2nd work from the Composing Electronic Music with Sibelius series. This one took 3 days to write — hopefully I can keep up the pace. This track is designed to loop indefinitely (like the other one) so the end will sound exactly like the beginning.
Occupational Hazards: For Saxophone, French Horn, Honky-Tonk Piano, Cello Pizzacato, Percussion
This was written in response to the “Occupy Wall Street” (and Occupy LA) protests that are going on all over the world right now — I basically tried to capture some of the energy, chaos, satire/humor, and of course, violence that have erupted as a result of these series of events.
The result is a kind of “cartoony” narrative that gets played out throughout the work, which allows for some distancing to occur on the part of the listener, even or especially in regard to serious matters. Lots of people do this now (South Park, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, video games, etc.) so I’m not doing anything particularly new here. Unfortunately General MIDI doesn’t come with a “pepper spray” patch, but maybe they will add one in the future.
Satire might be the next mode of discourse in American politics, which gets me thinking — the future will probably be very weird.
(There’s a reference to Louis Andriessen’s Worker’s Union which you might hear if you’re familiar with that work.)
It seems like I have a habit of making all my parts “playable”, despite the fact that I don’t really necessarily have to pay attention to the limitations imposed by human performers. On the plus side, this means I can keep these “scores” in case anyone might want to play them. Maybe it’s good to think of it as a high-quality MIDI accompaniment for “real” music.
I should probably note that entrepreneurs — the vast majority of them (even the successful ones) — are in support of the movement’s goals. Occupy Wall Street will eventually need their economic support if they want to stick around for the long-haul. It makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, since entrepreneurs usually aren’t too keen on established norms either…they’re movers, and shakers.
Related posts: