For the last few days, I’ve been distracted by this idea for a composition.
Not a song — an composition of the classical music variety.
Something I’ve always wanted to write was a modular score much like the television score for the ’80s animated show, Robotech. When I was a kid, I loved how the show’s composers mixed a rock ensemble with an orchestra.
Electric guitars didn’t just play power chords — they were given some dischordant melodies. And the electric drums so emblematic of that time period mixed in well with timpani.
But the most fascinating part was how each piece of music could be repurposed and reused, as if they were interchangeable parts of a whole machine.
I always thought — actually, I still think something like that would work as a chamber piece.
While stuck in traffic, my mind started to stretch that idea even further.
Is it possible to compose a piece in the same way an object-oriented program is written? What would happen if I were to write incredibly modularized snippets of music that could be called like methods of a class to create an entire piece?
I started to mess around with the possibilities.
Like creating a piece of software that would let a user, such as a conductor, a facilitator or even another composer, build a work of music from a library of tiny musical ideas. The user essentially brings the piece together by writing an object-oriented program.
The score isn’t anything written down — it’s the software itself.
This method is probably one used by electronica artists everywhere — take a bunch of canned loops and string them together — but there’s something about object-oriented programming that seems like it shares a connection with music composition.
Else, I’m just trying to be avant-garde as all get out.
I wonder if I could get into a graduate programming pitching this idea.
If it turns out trying to bridge object-oriented methods and classical composition is a bust, I could always fall back on trying to write my version of the Robotech score.
Still, there’s something intriguing about this idea.
I’ve just begun to wrap my head around object-oriented programming, such that I almost feel tempted to re-write the code that powers this website and others.
If such an idea can be pulled off, I imagine it would sound incredibly minimalistic.