Tim Rohwer: Composer

I've been hoping to stretch my composition skills and at the same time create a useful resource for others.  In order to do this, I've started a project to create a series of orchestral pieces that describing different emotions and moods.  I'm going to start making the MP3 files available on my new website , and these will eventually be put into the Unreal Engine Marketplace for game developers to be able to utilize.  Check out the video above (made using Unreal Engine and Blender) with some of this new music! As I write these new pieces, I'll also describe some of my thought process for how I went about writing the pieces, and creating the feel.  Stay tuned for the next article about "Warm and Calm."

To continue where I left off in part 1 of this series on arranging music, I wanted to talk about what the eventual goals of the piece you are trying to arrange are. Why would having goals for your piece be important?  This helps you keep focused on what your final outcome will be.  If you don't maintain this focus, what you can end up with is a result that feels like lots of great parts that could sound good independently, but which collectively don't match very well. How can we go about defining these goals?  While I usually don't write out the goals for my arrangement, I have always taken the time to think about what my goal for the final result is.  Here are some questions I go about asking: -What can I expect the players in my group to be able to do well with as far as key signatures, time signatures, etc.? (see " Thoughts on Arranging Music - My Personal Process Part 1: Who are you writing for? ") -What do I want this arrangement to sound like? ...

In the midst of starting to get lots of students again, and taking care of young kids, and general life craziness, I've managed to get a few of the videos for the 14 week music theory course.  Two of the first week videos are now finished, and a couple more should be done pretty soon.  Here is the 1st video: The example videos are in the comments for this video.  Some more videos to come soon will be more about the structure of the class generally, but then we'll start delving into more of the theory elements, and about the composition assignments that will help understand the theory that we talk about. The goal of the course is to be able to write some simple songs with harmony, so if you're interested in writing, follow along with the videos, and let me know what you come up with.  Also, let me know any thoughts you have on this video and any others we post, as this is going to be a completely new course and curriculum.  :)

I've been working at the Utah Conservatory to put together a music theory class that is designed to help kids use theory right away in making compositions.  More updates on this as they come along, but part of my intention is to make many of the resources available online for the students to use.  My goal is to start anyone out with note reading and build up from their so that anyone who has sang or played an instrument can start to learn the theory that will allow them to write some basic and simple songs.  It's a lofty goal, and I think it is one that will help me refine the class structure. More updates on this class as they come.

As a fun experiment, a decided to take a shot at some minimalism as a weekly warm-up.  Minimalism is where you take a few basic elements and develop art from them.  The idea is simplicity, although sometimes the results can be quite complicated in sound and appearance.  For example, here is a minimalist painting on the right.  It takes a shape and colors to form a painting.  the result is quite beautiful. Composers can do the same thing in music.  An example is Steve Reich's clapping music: The composer takes a rhythm and has people clapping it.  One group then shifts the notes.  This creates an amazing effect that sounds new and fresh even though it is the same rhythm again and again. Another famous minimilist composer is Phillip Glass who wrote the music for "The Truman Show" and "The Illusionist" among others.  Again, he uses some simple ideas to create pretty neat music. I tried my hand at this style of composition and came up...

I am very much a perfectionist, and this comes out in almost everything I do.  From the simplest tasks at work to my artistic endeavors, I strive to make everything the best I can.  But where do we as artists draw the line between a healthy goal of achieving beauty (and even potentially a masterpiece) and the inhibiting and self-destructive pursuit of perfection? Striving to write beautiful and powerful music has been my goal since I started composing many years ago.  However, I've recently realized that my own perfectionist nature has made me freeze up when dealing with the compositions I've been striving to write.  I currently have around 15 or more unfinished projects in various stages of development.  Each one was started with enthusiasm but has since become stagnant, and the main reason behind this is the desire to get everything "right" on it. I pondered about this the other night while driving home.  I was listening to a piece on the radio and wa...

After coming back this week to work on the fugue that I had originally started last week, I found that somehow it had all been erased except the first measure.  I was a little flustered and frustrated by this, until I realized it could be an excellent opportunity to start again with some fresh ideas and some new insights.  So, here is a newly updated fugue with a completely different subject.  Again, the subject was one that I wanted to be something you would be okay hearing again and again throughout the piece, and the counter-subject something to match it in enjoyable-ness, and yet not to be too "overbearing," to drown out the subject. Thinking as well about last week's attempts, I realized too that a 4-voice fugue for piano would have to be carefully crafted to include all four voices in such a way that no voices were lost, there would be little to no crossing of voices (lower voices going higher then higher voices and vice versa), and this would all need to be c...

I've been thinking about grad school and some of the essential knowledge and skills that I'll need, and one that has come to mind is counterpoint.  Since I began learning about counterpoint, I have been fascinated with this compositional technique.  In High School, I began to write two part inventions for piano, and ended up writing about 26-28 of them.  I don't exactly remember because somehow in throwing out some old school work, I must have managed to throw these out as well.  It's probably just as well since I had a limited understanding at best of harmony, of counterpoint, and of music theory and composition in general.  My guess is that they would have ended up sounding quite gross, to say the least. However, my fascination with polyphony continued, and I eventually wrote a fugue that took as its theme the Mario Brothers theme, changed a little to sound a little more classical.  In the end, I came up with a very classical sounding Fugue on a Theme...

As a precursor to an upcoming discussion on harmonies (or a "postlude," if you will pardon the musical pun), I wanted to rewrite "Mary Had a Little Lamb" again with the same melody but different harmonies, placed in such a way to put it in a minor instead of a major key.  This wasn't too hard, as there are only three notes (4 notes in some versions) in the whole song.  Here's the minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb:" While this is the same exact melody, a change in the harmonies can give the song a different feel, in this case quite sinister and very dark.  Since the melody used only DO, RE, and MI in the original key, I turned these into ME, FA, and SOL for the minor version. I've utilized a similar technique for my Piano Sonata to help change the feel of different movements but to connect them together.  The first movement is in A minor and starts out in the melody with a B-flat grace note going to the tonic, A.  The second move...

After spending some time moving, I've been able to get back to experimenting with the chance music piece I started preparing for a week ago.  The results are quite interesting:  something that sounds kind of neat and quite tonal overall. Here's what it sounds like: Not necessarily great, but I think it turned out quite interesting. Here's my methodology for creating this piece. First of all, I played a game of chess against the computer (and lost:  I'm not great at chess). I recorded all of the moves that were made and using a chess board pitch chart I'd created earlier, I found out what pitches corresponded to what moves. My pitch charts were based on 2 major things:  1) As I was reading about chess, it was mentioned that the center of the board is the most important place.  The pitches I felt would be most important to establish the tonality were placed in the center of the board so that they would more likely be fell on. 2) Whether the section u...

I've been toying with an idea in my head for a long time now, and have started to put it into conception:  How could I write aleatoric music that sounds tonal? When I thought about it, the answer was quite obvious:  if I control the possible elements that are going into the piece, I will control the tonality of the piece.  Not only that, I could 'write' a composition with largely chance elements involved, but sculpt them in such a way to make something that may even sound melodious, and might even have classical forms in it. To this end, I've started putting together some different ideas for a 3-movement piano sonata that will be written as a chance piece.  I will strive to incorporate the appropriate form by controlling elements in each section.  For my first attempt, I am going to use two different chance mediums:  rolling of dice and a chess game. For rhythms, I will use dice to determine which of several sets of measures to use for different sec...

With the Missal Suite and other works, I've been exploring the possibilities presented in composing by changing the register of melody and harmony and in spacing of the chords.  In the overture of my Missal Suite, I explored a little of the possibilities of the register by having the melody in a lower register at the beginning and raising it to a higher register later on.  I also used some register techniques in my piano sonata. So what does "register" refer to?  Register is where on an instrument or with a voice something lies on the staff.  When we say "upper register" we are referring to the higher reaches of the instrument or voices capabilities, and "lower register" the lower reaches.  By changing the octave of where something lies, we can change the feeling and color of it.  Here's an example from my piano sonata: In the opening section, I introduce the melody in one octave.  After the initial introduction, instead of playing the ...

In our palette of potential compositional "colors," we have many different choices on how to create a feel.  Today, I wanted to explore just how varying rhythms can change the feel of a piece, and to do this I have take a familiar song and added harmonies to it with varying rhythms to show how varying the underlying harmonic rhythms can change the color and feel of a piece. First, let's look at a simple harmony underneath with slow rhythms: Pretty simple harmony, and it ends up sounding more simple and laid back and kind of sweet and good natured: So, what happens if we change the underlying rhythms?  Here's an eighth note version: If you'll notice the harmonies in the left-hand, they are the same.  Even the same notes are used as from the previous example, but because the 8th notes contrast with the melody and are quick moving, it adds a much more up-beat feel to this simple melody. What if we try a homophonic rhythmic texture? N...