This week, instead of our usual class time, we had a composition workshop with Professor Christian Justilien.
Mr. Justilien is an Associate professor at University of The Bahamas with a wealth of knowledge related to music theory, composition, and performance.
During the workshop, he explained several techniques that he uses to jumpstart his composition process.
One of the techniques that he demonstrated utilizes just four random notes on the keyboard – he then takes these notes and creates a pleasing melody and then morphs the pitches using different intervallic jumps and rhythmic displacement.
From his initial findings, he goes on to create a harmonic progression based on a key that contains all the notes.
One of the most important things that he spoke about was the importance of technology, as it simplifies many tasks and allows a great amount of efficiency.
At the same time, he told us not to become slaves to our technology – and during the course of the workshop, we experienced the terrors of malfunctioning technology first-hand.
Prof. Justilien worked on a piece he had previously composed and then he started to create new compositions on the spot.
His massive store of knowledge and instruments was amazing – he went from four random notes to a full song with A and B sections in under a minute; he says he can write up to 150 songs in a day, but I think that number is modest.
We were tasked with doing the same and composing a full song using that idea.
Composition in Practice
I began this idea by sticking to four notes on the keyboard – C, D, E, and F.
I then began playing with the notes until I found a starting point and I eventually expanded the note set.
After creating the melody, I found chords that fit the notes that were playing.
As I worked on the piece I found places where I could use dominant substitution and leading-tone dominant substitution.
I have come to the conclusion that the piece is in A minor and it modulates to C Major before returning to A minor.
It is still a work in progress, but this is a start. I hope you like it and feel free to leave comments.
Composition_Workshop2