Tim Rohwer: Composer

In order to show more about the compositional process, I wanted to spend some time taking readers though my thought process while writing the different pieces in the emotions suite.  For this article, I wanted to talk a bit about how I arrived at the decisions for different parts of the piece.  If you haven't had a chance to hear it yet, you can check out the video on my YouTube channel!!  (Shameless plug included today) The first decision I made was on what kind of instrumentation I wanted.  I wanted this to have the feeling of a full orchestra with some percussion to give it a richer, more diverse, and more full sound.  So I created a Finale file that had all of the instruments I was likely to use and that I might use. After that, I wanted to figure out what key area this should be in.  I felt that B-flat would have a warmer sound to it (no particular reason:  I just wanted B-flat). After this came the more nitty gritty work:  how do I c...

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? ...

I recently have been in the process of publishing some of the arrangements that I've done for various groups, most of them my orchestra class at the Utah Conservatory ( click here to see my publisher page , and click here to see my new website ).  Some of my colleagues commented that the arrangements were fun and very high quality.  They were long enough to be recognizable, but short enough to be enjoyable for the students to play.  I've also started to have some success in selling these arrangements, and I wanted to take some time to talk about the process I go through when I start to arrange a piece. In this article, we'll be talking about your intended audience:  those who will perform the arrangement and those who will hear the arrangement. The first consideration I start out with is: what kind of group will be performing this? What is the group I'm going to be writing for like?  Who do I have to play the different parts and what are their strengths and ...

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.

I've recently been using a technique for teaching whole steps and half-steps with my students that I feel has been pretty effective, and I wanted to share what I do.  I mention this to my violin students after they have been playing for a little while.  I have students start with a simple tetrachord pattern (what I call the mini scale) on just one string, and from there we progress to a D major scale on the D and A strings.  When they are starting to play on more than their D and A string, I introduce them to the fact that they can do a bigger scale on their whole instrument.  At this point, I mention half steps and whole steps. I start by having students listen to the difference between half-steps and whole steps.  I currently have a piano in my teaching studio, and so I'll play them the a half-step lower down on the piano, and tell them how it is like the "Jaws" theme. I then show them the contrasting sound of a whole step and mention how in music we ha...

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'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...