Straight out of high school I headed for Brigham
Young University. My first
semester, fall of 1980, I took a composition class with Murray Boren. I remember him telling me that when I
write music I need to stay with just one theme. He could take one of my compositions and divide it into
three separate pieces. My
justification at the time was that I didn’t want the listener to get
bored. He was probably
scrutinizing this piece when he made that observation.
Emotions
is one of my earliest writings – high school days, in fact. Back then I wasn’t too concerned with
musical form. Nowadays I do try to
keep the structure of the piece in the back of my mind as I’m writing, but I
must admit that sometimes I fall back into old habits and just let the music
carry me away.
If the song (above) won't play, try clicking on the word/logo SOUNDCLOUD just above this sentence on the right.
A few years back Chuck was wrapping up a major
project when he provided me with a golden opportunity.He invited me to write the musical
score as the background to the narration for his video documentary. The show tells about the
construction of the Crooked River bridges here in Central Oregon.I had never written for orchestra
before, but that didn’t stop me.
For this piece I took a simple eight-note musical
phrase and applied mathematical principles to create the harmonies. Basically, I took a short sequence of
notes and added layers of the same melody but applied different time values to
the notes. Each layer is a multiple or division of the original phrase – twice
as fast, twice as slow, etc. It
can get a little busy, but I like the dreamlike quality it seems to
create.
You’ll have to forgive my unorthodox notation. As I was pressed for time, rather than
write for specific string instruments, I took shortcuts and transcribed it as I
wrote it on my Yamaha Motif.
This video clip is an excerpt/chapter from the
movie A Story of Three Bridges. A highlight in the Hutchings household
last year was having the show air on Oregon Public Broadcasting and on other
local television stations. How fun
is that!?!
To download free SHEET MUSIC clickHERE To download an mp3 FILE of just the music (without the narration) clickHERE