Music Composition DUMmIES

Flick ......................................................................................................

Flickis light, indirect, staccato, and free-flowing.

Imagine you’re flicking an eyelash off of someone’s cheek with your finger.

You’re not pouncing on that little stray hair to remove it — instead, you’re

aiming at the general direction of the hair, just brushing against the cheek of

the person and the area around the eyelash as well. When you’re trying to

capture the feeling of flicking in your music, you’re quickly and gently hitting

the notes you want to hit, but you’re also playing with the notes around your

core musical idea as well.

Serialism and fugue counterpoint use the concept of flick in their construc-

tion, as do artists such as J. S. Bach, Elf Power, Philip Glass, and Can.

Glide .....................................................................................................

Glideis light, direct, sustained, and bound.

Imagine a bird gliding, and make your music take on that sound. When you’re

writing music that glides, keep in mind that you’re trying to make music that

soars, just like that bird.

Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Brian Eno’s atmospherics, and Arvo Päart all

manage to convey glide.

Press.....................................................................................................

Press is heavy, direct, sustained, and bound.

Press music does just that — it presses down hard on the listener. This is

you, the composer, pressing down hard on the fly that landed on your key-

board, slowly and with great intent. There’s no misconstruing your musical

concept when you compose in press, which is why almost all heavy goth

music and slowcore fit under this heading.

Wagner, Low, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Canadian folk artist Hayden, This

Mortal Coil, Mogwai, Popol Vuh, and Joy Division all are into press.

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