HCP 32 Amy Gordon on choral music composition and songwriting
Amy Gordon, Composer and Songwriter, brings a very fun and thought-provoking subject to The Happy Choir Podcast. The perfect way to close season 1! The relationship between songwriting and choral writing. Her experience with both and how can we use the best of both worlds to create something unique. Thank you to everyone who follows this podcast and keeps supporting The Happy Choir brand. Hugs!
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In this episode, you will learn:
- Amy story with choral music and becoming a composer
- How a school discussion led her to songwriting
- Realizing that one can be a composer as a job
- The magic of discovering something new and not knowing what one is doing
- The influence and support from her parents
- How going to California State University and Loyola Marymount University made her fall in love with Choral Music
- How she sees music composition and what she treasures in her pieces
- How important melody is for Amy and why
- Her appreciation for exploration within a certain key instead of atonality
- Our love and praise for altos
- Her view on songwriting and choral composition related to one another and letting them influence one another
- The use of different texts for choral composition (something that feels more from a diary or a letter)
- The belief of choral composers as not a lyricist vs the songwriters being both the composer and the lyricist
- The freedom of doing something that one is not completely confident on or know much about but is eager to try
- Setting texts from her grandmother and how that inspires her to write her own texts one day
- Amy’s piece Lotus Flower and the process to select the text from students
- Her advice to someone who is thinking about composition and songwriting
- How the iPhone app Unblock me relates to music composition
- Great advice for checking each voice and how successful a musical line can be
- Recommendations for lyric writing for composers
- Letting oneself try and fail in order to grow and explore during the process of creating a new piece/song
- Being open and showing your process on social media
- Not letting other people’s social media make you feel bad about your career or process as a composer
- The joy of knowing that we are not alone in struggling to create during COVID 19 and ways that composers can still work on their craft while not writing new music
- Arranging pieces to unison or fewer parts for conductors to have the flexibility for their programs during COVID 19
- Where to find Amy’s music and scores
Share it with me
- Where do you find your texts?
Links mentioned in the show:
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Produced by Carlos Cordero.
Thank you for listening!
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Hugs,
C.
