5 COMPOSERS 1 IDEA (ft. June Lee, David Bennett, Ben Levin & No Compliments)

some of the best emails I ever get are the ones that come from David Bruce because every now and then they're they contain a file that has a composition I wrote played by some total badass and today it's Sequoia playing all of our piano solo compositions it's time to listen this is like a special holiday for me so welcome to another five composers challenge after the first two which featured a chamber ensemble and then an orchestra we're stripping it right back today to have just a solo piano played by friend of the channel Sequoia and we'll have pieces by David Bennett composer producer trumpeter no complements pianist and composer Jun Lee and our old friend Ben Levin instead of a theme this time I chose what I called the three to one challenge so the piano part should have a main line and an accompaniment in one of the sections of the piece the main line should just use one note although it can use octaves in another section it can only use two notes and in the third section three notes the three sections can go in any order and the accompaniment can do whatever it likes so it's a very restricted brief let's see what everyone comes up with first up it's David Ben my approach to this was if the right hand can only play one two or three notes at a time then it would be the job of the left hand to keep things interesting so before I wrote any melody at all I wrote the entire chord progression for the left hand and I made sure that it moved through different key centers and different tonalities to make sure the right hand kept being provided with a new backdrop and a a new context I'm really excited to hear how everyone's dealt with this brief and thank you again David for organizing all of this [Music] all right its reaction time I'm really excited to hear what everyone came up with so I know David is a pianist himself so it'd be interesting to see how he uses the piano Sequoia playing David Bennett here we go like drops of water on the ocean really making use of that active so emotionally it's like the friend they really wanted it's quite tender feeling oh two nights and that too that's the next friend it's a brilliant performance he's really captured the the feeling that I was going for I don't know how it's possible but it's it's very melodic and it works it's a nice little tender embellishment just circling around each other unwrapping the melody [Music] so classy Wow yeah nice us too hmm that's so nice to hear that performance of it it's really weird yeah Wow so the combination of the repetition of the melody and the gradualness of its development really makes you feel like you're getting to know each part of the piece as it comes in and since it's got this kind of sentimental wintry vibe you feel like you're getting warmer and more in touch or something as the melody evolves David uses the you know restricted and unchanging melody notes to create a sort of emotional tension as they pull it the harmony changes underneath and they kind of create this sense of pull against it it feels very natural and organic the way the melody just gradually blossoms really nice hey Internet my name is no compliments thank you to David Bruce for having me in this video I'm a big fan of the series so this is a huge honor yeah riding with so much restriction that was a lot of fun I had way too much fun doing this so yeah the first section I wanted to write something quite cheeky because my initial instinct was to do the opposite was to do quite something minimalist and more percussive leaning more into like American style new music and minimalism and yes so that day I didn't feel like following my instincts at all getting into the to note motive I wanted to be able to hear the piano players internal dialogue where you can you can hear them discover oh wait there's more than one note so you can get the sense that the piano players sort of dipping their foot in the water before they jump all the way in and then go on this like little winding adventure through a couple of different keys and then eventually landing in this kind of train on a track multi perpetuo kind of idea with just three notes and then I decided to be self-indulgent and decaf I was back to the beginning and then this this little piece was born Carnival of the Bruce Y Carnival of the Bruce well I showed this to my girlfriend and she said it reminded her seen from Fantasia with the music of Camille's a song from Carnival of the animals and so I guess she imagines David Bruce as a flamingo [Music] let's listen to no compliments okay I think I'm next you go I really like that bounce quite a poppy chord progression a really nice character that's really took playful character [Music] it's like a child tickling you know or something like that lovely dramatic suspense there the big deal is here it's so playful all of the octaves they all feel like different voices of different people well the piece is enjoying itself I don't know that if that's possible but it really feels that way whoa didn't see this coming nice I know fit the three they almost feels like a celebration because we've got that there don't now everybody's here that cord this feels like a sort of coda it's like it's stuttering [Music] man that piano player is a based Wow cool yeah that's that's exactly what I imagined and more yeah I couldn't be happier with that I can't stop smiling because how because of how playful it is what a nice payoff that is a great example of a piece of music that sets up any an expectation and then defies it in a way that crushes that's why I sign up for listening to music it's a really rhythmically inventive piece I love those moments when a kind of triple time pulse emerges from the texture or the way it suddenly turns corners like into that moto perpetuo a bit at the end it's good stuff for my piece I took a three to one approach with the melody where I went from three notes to two notes to one note with each section and as I decreased notes in the melody I was able to make the harmony more and more complex because there are fewer notes in the melody that could potentially clash with chords it just became easier and easier to get more creative with my Harmony also I made it so that the density of notes increased as the number of unique notes decreased so the idea was that you kind of go from someone like kind of tapping around being like doopty doopty due to someone being like ha ha ha ha and then someone be like hey where it's just the emphasis on this one note becomes so acute it's like a pounding in your head just kind of the most obvious ling for the form in my mind I'm not sure if anyone else did that but it just seems like the thing to do if you're gonna get fewer and fewer notes make the complex harmony come in baby [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the one thing I've learned about been both in his music and in his videos is you should always expect the unexpected so let's see what we're in for today I'm excited to hear Ben's okay here we go it started with all three notes s a distinctive motif at the top there kind of an evening vibe nailing the dynamics so those are definitely our three notes there okay drop down the octave it's kind of got a Latin feel to it it's nice fella this is going to build up to something big chef's nine chords oh the drama the attention just keeps fielding almost without you noticing it that tension is really starting to peak sort of going round and round getting kind of almost stuck oh oh oh yeah oh yeah those left hand chords underneath that pedaling right hand so energetic [Music] well I'll her ending that's amazing it has I mean I started so modestly it just end as why would as it could be that's brilliant so sort of explodes off the end of the piano then it's great I like how the motive the beginning motif loses its shape gradually and turns into the repeated G's but different cores underneath and I like how it finished strong yeah I really like that again kind of classy but so with mcli you like propulsive it's funny when I actually hear it performed for me it sounds kind of like a the ending is a is sort of like an absurd joke which is fine I think that if I were to go back and do this piece over I probably would have made the ending a little bit crazier to really mint draw that home drive at home maybe I would have added a few more measures of just unison smashing things but the form is like a carrot it's got a really good dynamic arc the way it was performed because you feel like all right there's the part of the carrot that goes in the ground the part you eat and it gets bigger and bigger so you get to that nasty green stuff that nobody wants to eat on the end of the carrot so because of the melodic limitation I wanted to find different ways to generate momentum and also a sense of familiarity by using other tools like like rhythm harmony shifting register and texture so I started experimenting with a bunch of rhythms and I ended up really liking this one rhythm in odd meter and in retrospect I think it's because of how ambiguous it sounded it was ambiguous enough to baffle me and make me ask questions like how do I notate this and how do I even count this but it wasn't like obtrusively vague as if it's trying to baffle the listeners to think - guess what meter it's in so after that building on this rhythmic framework I started experimenting with harmony with the same idea of subtle vagueness think one of the coolest things about the David impose is that since the number of notes in the melody is limited it naturally frees up other voice parts so for the final part of my piece I wanted to bring the level bring the rhythmic energy level down for a over harmonized choral kind of kind of style because I love harmony I guess that's it hope you enjoy [Music] so all three have had a similar trajectory and then they kind of get more rich and more complex as they've gone on although Ben went in reverse order in terms of the melody notes he went three to one where the others weren't one two three let's see what June leaders okay moving on to I guess my piece yeah this is Julie's composition mm nice rhythm it's a lovely lilt they're gorgeous such nice harmony rocking back into it's a surprise that it picks up again where it left off love very tight chords very dense harmony yeah there's the density well really nice dynamic build across the piece this is a very G Julie harmony yeah super Missy on these chords say the chords are really landing so much to this piece the right hand doesn't even have to do much [Music] it has such an interesting dynamic range just starting the medium then right up to the loud and then right down to quiet Jun is such a subtle composer it never ceases to amaze me how rich his harmonies are they always sound so beautiful even though they're often very chromatic and quite dissonant I got a whole story out of that one the form of it is super relatable to to life as I at least as I understand it now where you have this chase the sense of like you're detectives on a trail at the beginning and you're searching for something and then you only find more questions more questions you think you've got it but no more questions we've got the questions the questions and then we hit this point where we're just kind of at the end when it gets quiet we're just kind of like gazing at this realization that there's no answers and everything is chaos and then at the end we find peace in that it's so weird hearing my piece being played but okay here's the thing my biggest concern in writing writing what the piece was the pedaling there were some notes some overlapping notes that were meant to bleed into each other and make things sound muddy and some other notes not so much they were meant to be brought out as a single moving voice so to achieve that I was you might notice in my my score that I was near radically specific about peddling and I was worried maybe maybe the notation was too much maybe it's like the too confusing of information but after having listened to this um I'm so relieved and I'm actually amazed by sequoias interpretation of the pedaling yeah hats off to Sequoia so I just called it all tonight is a bit of a throwaway title just because the hands do quite a lot of alternating one against the other so I got the initial rhythmic idea with those high ease and II flats and I just wanted to try to constantly keep it moving so each time it repeats something changes and something is slightly different and then also in the final section at the end although I've got the three notes repeating in the right hand I wanted to be constantly shifting the texture underneath it so that it's always going somewhere you didn't quite expect you you [Music] all right so now we will listen to Daddy doggy David Bruce my god my god my boss my dad my David my dad my son David Bruce whoo I've had a Chinese food dinner with and I loved it and David liked it it was red spicy here we go mr. Bruce mr. flamingo okay straight out of the gate I love the intensity right from the beginning cool ostinato stacking perfect fifths it really gives that full sound because fists are wonderful my left hand is really making up for the limited melody it's like the the wave crest and then it pulls back for the lower and then Shh and then the lower such an amazing pianist okay this is the one note section lost a lot of tension building air [Music] a little bit of a Lydian moment real shift in mood between that OneNote section and that three night section I like how void it feels in this section one voice incompletely in very high register and one in come in low and there's nothing in between it's a different feeling I love it just sort of wisps into the ether they're not totally sure I didn't cheat at the end there I'm not sure if the right hand really is the main line I tried I just feel like the relationship between the accompaniment and the melody there is just so creative and so detailed the accompaniment is such a world it's such a underwater landscape with the the light shining through and making rainbows and stuff and I think when I envision accompaniment on piano I think that I struggle to even imagine very creative accompaniment I'm such a melody chords guy you know I've really found it interesting how each composer has has brought their own flavor to it I before listening to those I just couldn't imagine how other people would sound and that's just amazing lot of drama crazy harmony stuff going on especially June but that's to be expected and David yeah that's symphonical mich I'm proud of how mine sounded I think everyone sounded super good Sequoia is such a great pianist I feel like every time I do one of these I level up as a composer so much faster it's an amazing resource I'm so grateful to be part of this when when when are we gonna hear a bad piece on one of these if you'd like to see more videos like this do consider supporting me over at patreon where you'll also be able to access all the scores and recordings from today's pieces and from many previous videos as well a huge thank you to the star of the show of Sequoia who you can learn more about over at Sequoia sounds calm and to our four wonderful composers watch out Ben Levin's follow-up video and for David Bennett's video on melodies that only use one note thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: David Bruce Composer

Views: 261,883

Keywords: 5 composers 1 theme, david bennett, june lee, ben levin, no compliments, composer challenge

Id: d9zvA_0b91A

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020