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Inspired by my fading memories of the fragrant harbour, along with Eric Whitacre's Equus and Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231 (two orchestral pieces illuminating the nature of horses and trains respectively), I decided to capture a picture of the autonomy and momentum of the harbour. I chose to compose for orchestra in order to harness the collective power, texture, and timbre of the woodwind, brass, strings, and percussion sections.

Over the course of a year, I collected melodies to compose with. These melodies were inspired by autonomous sounds, such as footsteps across pavement and the subway's passage over the rail tracks. However, I wanted to capture more than the sounds of feet or subways and include my personal impressions over autonomy in the harbour: the ostinati of the padding feet under pizzicato sections, the briskness of walking delivered by the brass, the franticness and breaths of respite at night ruminated by the woodwind, and the percussive syncopation over the speeding subway.

Naturally, 5/4 time best suited most melodies and applied throughout, intercalated with bars of 4/4 or 3/4 time to accommodate transitional phrases and rhythms. Amidst this were 3/4 cross-rhythms generated by the descending riff. To further connect personally with the music, I chose to set the key in B flat minor, modulating it in the middle of the piece.

Since the piece was much bigger than any I've previously attempted, I began by first laying out the primary melodies on piano before transposing to other instruments. In 04:11–05:53, I struggled with transitioning the piece towards the modulated key of C, eventually reverse-engineering the section by using the ii-v-i progression amidst fanfare. Perplexed with how to end the piece, I eventually decided to take the starting riff and invert it to provide a sense of continuity in the walking feet, autonomy, and momentum.

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from Johnathan Law Jun Jie, released March 26, 2019

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Sekolah Ciputra Music Surabaya, Indonesia

Sekolah Ciputra is the largest single campus International Baccalaureate (IB) World School and the only IB school in Surabaya and East Java (Indonesia) to offer all three International Baccalaureate programmes.
Songs and Musical Works on this page are student created, original compositions and arrangements produced through our High School Music Department programmes. ... more

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