The original exercise from Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from Listening and Writing is: “‘Animals’ are the subject here, but more important is the idea of headlong, concentrated improvisation on a set theme. Once the subject has been chosen, the exercise should be given a set length, say one side of a page, and a set time limit—ten minutes would be an ideal minimum” (Hughes 1990). My adaptation is as follows: 

For this method, the exercise was open-ended, and not much needed to be adapted. I kept the set length of ten minutes and changed the “one side of a page” to eight bars of music at a minimum. In my experience, this would be an achievable amount of music to write within the time limit and, in this exercise, it functions as a goal rather than a strict rule.

Case study, “Escape from Jungle Island”

On January 26th, I picked the Macaw as the animal for the exercise. After ten minutes, I had six bars (a little short of the eight-bar goal) that sounded like this (original audio from the writing session):

While writing it, I had the mental image of two Macaw birds flying in Miami. One can occasionally spot a flock of these majestic blue birds throughout the city and I loved seeing them when I lived there. 

Musically, the repetitive upbeat pattern in the piano accompaniment gives the feeling of perpetual motion, which in this case represents flying, and the sustained melody on top depicts the birds soaring on the wind above all that goes on below them. The harmonic context of chord-defining thirds gives this upbeat pattern a harmonious feeling. The lyrics themselves illustrate this imagery, setting the scene.

I liked the idea so I continued to write with this as the basis of the song. I came up with another four bars that advance the flying imagery by gradually increasing the top note of the melodic line to a peak at the end of the A section.

My notation from the end of the first day can be seen here:

Over the next few days, I refined the phrasing and added more lyrics. To get further inspiration on the subject, I researched more about these Macaws. I found mention of an urban legend I heard while in Miami, that the Macaws were descendants of birds that escaped from a local zoo called Jungle Island (Vazquez 2023). I admired their story of triumph and I also related to the fact that they were transplants living in a new area. Because of this, they are not legally protected from the poachers who hunt them (Vazquez 2023). This extra context helped me write the lyrics of the next section, the bridge (lyrics of the bridge to the right).

The next step I took was writing a vamp section, interlude, and solo section. For these, I focused on ascending motion. In the vamp section, this is apparent in the chromatic ascent of the bassline which contributes to a lifting feeling.

In the interlude, the four-bar melody repeats twice with the second four bars lower than the first. However, it still gives the illusion that the melody is rising because the final two notes resolve differently (higher) in the second repeat. 

Lastly, in the second half of the solo section, the chords move through a cycle; every four bars the chords repeat up a minor third. This creates a rising feeling throughout the section.

Lyrics: The lyrics tell a story of freedom and perseverance of the Macaw birds from the perspective of the birds themselves with reference to local lore. 

Melody/Harmony: There is balance in the melodic shape of this composition. In general, there is the feeling of lift throughout the song in the progression of the harmony and melodic line. This mimics the feeling of flying. However, the lift is balanced by the resetting of phrases and descent which levels the composition. The melody has an ascending trend but it then restarts at the beginning of each lyric section. This ascent/lift is also present in the harmony during the saxophone solo which repeats a four-bar pattern of ascending chromatic bass movement. These four bars then ascend in minor thirds but the figure itself resets. Additionally, the ascending chromatic movement of the bass is countered by the first four bars of the bridge, which descends chromatically.

Form: The use of interludes and vamps at the end of the solo section and the end of the song build the energy throughout supporting the story of the freedom of the birds conveyed through the lyrics and the melody.

Performance: I enjoy the upbeat nature of this song and the interaction between my voice and the saxophone. 

Thoughts from my reflective journal: “I am pleasantly surprised with the composition I was able to create from this exercise. I know I would never have thought of this idea had I not had a specific topic to write about.” 

“I found that after writing the original 8 bars of the Macaw song, doing a bit more research helped to inspire the rest of the piece."

Composition Workbook Results: (In these sections, results from the ten composition colleagues who experimented with three of the methods will be shared. A full transcription of the discussion can be found in Appendix 3.) In the discussion of results, many participants mirrored my experience noting that this exercise gave them a different perspective from which to write. Composer 3 observed that the inherent silliness of writing about an animal helped to get rid of the judgment of the resulting musical idea itself. Building on this, Composer 9 found that “not having this really wishy-washy sort of like emotional idea…just having a really specific idea” led them to some “musical things that would not be normally… where I would go so directly.” Composer 6 however brought up the point that some animals already have a sound or musical association from cartoons, movies, and popular culture. They noted that they “found it pretty difficult to break away from… tropes that were written for certain animals.” Multiple participants cited the time constraint of ten minutes as being helpful in accepting ideas as they came and focusing during the writing session. Composer 7, on the subject of the time constraint, said “So I started with a big idea” then moved to “okay, let me try to get something on the page.” Also on the subject, Composer 1 noted they felt encouraged to continue writing the song as a result of the time constraint. They liked what they wrote in the ten minutes and were excited to continue it in another session stating that “It felt very playful” and that “coming back to it and just expanding on the perspective from the lyric standpoint was really fun because… I was able to go into this kind of like a little introspective space but I didn't have any initial pressure to do that.” Composer 1’s experience with the relationship between the time limit and continuing their work was similar to my experience as well.

Results:

A song from the point of view of a macaw bird is something I simply would not have come up with without this method. In this example, it is clear the musical figure and the lyrics stem directly from the exercise. Because of this, I consider the method to be successful in giving me the idea to write about something out of the ordinary and from a different perspective than I have thought of before. It therefore resulted in atypical lyrics for my writing style. Before starting this research, I would commonly write songs directly based on my present experience. I wrote these most often from a first-person perspective, synthesizing my own experiences. This exercise brought me out of my comfort zone and I wrote from an omniscient perspective about the experience of a bird. This perspective gave me different emotional content to explore such as the feeling of freedom that comes from flying with the idea of not belonging (from the macaws being a non-native species). I found I could still relate to these from my own experience in order to bring this perspective to life. 

Overall based on my experience and the feedback of my colleagues, this exercise can encourage compositional exploration from a new perspective in a non-judgemental way because the exercise requires one to create something on a specific (not emotion based) topic within a time limit of ten minutes.