Emma Farquhar

What are your thoughts on having Joe Hisaishi specifically as a reference for your work? How did having his music in mind affect your own compositional decision-making? In what ways do you think you were successful in capturing his style in your composition?

Joe Hisaishi was a good example for our project and our level/experience of composing since his music is fairly open in how he structures it and there are a lot of different-sounding pieces to choose from as inspiration. When listening to the other student’s pieces, they had the typical Joe Hisaishi feel but our compositions did not resemble each other’s too much which shows that Joe Hisaishi has enough variety in his original works that we could each be inspired by a specific song and they could still all sound fairly different. He also tends to use many instruments and build up textures to make his pieces sound very lush which is a good challenge for us since we have more experience composing solely for our own instruments. In my own composition, I fell back on his works when I had trouble with inspiration and I used some of his chord progressions or specific techniques to fill in any gaps. Having something to look back to for inspiration helped to streamline my work and to limit the time I spent wasting time not knowing what to do. I think that I captured his style accurately, to the best of my abilities. The intro section of my piece was based off of One Summer’s Day from Spirited Away, and used the high, arpeggiated chords that Joe Hisaishi uses a lot. I then chose to use two violins, a cello and a piano as my instrumentation which is also similar to Joe Hisaishi since he works a lot with piano and adds strings to build up the lush sound. I also tried to mimic how he builds pieces up and then brings the piece back down to something very minimalistic. My piece starts with solo piano and then is built up one by one by a first violin, then the cello, and finally the second violin, and then my piece ends with solo piano again, an octave above the original A section, with arpeggiated chords in the left hand. Overall, I think that this was an accurate homage to Joe Hisaishi and I am very proud of my work.

What are some things that you did not foresee? Why do you think some of these turned out differently than what you intended or expected? How did you deal with this?

When I started my composition, I had a good idea of how the A section would sound, and the end was pretty clear once I had figured out the A, but my B section stayed a mystery for quite a while. At the start I had written some chords for the B section based off of the piece I had picked as my main inspiration: On a Clear Day from Kiki’s Delivery Service. I added on to those chords but for a long time that was all I had and I had no clue what to do for the B section. I knew I wanted to make it more atmospheric with a less obvious melody, however, it was very unclear to me how to do that. I had drawn inspiration from another Joe Hisaishi piece for a couple bars of piano in my B, and this ended up serving as a transition from my B to my A. This was good, but I still did not have anything for my B. In the end, I decided to just replicate the chords I had chosen for the left hand into the right hand, and arpeggiate them slowly to create a strong sense of atmosphere. It was in this part that I played around with the harmonies of the strings and really had the lush feeling I was looking for. In the end, although the B section took the most time, I really like it, and think that it is my favourite part.

What worked well for you and therefore is something you would do again in the future?

Working through my composition methodically really helped me to finish the composition quickly. I found that just writing down basic ideas and getting anything down helped me, since I tend to focus too much on details even though I do not even have that much to work with in the first place. I started composing for piano which helped me initially since it is the instrument I am most used to, and since I can play it, I could just improvise on the piano and see what sounds good. Next time, I would like to try not using piano, to fully push myself out of my comfort zone. Finishing the beginning and end of my composition also helped me since I felt like I knew where I was starting and the journey I wanted my music would take. This helped me to write my B section since I just kind of had to fill in the blanks of where my music would go between the A section and the return of the A section.

What did NOT work well for you and therefore is something you would do differently in the future?

At first I focused too much on the piano section and forgot that I needed to add other instruments. I think that I should have been thinking about other instruments as I was writing the piano part so that the piano and string parts would meld better together. As it is, my string parts sound a lot better together and more united than my string parts and piano part since the strings were written together. For a next composition, I will try to not use any piano, or at least to write some of my instruments at the same time to make sure that they perfectly blend together. Other than that, I think that my work habits were very good for this project and that I ended up creating a project that I am extremely proud of. Thank you for the opportunity to do this project!