Soft Machine³ - Arts Tech and Other

Etude for Clarinet & Piano by Richard Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

 

This piece of music has a very unusual genesis. So unusual, I’m calling it “collaborative improvisational composition.” My collaborator was a bit less than “composer,” and I bit more than “arranger.” Also, what a lovely feature of this method - that no-one is ever faced with the Blank Page Terrors.

Robert Elvin was (and still is) making an independent film, and had improvised some music on his clarinet, for use in the film. (Robert used to play winds professionally; he was rusty, but not very!)

I listened to it and was able to easily deduce things like meter and key signature.

I then created a score for the solo clarinet part. That was a fair bit of work, mostly because of the fast runs and other unusual figures.

 

 

I composed (arranged?) a piano part after seeing the music on paper… and then performed and recorded the piano part (in a sub-optimal acoustic space) and mixed the audio together.

Finally, we got the score in decent shape, suitable for other uses, such as a chamber music performance. Don’t tell anyone there is no Lone Tortured Genius Composer for this piece!

Please share away, Robert and I agreed to make everying Creative Commons licensed. We would like to hear the piece interpreted and performed by others; Robert is curious how the”improv vs. sheet music” issue will play out for the clarinetist.

Sheet music (full score & clarinet only) is avaliable in PDF format at Free-scores.com

Stream the audio right off Archive.org with the player, or go there to download it

 

Etude for Clarinet and Piano