and experienced composer/arranger Gareth Westwood.

During my exploits at Butlins Miners Contest, I watched some of the championship section entertainments contest. This is a programme put together about 20 minutes in length and features a varied programme suitable for entertaining a whole family. One of these bands was “Desford Colliery Brass” who put together an entertaining performance. They finished on a number called Stardust which is music from a motion picture. Within the first few bars of the arrangements, I believe I found the answer of what I was looking for. After having tried to hunt the arranger through the wonders of modern day social networking, I managed to get through to the composer directly. Due to copyright reasons and as per the wishes of the composer I can not put any of his score or recordings on at this point, I will only upload a sample of my end product.

I would, however, Like to take this opportunity to thank Gareth Westwood, for taking the time out of his day to send me over the score and a recording of Stardust in order to help me progress with my studies.

Now, thanks to Gareth, I believe I have the compositional mechanism available to score the sound of a trickling stream. This is something I have wanted to know how to do since summer last year and I will deploy this mechanism in my current Musical Work in Progress “6 Roman Deities” Please find below a preview of my work. I intend to incorporate this mechanism in to both an orchestral setting and a Brass Band Score.

• preview in progress