Rain Steam And Speed

Inspired by J. M. W. Turner’s painting Rain, Steam And Speed – The Great Western Railway I made this collage of processed and edited samples from classical instruments. The deep drones are influenced by Sunn O))) and Murcof. I only used a couple of samples:
1) a part of ‘Cello Fundamentals’ by richtcello via freesound.org: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=32439
2) sample from Dianne Verdonk playing cello
3) small part from a Vienna Wind Solists play Ligeti record.

Rain Steam and Speed by RutgerMuller

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Project Evaluation

This project took place in the beginning of the second year of my Music & Technology study at the HKU. It fell under the course “Composition-1: Kunst & Kitsch”.

The assignment was: compose music inspired by any of the given paintings and present painting and music together. We were given total freedom in musical style. I chose the Turner painting because I felt it would connect well to my style of composing. The clouds and the mist, the almost impressionistic vagueness, made me think of ambient or other slow moving mysterious music. The warm colors added emotional depth and energy. And from the train I inspiration for rhythms and power.

I started out layering samples of wind instruments, to replicate the sounds of the train in a great open natural space. It sounds like ambient synthesizer pads, but has the acoustic esthetics of the times in which the painting was made. Then I thought about using close and loud cello samples to add the train-like power to the music. From the soothing atmosphere of the beginning the piece travels more into a dark and loud direction, this can represent someone in the train falling asleep and having a nightmare. I combined influences from ambient-electronics and drone-metal with contemporary classical music. Because the music is pretty slow and minimalistic I needed only a few samples. I layered them to harmonies, I re-pitched them for melodies, cut em, stretched em, etc. Pretty basic edits, nothing to futuristic.

In the first evaluation I was told that the wind instrument fitted well with the scenery, but the composition structure was a little too vague. So after that I tried to align the composition more to an intensity curve. Because I worked with samples and decided to make a sort of collage, the challenge for me was to create something truly unique out of existing material.

It was interesting for me to have my work evaluated by someone from the work field, in stead of a school teacher. It lights your work from a different perspective. It’s interesting to compare opinions of teacher, guest teacher (music director) and classmates. A student’s view is more autonomous while a music director listens in applied way.