{"id":1983,"date":"2026-05-09T19:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T18:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/?p=1983"},"modified":"2026-06-10T03:31:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T02:31:47","slug":"class-composition-alligator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/compositions\/class-composition-alligator\/","title":{"rendered":"Class composition &#8211; Alligator"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the last few months, our Music 4 class have been building a composition for which we drew inspiration from aspects of traditional Japanese music and American minimalism (though the minimalist influences are more akin to Jan Thiersen&#8217;s work than the original movement in the 60s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Japanese elements are the use of a pentatonic scale &#8211; specifically the In scale (as opposed to the Yo scale) becase we found it was more mysterious and interesting &#8211; and the &#8220;instruments&#8221; we used for the synth, which included a Sho sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To begin writing it, we decided on a key (A &#8211; mostly so I, on bass, could start on an open string) and then started by experimenting with basic sounds and chords and altering scales until we settled on a base we liked. This being parallel scales (up and back down then partially up again (3 x 5 notes)) a fifth apart (the piano was higher up), to do this we made the piece be in 5\/4 to accommodate the pentatonic scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later we added in some phasing in the form of one of the keyboards going further out of sync by one beat every few bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alligator Class Composition by Jay Weiner\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F2336475917&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think we did quite well considering constraints with instruments and not everyone always being present, but we definitely could have given more thought to certain parts of the piece, especially sections that were left as improvisations until the last minute, when we decided to try to cement them a bit further. I&#8217;m also aware that I didn&#8217;t really participate much personally in contributing ideas though, which I&#8217;m not particularly proud of myself for, and also puts me in no real position to judge the composition process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A composition we created in class inspired by traditional Japanese music and American minimalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[123,54,26,122],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compositions","tag-american-minimalism","tag-composition","tag-school","tag-traditional-japanese"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image_2026-06-10_043132150.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2055,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions\/2055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayweiner.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}