Darkest before the Dawn! Draft 12

My keyboard at home. (D. Ondishko)

I had to take things apart to put them back together. There's nothing like scissors bust things apart so they can become fluid.  Everything can be broken down into smaller, movable parts! (The smaller things get as they break down, the more fluid they are, and the closer we get to God.)

Finally, I'm pleased!  Here it is!  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO Draft 12 with harmony that makes sense and is designed around the birdsong, with string movement that is designed using the birdsong for "restlessness." I'm getting very close to the texture I want for the strings!  I'm excited because now I have hope that one day I will write strings so they resemble the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.  A gentle wind, a slow wind, or a forceful wind.  Next!

GETTING TO THIS BRIGHT PLACE WAS LONELY WORK
I had to go through a dark phase of hopelessness, working through draft 10 and 11, tossing them both out, along with Drafts 9A and 9B.  I don't know what kept me going...maybe just knowing what an investment I've made already.  Maybe just because I'm here and it's what I do.

My first harmony, Drafts up to 9A was based on the notes implied in each sampled recording, using Audacity's Plot Spectrum.  I put the songs with their chords into an order that made sense, had some drama. It was too dissonant.  As I started developing the strings, I couldn't keep the texture aligned and relating to the birdsong.  It was too unrelated.

Draft 9B was based on a wholetone scale, which I derived from taking all the notes from all the songs and putting them into a scale. (Well, two of the songs were eliminated.)  I stacked perfect fifths starting on Eb and stepped down the wholetone scale.  Most of my friends liked this.  It's calming.  But I felt like it lacked any drama, like a still forest with no wind; it just isn't as interesting as a live forest with wind.  I liked the stacked fifths and the implied dorian scale it reveals in the birdsong, instead of wholetone.  Wholetone scale to me is like the color white.  Is it really a color?

CLICK Here for Draft 10 that I tossed. I was trying to use my favorite chord sequence from Barber's Adagio for Strings (bvii7 - I) and I arranged the seven different carolina wren birdsongs into a cycle of fifths. I actually had to write out each birdcall and determine the chord for each. (I used stacked fifths as a way to assemble a scale; if the birdsong fit the scale, I used the root of the scale to assign a chord.)  It worked out well except for Song B, which I had to transpose down a step. (The birdsong pitches are so unclear, it blends OK.) 

I tossed it because my ear gets tired of this after the third sequence.  What I'm thankful for in this draft is that I worked hard to notate the birdsongs so they play very closely to the recorded birds.  Bird E still eludes me...I think he changes his metric accents every time.  I checked my pitch and rhythm notation for each birdsong. The pitches in the birdsong are so elusive, I figure I can put them with just about any harmony.  The harmony is just the trees in the forest, the bird flies through it.   I picture myself as a bird, flying through the notes like branches of trees; agile.  Anything goes--as long as it keeps moving forward.

 CLICK HERE for Draft 11 that I tossed.  I spent an afternoon with Barber's Adagio, analysing the melodic and harmonic movement.  So in this draft I took the first two sequences and put them into the mode of the Carolina Wren (see below).  After all the analysis on the birdsongs, I thought I'd test my theory that the birdsongs can go with just bout anything.  So here they are against a re-application of Barber's harmonies.  It's lovely but it sounds constrained, forced. From this I'm thankful for knowing that the bird melody is entirely in Eb mode, based mostly on the overtone series. (The overtone series is a good starting place because the bird whistles slide around consistently, as if they are locked in on some root note...I've been amazed at the birds outside my window as I write...they immitate the recorded calls exactly---several of them are stars of my show. :-) 

So here's the mode for ALL the birdsong recordings for Carolina Wren:
Eb - F - G - (Ab) - A - Bb - B/Cb - Db - (D) - Eb.
1      2    3    (4)     4     5      6           7       (7)     8

All the songs fit into these notes, (or transposed a step above).  So the chord structures and moving parts in the strings have only to stay within this mode and it will sound consistent.  Now at last I have something to work with!  Happy but tired after three days of hard work taking things apart.