Week 1: January sketching challenge

I thought I would give a short update about my progress on my 'January sketching challenge'. One week in, I feel really good about what I have achieved so far. I have definitely realised that you don't necessarily need inspiration to create music, sometimes just playing around with sounds can lead to an idea and start the compositional process. Many times I had absolutely no idea what to do but in the end I always managed to produce something. I have also improved my speed in writing, at the beginning of the week I would have needed about 3 hours to sketch out an idea, whereas know I only need about 2.
All in all it has been great so far, hopefully I can keep it going for the remaining 3 weeks!

Here are the pieces I have produced so far:


This piece started out by playing around with thirds in flutes and then gradually evolved in orchestration.


The bouncy rhythm of the piano figure was the idea that set the whole piece off. It then evolved with every repeat until culminating with an almost heroic sounding ending. This was fun to do!


The dissonant chords in the piano was the starting point here, the cello and violin melodies respectively then just emerged out of the synth/piano accompaniment.


The idea for using marimba came after I heard a piece for marimba on the radio that day and I thought to myself 'that's a nice a sound I'd love to write something like this', which is exactly what I have done later that day :)


I always liked the sound of vibraphone in combination with harp. Add a bit of high strings to it and you have a suspenseful sounding cue.


A woodwind solo over strings always sounds nice in my opinion. I think I had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to do before I started composing this one, which is actually quite contrary to the most of the other pieces!


I wanted to make use of low rumbling woodwinds here, combined with twinkling glockenspiel makes it sound a bit eerie I think.

That is my quick rundown of all 7 pieces for week 1. I hope you have enjoyed this and I will be back with another update next Friday for the 2nd week of my 'January sketching challenge'.

-PW