I’ve put some stuff down the bottom of the homepage. Little bits of music with an image.
I play the cello. Not particularly well - I’m an adult learner. But I do play it. What I don’t do is compose, so seeing a video on Musescore’s new features [1] made me want to play around.
The first of the little pieces down below (grouped together as ‘COB’ - an acronym for the unrevealed title of the mini-series). Originally I wrote ‘door’. The fundamental idea was to make something a bit weird but a little interesting. There’s a spooky door, and a lantern, and it isn’t revealed what’s behind it. It’s made up from two cello parts, and has some intentionally unresolved chords to give it that aprehensive feeling. I probably spent more time trying to find a description of chords and chord progressions that sounded right than I did coming up with the melody. The second cello exists mostly as a drone (something in most of those little pieces).
It turned out alright. I had fun, and it was done. So I paired it with an AI-generated image of a large wooden door, in a dark cave, with a cobblestone surround, and a hanging lantern, and then put it up.
I woke up the next day and wanted to make another. The obvious choice was the thing behind the door, but that led me to wondering why you’d open the door at all. It’s an obviously disconcerting door in a cave - just go home. So I instead started to build a small world. Which led to the true (rather than chronological) first piece, named “order”.
I wont go through each little piece. You can see them for yourself. But the fundamental plot of the series is a knight of some-sort being ordered to travel to a dark place to retrieve something. Only to meet their demise. Originally, the final piece wasn’t the final piece - the knight was going to take the small boat and travel further into the darkness, whereupon we’d find out what they were ordered to retrieve. Unfortunately, the generated image for that scene had what looks like an altar, and some skeletal-looking objects poking out of the water. That informed the piece, and by the end it all fit too well together to not have it be the ending.
I’d like to play around with some other music stuff. FM synthesis is interesting, so it’ll probably be that next. I haven’t decided on what the little story will be - but I’ll be doing the same as with COB. That is, come up with a single scene, set out the preceeding events to create a timeline, and then continue the timeline.