The first stage of trying to work out how to write a Scottish dance as one of the movements for a set of pieces for piano quintet I looked at a traditional "Reel". Below is one, showing the characteristic constant quaver movement of the form.

The next step was to come up with an original musical theme which had the features of the piece above but was my own music.

​Below is my theme.

As can be seen from "Lord MacDonald's Reel" (printed above) - from bar 9 it goes into a second section, so I had to compose a second section which served the purpose it does in the traditional reel of being a distinctly new section but with similar music.

Below is a video of the second section leading back into the theme again.

The original reel I am using as a starting point is in the key of G major. My theme is 'in G' but is using a modal scale.

Below are written out all the traditional modal scales (all beginning on the note C).

The mode I used in the theme of my reel is the Mixolydian mode. This mode is characterised by it being almost exactly a major scale but with the second last note flattened. The reason I have shown the modes all starting on C is to explain as simply as possible the 'change' from the conventional major scale. If you were to play all the white notes on a piano keyboard from C up to the next C you come to it would be a C Major scale. If, instead of playing the second last white note you come to (a B on the keyboard), you played a Bb then that would be the Mixolydian scale.

[Note: in the key my theme is in (G), again you play all the notes from G to the next G. Normally you would play an F# as the second last note of the major scale but if you flatten that to an F Natural, then you have the Mixolydian scale beginning on G]

Generating more material
If, from the outset I have set up a modal character how can I use this feature to create more musical material? Can I create a new modal scale which makes musical sense from the original theme?

Below is the Mixolydian scale on C. 
​
EXAMPLE A

 I have used slurs to show where the semi-tones are. So the Mixolydian scale consists of: a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, and a tone.

As this is the scale that forms my theme, how can I modify this scale to create a new scale which I can use to generate more material. If I read the scale backwards (i.e. its retrograde), then the descending scale would consist of: a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, and a tone. Below is exactly that (each interval that ascends in the original just descending in the example below: 

​                                       EXAMPLE B

So, to clarify, In example A the scale moves up a tone, then a tone, then a semi-tone etc. Example B moves down by these distances ( a tone, then a tone, then a semi-tone etc). In example C, below, all I have done is put these notes into an ascending scale (on the note C), and in example C (ii) we see exactly the same scale begin on the note G (since that's the starting note I need for my composition)

​                                   EXAMPLE C

                                 EXAMPLE C (ii)

Now this new scale can be applied to the music I have already written to create a "variation".

Below is a video (with the score) showing how I applied this 'transformation' to the second half of my original theme.

Applying the same kind of process to another movement in the work for Piano Quintet, I looked at the Scottish Strathspey.

Below is an example of a traditional Strathspey.

The rhythmic feature which immediately stands out is the "Scottish Snap" rhythm. I began to sketch ideas around this distinctive feature but wanted to see if I could create a more melancholy mood. Music which is reflective, rather than music to be danced to.

Below is a video of a piano piece I wrote which acts like a sketchbook of ideas for a more substantial piece.

Detuning The Nation
Since lockdown, walking the streets near where I live I have been constantly noticing how everything is becoming 'out of tune'. It is obviously true when talking about musical instruments which need a tuner to visit to maintain their pitch and tuners have not been able to gain access due to the lockdown restrictions, but I have also noticed church bells and town hall chimes slowly de-tune during this time.

Normally, when I walk to church on a Sunday to do by job as a church organist I hear the clear bells from the clock tower of the church at the top of the hill on the street where I live (pictured below) and, as I continue on, those bells recede into the distance and half-way through my journey I hear the chimes of the Town Hall clock chime the quarter hour (telling me I'm on time to turn up for work). I can always tell if I'm running late since the church bells (to my right are still too loud), and the Town Hall chimes are too distant.

I bought a pair of Roland CS-10EM binaural headphones to be able to capture this sound of bells at a certain point in my walk to work every Sunday.

I went on my first sound walk and captured the sound of church bells in one ear and Town Hall bells in the other. When playing back on my PC speakers I couldn't hear what I heard while I walked, but when listening with headphones I can. Below is a recoding of that four minute walk where one bell can be heard throughout and then the two bell sounds can be heard towards the end.

.Since lockdown began it's forced me to think about 'performance spaces' in a totally different way. Since these spaces are known to me through them having physical bodies of people in them either rehearsing or performing music or being the audience for live music I've begun to see these spaces differently and have become aware of the acoustics of the buildings when empty a lot more. I also focused on what sounds were in and around these buildings.

Normally I play some improvised music as the congregation is arriving and I help drown out the sound of the traffic outside. In "Music and Mind in Everyday Life" (when describing the role of the organist as the congregation assemble for the funeral of Princess Diana), it is described as: "​The music masks environmental sounds and in doing so it serves to demarcate the physical space as one which is different from the ‘everyday’, and provides aural privacy between waiting members of the congregation."

I decided, instead of masking these sounds,  by improvising music at the same frequency as the traffic noise outside, what if I 'collaborate' with these sounds.

​The video below is taken on my phone but the sound comes from the binaural recording from my headphones.

The church is also near a hospital so often there are ambulances going past. I didn't manage to capture that sound on this recording, but did later.

​​The “pitch” of the traffic noise is roughly between middle C and D two semi-tones above.

What if I take this ‘drone’ as the starting point of a piece of music I create inside the empty church building.

I then set about creating a drone close in pitch to the traffic noise. Since I am the only person creating this piece I had to find a way to get a note to sustain on the organ while I am not physically there to play the note.

In order to gage the resistance of the ‘touch’ of a keyboard instrument you might put a pile of pound cousins on the key to see how many coins it takes to depress the key. The more coins the more resistant the key. I put a pile of coins onto one of the keys on the organ in order to be able to make it sound while I could go off to another area of the church to play the piano along with the drone it created. I also wanted a drone from one of the notes of the pedals of the organ and so placed a book on the pedal to keep it playing. Below is a video of me triggering these two pitches.

​With this constant drone I then moved to the piano which is situated on the lower level of the church (where the organ is in the organ ‘loft’ one floor above). This is a perspective of sound I never get since I am always producing the sound so the organ I only hear from being directly in front of it while playing. The picture below will give you an idea of the distance between the upper level (organ loft) and ground level (where the piano is situated).

Composition One

​The video below is the first of three compositions which explore being influenced by the environmental sounds around the space in which they are created.

While the drone is constant from the organ I create a piece of piano music which moves around the pitch of the drone and often settles on the fundamental pitch of middle C (the ‘traffic noise drone’).

I created the composition below by recording my piano piece first and then listening back with ear-phones while recording interjections from me playing strings inside the piano (in and around the fundamental pitch). I then synched up the two recordings to make a piece which is in three layers - drone, piano composition, and piano string “interjections”.

In order to be able to play the strings inside the piano so the sound would ring on I had to keep the pedal down. Once again, being the only 'performer', I had to find a way to do this and, similarly to the organ solution, I used a weighty object to hold down the pedal. The piano stool (pictured below).

I titled this piece “Siubhal” which is the Gaelic word for “walks” (or “passing” or “traversing”). This word is used in connection with the playing of Pibroch where a player will create variations around the drone or “ground bass” of the Pibroch with variations (or 'siubhal')

In my piece the variations are harmonic. The fundamental pitch is constant throughout and the harmony in the piano music is sometimes sympathetic with the pitch of the organ drone (often returning to being in unison with the organ pitch) or sometimes the harmony is in direct conflict, but always clears away to restate, on the piano, a consonant sound with the pitch of the drone (for instance harmonising the drone with a simple major chord which recurs - one example is at 48'' seconds in the video). To signal this consonance more clearly this is where the strings of the piano are plucked. I also used a separate piano in a room behind the "sanctuary" where the organ is to add another timbre to the sound.

Each of the instruments in the church is 'out of tune' to some extent. The organ is a micro-tone flat of "concert pitch" (according to this tuning app, almost a full quarter tone).

Below is a video of my "Composition One"

​Composition Two

In the second composition I wanted to look at interpreting a space while not in the space. So everything I worked on in the church I wanted to translate into sound but at home. I reused the binaural traffic recording as the backbone of creating a work in a DAW. I already knew that the recoding produced pitches around middle C and I used mostly Spitfire Audio's "Labs" sample libraries. I first tried to find sound which complimented the sounds I hear around the church, but found that the "industrial" or "urban" sound libraries were too close to field recordings I could have recorded myself from the real sounds around the church. I chose to work with instrumental sounds which had some timbral connection with my own recording of the traffic noise. Their sample library "London Atmos" was doing something that I was looking for but was full of sounds not heard near me (London Underground, large traffic-jams, talking crowds etc), so I decided not to use that library and only use sounds I'd recorded myself.

My very first attempt included instrumental sounds which had less defined pitches or would 'slide' pitch so the first two libraries I used were "Frozen Strings" (utilising string effects which were less focused on one exact pitch), and "Trumpet Fields" which Labs describes as being "long notes with a range of granular elements — from double tonguing to slow bends". 

​Below is a screenshot of how the DAW looked in my first sketch (limiting the sounds to just 3 virtual instruments and two field recordings (one being the traffic noise and one being a sample of an ambulance siren and its doppler effect).

The ambulance sample didn't blend with the other sounds in the arrangement well and so I had to make them sound more like the sample library sounds I was using. I slowed the ambulance sound down by 300% and lowered the pitch by half an octave (pictured below).

 This ambulance sound drops in pitch as it passes by. This "doppler effect" I wanted to capture since it created a sliding pitch which I wanted to explore as compositional material for building the piece. It goes from being a Gb to an F. This particular drop in pitch gives me a harmonic "leaning note" (or 'appoggiatura') onto the second note which creates the consonant harmony of an open fourth interval (if I keep the pitch of C as the drone). I ended up changed the fundamental pitch from C, up one semi-tone, to Db so the C became a consonant note of a major chord instead (similar to the piano piece in "composition one" returning often to a simple major chord)

Below is a recording of the first attempt at using found sound and sample libraries.

With my 'first try' I decided I was letting the pitched sampled instruments 'take the lead' too much and creating music with the traffic sound as background. In my second composition I wanted the traffic noise to be the foreground and the picthed samples only 'pick out' the notes of the traffic noise occasionally. I wanted it to be more in the style of "musique concrete", where the recorded sounds were the raw materials.

​Below is a recording of my second composition.

In "Composition Two" I wanted to see if musical pitches could be imposed on field recordings and if pitches could be derived from those recordings. The piece is an interplay between these two things. I took the Doppler Effect of the ambulance and mapped it to the first three pitches in "Composition One" (“Siubhal”). I then shifted the pitch of the original piano recording (without organ or traffic drones), to match the sliding pitch of the ambulance sound. When the "music" settled on the pitch of the bells from the first sound walk then I introduced the bells to the mix to provide a new drone or "pedal point".

Composition Three

For my final composition I wanted to combine all the elements of the previous two compositions and have the organ be the primary instrument and the other sounds as the sonic background. This piece plays with the out of tune elements of all the sounds. Playing with the complex overtones until reaching a resolution with some kind of cadence. In this piece it resolves onto a major chord. the 'resolution' of all the out of tune elements landing on a consonant chord.

Final Thoughts

Since all the acoustic instruments I was working with were out of tune to different degrees, I felt that it gave me a lot of scope to composer with harmony rich in clashing overtones and work out ways of resolving the pitches to some kind of consonant sound. These out of tune instruments blended much better with environmental sounds since those were of indiscriminate pitch.