Sketch #1 (Week 1)

For my first of the three piano pieces I was trying to write something that someone like myself (who has very little skill on the piano) could feel good about playing. The way I went about it was creating a motive using clusters and small intervals (like 2nds). The piece also has a very strong rhythmic intensity. I chose to use rhythm as the main focus of composition because it is something that transcends your instrument, as where keyboard dexterity does not.

There were some good suggestions made on how I can improve this sketch:

• Use cross staff notation for the oscillating hand figure that repeats for most of the piece.
• Indicate when the left hand is shifting to the top staff with a line.
• After the chromatic cluster build up, a grand pause could be very effective. (The MIDI playback stopped right here because that was all that I had written. It turned out to be quite an effective pause!)
• During that chromatic cluster build up, I could thicken the texture by using actual cluster notation rather than precise pitches.
• After the pause that was suggested, I could do a number of false starts with the opening material before continuing on.

I found every one of these suggestions quite helpful, and I used all of them to some degree in my revamp of this sketch. The cross staff notation was extremely useful to me in this piece, as it can now be read easily!