The “Problem” with “The Coast”

Posted on by jjonesdtrt4422

Well, OK, no, there’s no problem. As a matter of fact, I’m getting close to pushing my way through the 4th section, “Beach,” which is going to be even more cheerful and full of fun than “Boardwalk!” (An aside — I’m not sure what the 5th section will be called. I currently have “Microcosm” as a placeholder, but I’m not warming up to it. How does one come up with a term that’s in the same category as “Aloft,” “Storm,” “Boardwalk,” and “Beach,” but reflects a microcosmic reference point? Beat’s me! But I digress…)

My compositional work has become more “visual” as my writing has progressed. I started out very abstractly, with a string quartet using movement names and performance instructions from the traditional Italian. The motivic content and forms were purely musical in nature. We’ll skip the two choral works for now, since the presence of lyrics make them ill-suited for this discussion. My next full composition was “September,” which was very visual, describing (abstractly, of course) ideas around the season. I even started a video project with it, which never quite got off the ground. Although the “Brass Variations” was, again, a bit more purely musical, several of the variation names had visual components (“The March,” “The Chase” are two). My dance suite was, again, very visual. Dance is consumed visually as an art form! I even had fun with some image generations in illustrating the dances themselves, with Bing’s AI tool.

And here we are. “The Coast” is a deliberate attempt at musically describing five earth vantage points which are decidedly visual. I have a serious thing happening in my head as I work on this piece. I’m visualizing an abstract line animation representing each vantage point. It doesn’t need to be full pictures — the music isn’t that representational, so the visuals don’t have to be either. But wouldn’t that be fun?

If you need examples to watch, here’s a short film called “Picasso One Line Drawing.” (If you’re on a computer, and the display in YouTube is annoying, click “picture in picture” and it’ll play outside of that.) Here’s another, a lot less abstract, “The Earth, Our Sweet Home.”

I don’t have anything vaguely like this skillset, so it’s just an idea that may stay that — an idea. But if you have any interest, or know someone who might, I’m all ears! Click here for “The Coast’s” project page. Three of the five sections already have their own pages, describing what each “pictures.” You can probably figure out what the other two will look like just reading the general project page.