I've heard other music of Errikos and it is brilliant, complex operatic work.
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Xander that sounds really good - was any of that VSL?
Thank you, William. No, nothing of that was VSL. It's from 1996, I don't believe VSL has already existed back then (?). Coming from piano, I think I wrote the better melodies in my early time when I had nothing but a piano and later a KORG 01W and, again later, a ROLAND JV2080 at my disposal. Since I started working with VSL my focus as a composer has shifted towards colors and orchestration. Now as I'm writing this, I'm not sure that's a good thing. 😊
Anyway, if this thread was about my best melodies made with VSL, I'd consider THIS one my favorite. It's the main title for a short film I composed music for some years ago. It's very brief, but I like to think it's melodically intense.
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Congratulations to everyone participating in this (great thread Bill), and thanks for the kind words Anand and good work too. Since people started posting what they refer to as their good stuff, I thought I'd put up something I wrote in this century. It has been interesting for me to monitor people's musical backgrounds and interests through this exercise. It seems that most listen to film music primarily (a lot of music offered here screams this), and less to the classical tradition (by 'classical' I mean anything 800-1950 A.D.). I'd just like to say guys, that as much as I too love film music and I marvel at the great tracks this genre's masters have offered us, the real wealth lies in the other direction. If you wish to enrich your musical vocabulary significantly and listen to the best melodies that have ever been conceived, take a break from film for a while, shift the balance a bit. Just a suggestion.
https://soundcloud.com/errikos-vaios/wings
Very beautiful song indeed. Inspiring voice too. I like the piano part a lot. Not just an accompaniment, it provides an additional value to the song by creating atmosphere in an active way!
Jos
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Happy new year everybody!
Jasen: Many thanks for the excess praise, The Good Lord Knows a composer can use all the encouragement they can get (and discouragement in the right cases...). It was about two or three years after that track when I wrote something I felt was unquestionably mine, full flavour, and my confidence in continuing studies in composition was sealed (the vagaries of youth...), so top points for not discerning influences, I have none to my knowledge. I consider melodic writing to be my strongest point, and I never post anything of mine on the net, I don't know how William's 'challenge' and your post compelled me to do it. The "embarassment" in posting this track after so many decades since its creation is not the melody, but the most generic chord progression (even though so many beautiful melodies have been buttressed by just such a progression).
Jos: a/a, many thanks. Having posted that documentary track in good humour I thought I'd post something more recent and representative. If you can write melody you usually can do so from an early age, however harmonic and structural development can come over time, and over studying (usually the masters). The piano accompaniment is more than basic accompaniment as it develops the material, has three and four voices going on at times, pedal points, etc.
Now, it is BLASPHEME time! More so as this is a Viennese forum!! This is the track I should have posted to begin with (humourously):
Somewhere in the mid-late '90s I was approached by a girl (music dept. piano student) in a panic. The Music History teacher (a composer) had given the class an assignment, to compose a brief work in the manner of one of the early Romantics. The works (solo, duos, etc.) were to be performed in class! She had left this for the last minute and could come up with nothing, so she offered me about €300 today's money to ghost-write a song for her in the manner of Schubert! And she needed it 'tomorrow'!! Also it couldn't be sophisticated so as to not raise suspicions...
I smiled, thinking a) I needed the money, and b) my age was within Schubert's own lifespan, and he was reputed to go out for walks and habitually return with a full song (sometimes more...)
I accepted that challenge, went straight to the library to have a look at a couple of the great composer's song-cycles to get lyrics and look at accompaniment patterns. I chose Die Stadt from Schwanengesang. I went home, composed through the night, and gave her a song the following morning.
As a result the lecturer was enthusiastic (and somewhat suspicious), but the important part that makes this story worthy of posting is that years later a baritone switched Schubert's own song for mine(!!) in his recital of the whole Schwanengesang at the Liszt Academy Concert Hall (Budapest's premier concert hall), in front of what was and is an educated audience, and the whole thing went like a charm. In my unmitigated arrogance I attribute their acceptance and applause to their thinking there might have been an alternative/additional version that Schubert discarded... The following (ersatz) track is a bad recording from that concert:
https://soundcloud.com/errikos-vaios/die-stadt-m
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Thank you Anand, the song was good enough for that baritone to interpolate it in his professional recital of the Schwanengesang. The audience were actually expecting all Schubert (and I believe most thought that's what they got), as was printed in the programmes in their hands!
The student picked a singer and performed that piece in a lecture hall at university years before this here track was recorded, where everyone was supposed to think she had done it.
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This is a nice melody I had scored for a movie a long time ago, I think has some Brahms-ish qualities:
Scene from Eternal (2004) scored by Guy Bacos (All done with VSL back in 2003)
Later I used this same theme to write a "Theme and Variations" piece, and also did a version for piano and cello which will be performed in 2018, but this is the piano version.
Hi Guy,
You posted this already more than 2 weeks ago. I listened just to both versions. I like melody very much, but also the variations I like very much!
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My contribution is a piece for accordion, clarinet, and harp. I wrote it for my wedding and Becky and I got the chance to perform it live with one of the top Canadian harpists, Erica Goodman. This version though, features live accordion, clarinet, and midi harp (long before we knew how to really work with virtual instruments).
Passages for Accordion, Clarinet, and Harp
Sincerely,
Dave
Hi Dave,
I listened to your piece, and I liked it very much. The occasion I understand was of course very inspiring, and I can hear that in this music. Beautiful played also by you and Becky.
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Thank you William,
Yes it was written for Theatre. This is where I believe people can write a "music" that can be something else than a "noise" behind the action and the sound of a movie, as many directors wants. Theatre is the most interresting music job for a melodist, I believe, - in france I don't know about american productions.
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That is a good point and something to think about as a possible venue for composition. I have done a couple that were interesting though the plays were not something I really liked. If there was a play that one loved it could be as rewarding as any film scoring and as you noted, the music would have much more prominence. I agree the trend in film scoring - making music just another sound effect - is deplorable.
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I have done quite a bit of theatre and found it very artistically rewarding (if not as financially lucrative as film). Lest we forget, theatrical productions up and well into the 20th century commissioned full orchestral scores just like in films, except in theatre we have infinitely more eminent composers contributing (Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Debussy, Sibelius, etc.). I am not sure why and when exactly this great tradition became defunct and music these days in theatre can scarcely be called music, but when I wrote for it I employed as big forces as were appropriate to the play (sampled of course...). Directors were at first caught off guard, but fully enjoyed and endorsed it.
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I think this was a good idea for a thread, it is focused on one (perhaps the most crucial) aspect of composing. It would be interesting to have an entire sequence of such challenges, best harmonic progression, best orchestration, and so forth.
Here is a link to the B theme, the Princess Anna theme, of my piece Saint Vladimir. The theme sort of gradually morphs through several iterations. When the trombone sings with the woodwinds, the trombone represents the voice of Vladimir.
I think this is my best melody so far, but perhaps I will write a better melody tomorrow.
That sounds nice Paul,
It has a real lyrical quality to it fitting for a fairy tale which I guess is the idea.
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I'm slowly but surely getting to as many of these posts as I can.
I think for me my favorite "melody maker" has to be Dvorak with maybe Rossini coming in second.
I was just listening to Dvorak's Rondo in G minor for the umteen thousandth time and it still sounds as beautiful today as the firrst time I heard it.
