Task: Now compose two studies for three or more instruments. With more instruments, you
 are likely to generate more material. You may want to make the pieces much longer.
 This is a good thing as long as each piece is interesting and doesn’t go on too long.
 Listen critically to your own composition. Play the piece through several times. If you
 are still interested, then other listeners might be too. If not, the piece probably needs
 re-thinking.

 Use these questions to reflect critically on your work:
 •     Does it have a principal idea?
 •     Is it focussed clearly enough on the principal idea?
 •     Does it have a clearly defined structure – or does it wander aimlessly?
 •     Is it too long? – could it be made tighter and more interesting by cutting it down? 

1. Trio for Snare Drum, Tenor Drum, and Tambourine

This is a short piece that is built on one of the motifs from the project on duets, with expanded instrumentation and a clearer path from development to end. This was a first attempt to try and combine instruments so they would take a complementary and active role in the development of the main theme, not just accompanying or filling in the space with sound. I left this piece quite short as I figured it had come to a natural conclusion, but also because this piece is more in line with the previous exercises, which were rather short.

2. Short piece for Triangle, Snare, Bass, Tam-Tam, Shaker, and Wood Blocks

This is the longest piece I’ve written for the course up to this point, and also the one that uses the most instruments. I had the idea to do a longer, slow-moving piece that had a recurring “announcement” in the triangle part after listening to Carlos Chávez’s 2nd movement of the Toccata for Percussion Instruments, from 1942, for which I did a listening log entry.

The structure of the piece is fairly simple. With an underlying pad from the tam-tam, the triangle introduces each section with a main motif consisting of dotted rhythms and varying triplets. The rest of the instruments take up this motif and try to develop others (such as that of the wood blocks) in the short space that follows until the triangle obnoxiously interrupts and sets the cycle in motion again. This builds on itself a total of 7 times before the ending of the piece.

We have been asked to reflect critically on the duration of the piece. I think in this instance, and for the purpose of this exercise, the piece is as long as it should be given the task at hand and the basic structure proposed above.

However, I would like to develop this idea further and this might require a longer duration. The way I would imagine this working would be to allow the complexity and density of the material that develops in the gaps left by the repeating triangle motif to grow larger with each cycle, only to be obstinately interrupted by the triangle motif. The parts allocated to the other instruments could be scored in the traditional sense or include directed improvisation. Following the interruption from the triangle, the development from the other instruments would have to begin again each time until a climax or resolution, neither of which has occurred to me yet, would end the composition. This would undoubtedly require a longer duration, and I hope to develop this in the future.