I made it to the end of a brass fanfare today. There’s still a lot of editing to do. It’s about a minute and a half, which is only enough room for one idea, but I’ve got two and I can’t decide how they fit together. The first is an embellishment of a small brass motive from The Wanderer, over low clusters in the tubas and euphoniums. It’s ok, but the more interesting idea is a composing out of a technique I started working on last fall. Last fall I wrote a PD patch that would play random pitches from the overtone series of whatever pitch the computer heard. (I really need to write a piece that uses that patch!) For this fanfare I’m thinking of the low notes as the fundamental pitches and letting muted trumpets play “random” notes from the overtone series. The effect–a cloud of soft overtones–would really be enhanced in an especially reverberent space.
I think the next step is expanding on the overtone cloud and minimizing or eliminating the Wanderer rehash.
