My Compositional Process for The Deleted Clause

This is the second piece I have composed in collaboration with the Sacramento State Dance Department. This time, I had the pleasure of working directly with Professor Bernard Brown and one of his top students, Noemi. I was excited when Bernard told me he wanted the piece to be based off the deleted clause from the Declaration of Independence. I had never composed anything that could hold such historical importance, and perhaps political and social importance; the clause that was deleted contained Thomas Jefferson’s condemnations of slavery as the most evil of racial crimes. It is still relevant today not just because there is still slavery in the world, but due to the fact that there are still large remnants of racial divide in America.

I immediately researched certain music groups that Bernard said he was inspired by in his music collaboration form, which included Janelle Monae, the group Kraak & Smaak, and the Sons of Kemet. I was particularly impressed with one of Sons of Kemet’s works with dance and percussion posted on YouTube, so I decided to use it as my inspiration for the percussion sounds in my piece.

In his description details, Bernard stressed that he wanted feelings of simultaneous weightlessness and lightness, frenetic and still energies, and a sense of progress and stagnation; I wanted to make sure I created all those feelings in my work. I immediately began sketching some motifs in Finale using a piano quartet (piano, violin, viola, and cello), but after the first week of sketches—even with a couple good phrases that I ended up using in the final project—I felt I needed something more than just a few acoustic instruments. I wanted a fuller sound for a piece that could potentially carry heavy historical weight. 

That is when I got the idea to transfer all my sounds into Logic Pro X, my main music workstation software, and transition the project into an electronic piece. I had just bought some new sound banks, including one with ethereal vocal effects, and thought this piece would be a great first opportunity to put them to use. I still had my piano quartet as the main group of instruments, but now I also had double bass, pads, percussion, vocal effects, and a zither synth.

As for the basic structure of the piece, I did my best to simulate feelings of weightlessness and lightness, progress and stagnation, freneticism and stillness. Bernard and I ended up agreeing that the first minute of the piece would be dominated by a drone; I added some stagnant, almost mesmerizing piano chords along with some sparse and frantic ethereal vocals. This was followed by a string section with techniques reminiscent of a slow movement of one of J.S. Bach’s French or Italian suites, symbolizing the music of the Baroque era that was present during the Revolutionary War and the preceding colonial period. This was the end of the first slow section. After this was the first fast section this was where I decided to add the first percussion section with congas and bongos (with frantic strings in the second half of this section) inspired by the Sons of Kemet’s works I mentioned earlier. After this, there would be another slow section and another fast section with similar characteristics; if I had to, I would letter the sections A, B, C, B’, and Coda. It is also important to note that I added boom and slam effects throughout the piece for increased dramatic effect.

This is what has become of The Deleted Clause, which was first the working title, and now the official title based off the deleted clause of the Declaration of Independence. One last note to make is that this piece includes spoken text before the drone starts at the very beginning, specifically the full text of the deleted clause itself.

	
	– Alan McMurdie

The Deleted Clause

The Deleted Clause (Spoken Text Acapella)

If you have never heard any of Chopin's Nocturnes, go google "Chopin nocturne in e flat" and listen to it before listening to this piece. If you have heard it before, this piece was inspired by Chopin's style. It's basically a piece that is meant to be played at night, when you're either up late working, or going to sleep. It's very nice and soft. Enjoy!

- Alan McMurdie

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Hey everyone! Dirty McMurdie here with some new tracks. These three that I've uploaded together lean more towards dubstep, since that's what I've been working on lately. The titles are Dubs 'n' Drubs, Subterranean, and Titanic Eruption. The last one isn't finished yet, I only just started it today, as in, literally a few hours ago. So for now, here's a preview as well as two other full instrumentals. Enjoy!

Alan McMurdie

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