Expiation

This piece was composed as an entry into :10:'s Project 5 Challenge, which lasted from March 23, 2008 until May 5, 2008. The piece was completed on April 21, 2008, yielding an overall composition time of 29 days. As implied by the challenge name, this piece was composed within Project 5, employing IK Multimedia's Miroslav Philharmonik Orchestra.

This mp3, along with other entries for the Project 5 Challenge, can be found on the compilation page, Melancholic.

I must note that most of this composition time was spent replaying the piece over and over again, considering what worked and what did not. This is a critical component to my composition, and also to producing works in general. I believe that a piece should be given the time to develop naturally. Attempting to force too much into a small time frame often yields cluttered or otherwise uninteresting results.

This became quite prevalent approximately halfway through the compositional process- I was so focused on filling the piece with sadness that it became monotonous, with poor transitions between sections. It was at this point that I decided to pull away from the piece, not listen to it for several days, and then return to note prominent issues. This led to the addition and removal of harmonies, insertion of transitional sections, and general improvement in dynamics and otherwise (I must concede that the Contrabass still needs more variation in volume).