"Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

It wasn't during the composition of this piece that those words of Leonard Cohen came to me, but just after. As I neared completion of the piece, it was a beautiful Spring day in Appalachia, and I pulled open the shades to let the light into my home. That's when this song got named.

Scored for string quartet + clarinet and French horn. Scores will be available once I clean them up and put more dynamics markings on them. If you'd like to perform this piece, just contact me for parts & score.

See if you can tell some of the limitations/devices I used when composing this. BIG HINT - look at the duration.

Over the years, knowing the composers' passion for music, friends and family had adopted the practice of bringing back gifts of music-related mementos from their travels. The composer now has an eclectic collection of instruments—some only decorative, some functional, all of them beautiful, and all of them charged with personal history and meaning. Souvenirs marks the first time that these instruments have been used for the creation of music. By sampling the sounds of these instruments (plus other sonic artifacts from the composer’s history), digitally manipulating the samples, and organizing them into a sound event, he sought to imbue ordinary, mundane sounds with a sense of the fantastical. The listener may notice the sounds of: djembe, ocarina, digeridoo, kazoo, rain stick, toy xylophone, tambourine, harmony singing, bamboo flute, shekere, vocal percussion, and rustic copper cowbell.

Back at it, with the same tone row.

See, I also just picked up the cheap version of Melodyne. Not because I want to be a cheater-singer, but because I often have to work out musical ideas that are beyond my ear. It's a tool.

I today I sang sing-songy melodies into my DAW, and used Melodyne to round me off to the closest permutation of the tone-row I'm working with. (P[e], P[2], I[e], and I[8], for those interested.)

Long story short, this was the result. I know there are several ways I'm still not doing it right—rows are not typically supported by themselves, and melody and accompaniment often move through the rows at different paces.

But I think I learned something.

And I kind of don't hate it.

More atonal business. Or is it?

20th Century Expressionists sought ways to express through music that didn't rely on our (I believe) natural tendency to organize the experience around a tone center. One way was to make the rules: "no repeating a note until you've done all 12 of them, and you must do your intervals in the same order throughout the piece."

That's all well and good, but I think we key into sonorities. Resonances. Combinations of notes that interact with one another in particular ways.

So, enough. I followed the rules, but selected an order for my notes that yielded stuff I thought sounded sonorous. Turns out it almost implies chord function. This is a good start, a proof-of-concept. More would have to be done to this to turn it into "music." I think I will.

So, am I ruined?

If you can't tell what I'm talking about, the answer is: no!

Somebody stop me. I'm in a hyperfocus.

Nah but seriously, here's another look at what I can do with a new toy. It may not be terribly musical, but it is of interest to me as a proof-of-concept.

Sleep Deprivation [for cello and piano] by Amado Ohland

Just a little chorale. But what happens when you split the [S] out as a lead, the [B] out as a bass, and make the inner voices a comping instrument?

Cute.

Starting from the part-writing rules of the Common Practice Period, I added N.C.T.s to minimize the presence of the leading tone (not entirely), then to add as many 7ths as I could (not many), then include as many 4-3 suspensions as I could. Here's what you get.

Now here's thgat same "allergic to leading tones" track as four voices (mine, badly rendered).

The illustration here is that the voice leading rules of the Common Practice Period may not seem relevant to today's music, but it's all in what you do with them. I didn't even break any "rules." Imagine what you can make if you selectively adapt the rules to your harmonic language.

Three notes, three instruments, three minutes. One key change permitted, and one return to the original key. At least one slow section and one fast section. Go!