Overall, I really enjoyed this project, as composing is something that I am very interested in, and this was the perfect opportunity to try composing something using the Soundtrap interface. The only really big difficulty I had with the software was with the recording function. Every time I tried to use it, the program would crash and I’d have to start again. As a result, the only thing I ended up using the recorder for were a few simple piano chords. All in all, the program worked relatively well. The amount of possible sounds you could get by playing with the effects, pre-sets, and automations was astounding. The way it was laid out was reasonably easy to follow, and it allowed to achieve the vision that I had for the project. It was easy to add tracks and record, and then, if you didn’t like it, you could delete it and start from scratch, if the pitch was off, you could alter it, and if the rhythm was off, you could quantize it. All of these different functions made the program easy to work with, and a good outlet for creative vision. The way I approached the project varied quite a bit from the beginning, I started with quite a clear idea of what I wanted, which was basically a simple fugue in the exposition, but with a development section that introduced quite a few different musical flavours. Once I had finished the exposition, my plan had changed very little. I had introduced the main theme, taken from Bach’s Art of the fugue, and introduced it in three different musical contexts, with the three instruments that I viewed to be the main voices of the work, the trumpet, French horn, and the double bass. Once I had done the first part of the development section, the plan had changed slightly. The rest of the development section would go as planned, but I knew that the recapitulation would re-introduce the subject in a slightly different way, and the subject would be in a different musical context than it was in the exposition. For the last part of the development section, I struggled for quite a while to find something that possessed the magnitude that I wanted. Eventually I settled on a very Romantic, mostly improvised section in C Major. I then decided to end with a minimalism-inspired recapitulation, after listening to a Philip Glass composition. The composition turned out very well in my opinion, and I am very happy with what I came up with. If I were to go back and do it again, I probably would have altered the violin writing in the second intro of the subject, because the way I did do it was slightly off kilter, but it works.

Adam Bertolo - Hope

Mentor College

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