Minimalist Piano pieces? Help!

[mer]

I'm having fun with composing, and here's the listing I'm aiming for:MINIMALIST PIANO INSTRUMENTALS a la Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, etc. are needed by an East Coast Music Library/Publisher who has signed and placed dozens of TAXI songs over the past several years. He's looking for very spare piano arrangements with a minimalist approach and tone. Repetitive melodic motives and compelling dynamics could provide the right kind of foundation. The tracks should be between 1:00 and 3:00 long. If he likes your track and is interested in offering a deal, he may also request :30 and :60 edits. He requests that your pieces have clear endings, no fadeouts. Excellent performances are necessary and the sound quality should be great. Broadcast quality is required [excellent-sounding home recordings are OK]. Please submit one to three songs online or per CD. All submissions will be screened on a YES/NO BASIS - NO CRITIQUES FROM TAXI - and must be received no later than July 14, 2008. The first two are digital sample versions, the last one is a real person playing. Please let me know what you think, are any of these on target? How does the production sound? What improvements do I need to make? Is it hopeless? Is the real pianist (he's playing a Steinway at a church) better than the digital sample ones? Thanks for all feedback!Ned's View from the Tophttp://www.taximusic.com/song.php?song_id=1392 ... 1Waterfall Magichttp://www.taximusic.com/song.php?song_id=140037&stream=1Sandy Dayshttp://www.taximusic.com/song.php?song_id=140039&stream=1--Mer

[mojobone]

I think minimalist means more along the lines of the piano cues in "Eyes Wide Shut", for starters. In Ned's View, the lead line sounds quantized and the piano sample might work in an ensemble piece but is glaringly fake played solo. Same for the piano sound in "Waterfall Magic", though the music's slightly closer to the mark. The third piece sounds significantly better, though, to my ears, it's missing some high end (trebles)-could be the data compression.(I like to hear the damper working ) I don't think it's on target for the listing, (you might want to reference some of Philip Glass' prepared piano pieces) but might be worth submitting.Excellent playing, very decent recording, very good compositions, just not on target, IMO.

[mazz]

Hi Mer,Some pretty cool pieces here. I wouldn't categorize them as minimalist based on the "a la's" listed. The thing about your pieces in comparison to the a la's is that they are too harmonically sophisticated and evolve too quickly to be considered stylistically "minimalist". One way to begin would be to arpeggiate a simple C triad in medium quarter notes until just past when you can't stand it any longer and then add a D and include it in your arpeggio. Then at some point maybe add an A to B at an eight note division and so on. My music teacher says that minimalism puts you in a trance and you don't know the texture has evolved until it already has. Of course, that's hard to do in 1 or 3 minutes but I think you get the idea. Go back and find some Glass piano pieces to listen to.Knock Knock?Who's there?Philip GlassKnock Knock?Who's there?Philip GlassKnock Knock?Who's there?Philip GlassKnock Knock?Who's there?Philip GlassKnock Knock?Who's there?Philip GlassKnock Knock?Who's there?Philip Glass..................................Mazz

[mer]

Mazz, mojobone, Thanks so much for your comments and for listening, I really appreciate the learning I hopefully am doing here! I think I get it, how what I'm doing is more complex and changes too much, to be "minimalist". Do you think that the listing person really wants solo piano, sparse, with not much happening?I did listen to Glass using the Glass Machine on his website, you can actually choose pieces to listen to based on degrees of the music having these factors: Joy, Sorrow, Intensity, Density, and I forget what else. Not the most minimalist stuff, either, and hardly any solo piano... Plus I listened to Michael Nyman The Piano, but maybe that is not typical either. On Eyes Wide Shut there is only one piano cue that would seem to fit this idea, is that what you are thinking of, mojobone? Well I'll continue to listen. And I think if I come up with something worth recording I'll get my friend to play it for me on the real Steinway with the great pedal damping sounds! (Maybe some of the treble was taken off to get rid of more of the pedal clicks and thumps, I'll have to ask the engineer).But, for an exercise, I tried to execute Mazz's instructions, and it is quite hard to make a trance-like motif, simple, but also change it up. Here's the result:http://www.taximusic.com/song.php?song_ ... m=trueHope you like it, Mazz!--Mer

[mojobone]

Yep, that's more like it. I realize it's difficult to produce convincing dynamics with sampled pianos.(there are some very large piano sample libraries that are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing) A lot of minimalist stuff barely even moves away from a tonal center. It's a huge challenge to make minimal interesting. Ambient is related, but it's not supposed to be interesting, even. At least not to the conscious mind. Very little changes in either style, the common thread is that change tends to happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, if you listen long enough your perception of time slows with the tempo, and small changes appear large. You might also want to investigate Brian Eno and I think the album's called Music For Airports.

[mazz]

Mer,You've gotten closer. I fear I might have over-simplified my explanation of minimal music just a bit. I did go to iTunes and played some snippets of Glass' piano music and he does change harmony fairly often but his harmonic structure is very minimal, mostly triads and he does move harmonically a lot in minor 3rds (a classic film composer trick, BTW). I don't particularly care for Glass' classical music, I've never gotten why he is so popular, but I do think he's a very, very good film composer and I enjoy his work in that arena.Hardly anyone these days is doing "classic" minimal music and even when they were, it was a fairly wide open field. I can say this: the musical materials are minimal and the changes made to the material is minimal and are gradual.After hearing your second piece, which is more in the ballpark, and perusing Glass on iTunes, I did an improvisation "in the style of" Glass and others of his ilk. It's not classic minimalism but it uses some of the devices I've mentioned. I'm also using Sampletekk 7CG, an awesome (IMO) sample of a Yamaha 7 foot Conservatory Grand. I used an 88 weighted key controller. Maybe this will help inspire you. I call it D minus (it rotates between D minor and F minor).Cheers!!Mazzhttp://www.taximusic.com/song.php?song_id=140331&stream=truePS: mojobone, Eno's stuff with Harold Budd (The Plateau of Mirror, The Pearl are the ones I know) is really great ambient stuff, along with the Airport series. Check out Bang on a Can Allstars playing Music for Airports. They transcribed it. It's pretty great.

[mer]

Hey, lots of good points, Mazz and mojobone. And I love your D minus piece, Mazz! Thank you for doing this, it helps me alot in thinking about this to hear your take on a more current (dare I use that word?) solo piano minimalist sound. And I think minor keys would be a bit easier to make them sound interesting, that was one challenge with trying to do a major key for me. I admit I was trying to pull your leg a bit, to over-simplify your "instructions", but also mainly to get the other way I was composing out of my brain. Like swinging the pendulum way back the other way... but you are a wonderfully talented composer and I love trying to learn from your approach.I've also listened to alot of Steve Reich's music for 18 musicians (one of my voice teachers, Jay Clayton, sang on the recording!), and Eno's Music for Airport series I bought close to when they came out (I think - I remember it was LPs then, I only have cassette tapes I made from the LP's now...) Later on I got Eno's work with Harold Budd. Also the Third World stuff, whose is that? I forget!And it is so clear that I should try actually playing the keyboard rather than notating the composition in Sibelius 5.2 and then trying to tweak the settings for playback to sound more real. Mojobone, that is why the pieces (except for Sandy Days) sound so "quantized" - actually it is the other way around, I was trying to make notation sound real by changing the duration, velocity, and timing by hand on every note. Well, I didn't do every single note! And I got tired of entering numbers, for sure!As a violinist my keyboard skills are not that great, but I may be able to play this style, and at least I'll try. The next part will be getting a good sample... thanks for letting me know what you used, Mazz, and I thought it sounded good. So you must also have a physical sustain pedal with your weighted 88 key keyboard, yes? I'm just on the edge of deciding to go the music production route - up until now mostly I've been composing and getting other people to play and record...Thanks so much to both of you for your help with this!--Mer

[hazineju]

Hi i've been playing with some stuff for this listing too. thanks so much for posting, Mer, because i can see that the one i've completed so far is definitely not mimimalist enough and this thread has made it much more clear. i had listened to the michael nyman stuff, too, and thought there was enough melody and a kind of "busy-ness" but when you listen to the Glass stuff it's much sparer and much simpler. i actually have a sampletekk grand piano dvd sitting in my drawer which i've been procrastinating putting on my computer because i think that means i would have to use it in logic and i am learning logic at a snail's pace (hardly an exaggeration). but listening to mazz's Dminus makes me think i need to try to figure that out before the submission deadline. i've been doing what you've been doing Mer, changing velocities etc. by hand. i had heard that boosting the EQ in the 3-5K range is supposed to give it the ring of a real piano, have you tried that? i listened to all your songs, the maximal minimalist cracked me up, just imagine- that could be the song that gets forwarded and placed and makes tons of money, you never know! to me personally, i thought waterfall magic did sound minimalist enough, and my favorite was sandy days which i also think is pretty spare (it does fill out a bit, but again, michael nyman) yet melodic which is what the listing says, right? i like the growth as the theme repeats over and over. good luck!

[hazineju]

PS- i like this Jun 18, 2008, 5:48pm, mojobone wrote: Ambient is related, but it's not supposed to be interesting, even. At least not to the conscious mind.

[stevebarden]

Mer,When a clients says "I want minimalist music like Phillip Glass" I wonder which Phillip Glass they are referring to. His "classical" music is a bit different than his film scores. Even in his film scores he is considered a minimalist, but they tend to be a little more involved and fall out of the definition of minimalism.That being said, I particularly liked the first two pieces. I thought they definitely captured the Phillip Glass (the film composer) sound. I felt the performance needed more sustain pedal because it came off rather staccato. And the sound of the sampled piano didn't bother me.I feel these pieces are definitely on target.Steve