VISUAL MUSIC WORKSHOP 2019

Hey Animators!

We have been invited to participate in the New Music Ensemble concert on Saturday, April 27 at 3pm by providing animated visual accompaniments to their live musical performance.

The Music Department has provided three new musical compositions that we can use to inspire abstract visual interpretations during our Visual Music Workshop on Saturday April 13th @ 10AM.

Please email me if your planning to attend leepe1js@cmich.edu so I know how many donuts to bring. :-)

 

Some things you can do in advance of the workshop. . . if you are so inclined.

1. Click on the banner image from Begone Dull Care by Norman McLaren and observe the patterns, shapes, marks and visual rhythms that he employs in his visual music masterpiece.

2. Download the Six Second Film Strip Tool and play around a bit. . . and don't forget to hold on to your experiments.

3. Listen to the musical compositions in advance (see links below) and read over the descriptions to get a feel for the music. Explore ideas about color, shapes and patterns that might pair well with the piece.*

*In the workshop I'll be offerring tools that will allow a greater degree of specificity when it comes to interpreting musical notes, patterns, etc.. In the meantime, focus on the broader musical themes as it's a lot more fun and will allow you to generate animation at a much faster pace.

 

Three New Compositions

click on the links below to play the music

 

Darlings by Maggie McGinity

06:50

The piece starts out as a fairly Romantic-era waltz with traditional harmonies. The middle section moves from
traditional to dissonant and complicated harmonies, and takes on kind of a spooky, menacing vibe
with some carnival-type music mixed in. The last section starts with a round between the violin, flute,
and clarinet, moving through three of the main melodies of the piece. It ends with a new statements
of some previous sections and returns to the traditional waltz bass line at the very end.

A story to the piece could be a dream that starts out pleasant and slowly turns nightmarish, before ending in a
neutral place that is both disorienting and familiar. . . I took inspiration from some 19th century
instrumental waltzes, as well as some early 20th century dissonance.

 

Unfamiliar Passage by Connor Pennfield Cummins

03:30

cautious, foreboding, ...unfamiliar

Started as an assignment to experiment in modal writing, the sound of this piece is a nice aural
reflection of the discomfort that came with writing it. Written in a way that home doesn't actually feel
like home, the story told in Unfamiliar Passage is one about facing new and unknown obstacles.

 

Magical Forest by Brandon J. Holl

04:00

Magical Forest is a chamber orchestra piece that depicts the gentle and somewhat

magical qualities of a forest setting.