Toast Counterpoint

Many people assume that since I'm a musician, I'm a composer. I'm not. Have never had an original musical thought in my life.

However, under pain of bad grades, I have been forced to write compositions for various classes. And since I could, once I had the equipment, I fed them into the computer. Thus, Toast Counterpoint. These MIDI files should let you decide for yourself whether I've missed my musical calling.

The first work, for piano, is entitled Three Elephants Romping in the Florida Everglades and is a minuet written for a theory class in college. Since the rules of the exercise were fairly simple (use some stepwise harmonic progressions, modulate to a not-completely-related key in the middle), I got creative. The title came from something Mr. Bradley Staubes described me as once when I was crashing around our dorm room freshman year.

May, 2006: Here's a revoiced version with a more carnival atmosphere.

The second, Deus Meus yadda yadda, is a four-part vocal setting of some Latin text or other that I had to do for 16th century counterpoint in grad school. It's deathly dull and not very good even in its genre (I think I got a B), but I fed it in because I'd never actually heard it with all four voices going. You won't hear the vibrant latin text, just the notes.

May, 2006: The MIDI file has been revoiced so it sounds more like voices!

The third, Gross Fugue, was written for 18th century counterpoint class. It’s quite a work and one of which I'm very proud. Although I'm not J.S. Bach (or any of his sons), give me solid structural rules to follow and I'm pretty happy. GF is a double fugue for any 4 instruments (or organ or whatever). A double fugue means that:

• • The first fugue subject is tossed in and all four voices get to play it, each in turn.

  • The second fugue subject gets tossed in and the same thing happens.

  • Both fugue subjects happen at the same time! Each of the subjects gets assigned to a different voice, and the two voices left do, um, something else. This happens four times so that each voice gets a shot at each fugue subject.

By this point, all pretense of melodic or harmonic interest has been thrown out the window, because you're just trying to get everything to work together. But I think it's really cool!

May, 2006: The MIDI file has been revoiced! I tried all sorts of combinations: it ended up being church organ for the soprano and alto lines, and trombone for the tenor and base.

Enjoy!

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