- Recording and Instrumentation:
- This is the most ambitious recording I have made to date. While, I love the variety of sounds that I achieve in this one piece, I was working on a deadline, which I believe shows in the recording's cleanliness. There are several parts in this recording that I was not entirely satisfied with, but I chose not to improve because I had a due date with this project. Not all the tempo changes are intentional, though I pretend that they are.
- Keyboard
- Cowbell
- Guitar
- Tambourine
- Vocals
- Accordion
- Lyrics:
- (Instrumental)
- Song History:
- I wrote this piece for a project in my humanities class as a musical reaction to my visit of "Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte" at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was deducted two points for the repetitiveness of the final recording. If Mrs. Eblen thinks this song is repetitive, she should hear most of the songs I write. Here is part of my writen justification of my work:
I tried to write this piece in a way that mirrored Seurat's working style. As Seurat did, I came up with ideas for each of the elements in my work and created a working study for each that would later be changed and incorporated into the final work. My studies are unpolished and largely improvised sketches of themes representing the landscape and several of the figures that I found more interesting. Then, for my final polished recording, I incorporated all of the figure themes with transitions in between them based on the landscape theme. My final recording opens with a simply stated landscape theme played with synthesized strings. These strings continue through most of the piece. I then transition into the couple's theme, which is march-like to show their processional manner and incorporates many minor sounds to convey their sternness. After a brief transition of the landscape theme, I suddenly switch to the smoking man's theme. I used the guitar as well as a "rock" sound, to not only suggest the man's lower social standing, but to show his relaxed, yet jaunty pose. After this, we have a slow building of the landscape theme up to the young ladies' theme. My personal interpretation of these figures is that they are both sitting and thinking about a boy, especially the one with flowers, and are fairly oblivious of their surroundings. For this reason, the pure organ sound is unaccompanied by the strings, representing the landscape. After the organ fades out, we hear a sudden burst of the landscape theme featuring a quickened pace, tambourine, and vocals, representing the sudden transition in the painting of shadow to sunlight. After this, we hear the fishing lady's theme played on the accordion. I tried to achieve a sense of water and the urgency of catching a fish in her theme. Then we have one last grand finale of the landscape theme, bringing back most of the instruments, and ending with a solo of the landscape strings.
- Recorded on: 4 October 2004
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