MP3 Caleb Hugo - Context, Symphony 1

This electronic symphony is filled with elements of rock rhythm and jazz harmony, performed with sounds specifically engineered for the composition, and is presented using classical theory and form. Download Movement II for free.

4 MP3 Songs in this album (45:13) !
Related styles: CLASSICAL: Symphony, ELECTRONIC: Experimental

People who are interested in Claude Debussy Saosin Takashi Yoshimatsu should consider this download.


Details:
Check out my website for more information about my work, this composition, and my first album: Prelude. Go there to order physical cd's as well if you prefer.

For years I have had a sound in my head that I couldn't manage to produce until I discovered and purchased Logic Pro 8 and began to play and compose with it. I quickly discovered Sculpture and began to create the sounds I have always wanted to hear. Having played drums all through high school, I quickly learned how to connect my Yamaha DTXpress to my iMac, and proceeded to perform and manipulate the intricate rock patterns that many fellow musicians often criticized when I was in high school. Had anyone (including myself) known what was going through my head when I played, my style of drumming may have been better received and used more effectively. However, my high school rock drumming days have now been channeled into my true passion for classical, or polyphonic, composition.

Between growing up in an environment saturated with popular music and my recent intensive studies in music theory, composition, and performance, I became passionate about writing a work that would fuse the genres within classical music to the sounds and rhythms I had been playing with for the past nine years. It is my belief that I have successfully done this and I hope much more:

During my training I obviously was required to be exposed to a wide variety of classical literature. At first I was apathetic but still listened because I knew that it would be good for my work in composition. However, I quickly realized that its value was deeper than simply helping me to gain musical understanding. I was beginning to connect with the music emotionally, particularly with the works of Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Barber, and several others. There was beauty in the larger formal structure, something captivating in the virtuosity of the performers, and profound wisdom in the compositional techniques which I noticed and began to take to heart. Yet in the midst of this intellectual pleasure, I still listened to the best of the rock and jazz that I had. My love for both genres was developing and was coming out in my compositions. Now it has come out to the extent of forming an electronic symphony which will appeal to both exclusively classical musicians and contemporary musicians.

Personal History:

Music has been a part of my home ever since I was born, but not necessarily as a serious topic of study. Both of my parents are formally trained: My mother is a fine mezzo-soprano and my father a tenor and guitarist. Being a pastorâs family, music naturally was a part of our lives, and my parents performed for our congregation on a regular basis. Because of this, I had been interested in music from a very young age. My earliest musical memories are of me sitting at the piano in the music room of our parsonage, making up short melodies using three notes at a time (white keys only) while asking my parents what they thought of them.

After attempting piano and disliking it in grade school, I started playing the clarinet in sixth grade. The drum set then demanded my interest in seventh grade, and saxophone in eighth grade. During these middle school years I played in as many settings as my band director would allow including symphonic band, jazz band, and wind ensemble. But I never practiced enough to be the best, but only enough to be the second best. I believe this was due to my slowly emerging passion for composition seeing as I was spending more time in thought about how sound worked so that I could reproduce the sounds that were in my head giving other people the ability hear them.

As I began high school, I became frustrated with being put on the instrument that the band needed rather than alto saxophone. Little did I know that playing with a different section of the band every year would help me more than anything else I did in high school: During my freshman year it occurred to me that music notation software probably existed, and I picked up a copy of Print Music! 2001 at the local music store. Less and less of my time was spent playing video games, practicing, and studying, and I would spend hours at a time in front of the computer writing music with my soon to be outdated software, writing small chamber works for my friends and I to play. We ended up performing three of my compositions for solo/ensemble competitions, and then my senior year my band director even had my group play during a band concert. These extremely encouraging events led me to pursue composition as a career since I knew that there was nothing else that I really wanted to do (There was and still is a passion for rock drumming, but that dream was stifled. Although, now it has been incorporated into this project).