Oboe Bassoon Mini-Duets and Composing Music
[Music at bottom]
This year, I was able to obtain an oboe, bringing back memories of my middle school band. It reminded me of why I chose band over orchestra, the bright lights of the stage as we preformed, and the harmonious tunes our band played. This time though, it was just for enjoyment. Shorter pieces, and less time spent on each. One of my friends, who plays bassoon, came and played with me, however, to my dismay, it was really hard to find Oboe Bassoon duets (even though they are both double reed instruments). That started a short term adventure of attempting to compose lyrical pieces as well as a full orchestra piece (That took FOREVER).
I can say that the attempts were (mostly) successful (?). Here are a few thoughts about composing:
- Improving music takes a really long time. With creativity ceremony strikes, it usually comes in 2 to 4 measures, which is barely even a phrase. This leaves you with a lot of work cut out for you as you try to expanding upon that idea. You have to then write the accompaniment, which has to harmonize with the main melody and also be interesting to play ( I hate it when the accompaniment part doesn’t have a melody in itself, because it is just boring and not fun to play).
- Writing the accompaniment is just so painful because the part either sounds good by itself but not with the melody, or it overpowers the melody, or it just does not sound nice by itself. And this frustrates me so much. I ended up simplifying the accompaniment, and just did chords…
- The 4 Chords (I, IV, vi, V) sound so nice. Adding them into your music does add a sense of beauty.
- There always needs to be a bass part, without the bass part, the music/piece feels really empty and not encompassing on the pitch.
- Recording helps keep the best melodies. When I don’t record, after I play a particularly good sounding melody, I would forget, and then be unable to reproduce it on paper :( .
- I never get the ending right. In my short duets, the endings, just flow onto the tonic but I feel like there is a better way to do it.
- There’s an app called Notion (on the iPad), and it is really helpful for composing (and user friendly), unfortunately it is pretty expensive at $15.
Okay, now for the music —
Everything= Oboe-Bassoon-Duets.zip — They are mine :) Feel free to use them, but please, don’t take this and say it is your own…
