Symphonina
I wanted to write a symphony but thought it a daunting process until I found Dr. David Fogel and Gary Gray's concept of a "Symphonina" https://symphonina.org - which is a mini symphony, having all the elements in 3-4 movements, compactified to under 12 minutes total. I had enough material in sketches ready for that and I could develop it into a larger scale symphony later. A few years ago I wrote a piano concerto which was exhausting, so this is an interesting idea and worked for me.
This subsequently won the 2nd prize ($1,000) in the Symphonina Foundation's 2022 Best Symphonina of the Year Award.
The first Movement is in Sonata Form, the second is in ternary form. There is then a more jokey and edgy third movement and a rumbustious finale!
Movements 2, 3 and 4 were based on sketches made a couple of years prior to the competition, whereas movement 1 was the last written, all new specifically for the Symphonina competition. My general conception was to work through the movements from classical to 20th century feel, whilst keeping the music tonal but with gradually more edginess. The first movement is in sonata form, with some small Mahler influences, the second in ternary form, with some influence from 20th century English pastoral music. The third and 4th movement had some influence from Prokofiev, particularly his 5th symphony. The finale brings in statements from the previous movements, as Beethoven did in his 9th symphony.
The video below is my mockup using the software "StaffPad" which uses sampled instruments and various user control features for a realistic effect:
First Movement: https://youtu.be/5iCU_RL6tEc?t=6
Second Movement: https://youtu.be/5iCU_RL6tEc?t=155
Third Movement: https://youtu.be/5iCU_RL6tEc?t=326
The Full Score and parts for each movement are available for free here.
This was subsequently recorded by live musicians and put on Spotify here.
So now I have an artist page on Spotify.
The music was recorded by the International Symphonina Orchestra which is a group of artists from around the world. The recording process was:
I sent the following to Dr. David Fogel:
scores for full orchestra and individual parts
WAV files for each movement (full orchestra)
WAV files for each movement (orchestral sections - i.e. just woodwind, just brass, just percussion, just strings)
Individual instrument WAV files
Click tracks
David then sent this to the individual players who recorded their parts.
David sent me examples with individual instrumentalists playing in one ear and my mock up in the other ear so I could check for accuracy. I was concerned I might have written something not idiomatic enough for an instrument or unplayable, but all instruments played what I had written perfectly with all the nuances I had put in - it was amazingly good!
David then mixed the live recordings with my mockup in his Digital Audio Workstation and send me each complete movement to check for balance. I listened to these and sent a few emails back and forth with the score marked up with a timestamp and my comments for which parts to bring out a little more etc. like this:
David then made the tweaks, then I made a few more suggestions, listened to the next mix and repeated the process until the mix was perfected.
David then sent his mix to his concert master Gary Gray (who does re-records for Disney including full-length feature movies) and Gary did the final mastering. (Mastering is basically audio polishing and making the audio levels consistent across all the tracks on the album).
The album was then released on Spotify and liner notes were made for a CD which you can see here.
The recorded movements are also now on YouTube: