Sarah’s Blog
Hi, I’m Sarah. I absolved the preperatory course ‘Filmscoring and Production’ at Musicube Academy and now I am a first year student for Composition for Film and Theatre. In this blog I’m gonna share my personal experience as a student at ArtEZ in Arnhem.
Any questions: sarahs_blog@yahoo.com
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Right now we’re in one of the most fascinating and also stressful time of the year of a CFT student. The exams are getting closer and another big project is waiting at the door steps.
The Matangi project.
Matangi is a professional string quartet and we have the honour to write for them. The piece should be around 3 minutes and should contain at least one musical element of the last project of our main subject.
Now I’m done writing and can’t wait to finally hear the musicians playing it. But to get there was not always an easy ride. I picked a day to write where I didn’t have to do anything else. This way I could focus best on what I’m actually doing. I started in the morning and wrote a piece from start til finish.
I wasn’t really in the flow but my work was ok. Some bits I really liked but it didn’t sound like one thing. I already noticed it in the middle but I kept on going so I could write another piece the next day.
The next day I knew I already had a piece that ‘works’ so I was super free to do anything without any pressure. The second piece turned out to be completely different. I used more odd meters and made it sound a little Icelandic. But I couldn’t finish it that day so I had to do it the next day.
The next day I finished it but somehow I used a completely different style of writing. So my piece became a patchwork out of two different styles. It was not one thing again so I decided to write a third piece.
The third piece was inspired by a dream I had and I was actually not really thinking of using it for Matangi but I wrote it just for me. Same day I started writing a fourth piece. I actually don’t remember writing the first part (a good sign cause I was so sucked into the work). I forgot time and wrote it almost in one go.
The first time I listened back to the piece I knew this was the one. During the writing I already thought about the instrumentalists, that the cellist doesn’t get bored because he only has to play pizzicato and that even the Viola gets a moment to shine.
So I was done three weeks before the deadline. We could schedule private meetings with our main subject teachers to discuss our work but after this there was not a lot to do for me. This way I could enjoy my tulip break without sweating while thinking of the piece 🙂
I’m quite a structured person so I never start just a few days before the deadline. That makes life before the deadline a lot more easy cause I also heard from one fellow student that he had to start over again a week before the deadline cause he was kind of stuck in the process.
The reason why I start that early is because I feel like especially creative processes are quite sensitive. Often you can’t force them to happen. You have to be careful with it and treat it like a scared animal. Don’t just grab it otherwise it will bite you. You’ve gotta be patient and eventually it will come by itself (sorry for all these metaphors 😀 ).
Anyways I’m really excited to hear the first piece of me played live from professional players!!!
All the best,
Sarah