Made in China: Tales of an Outsourced Composer

8-bit Rage Quest

A few 8-bit compositions for a short set in a…surprise surprise…8-bit video game! Certainly a different beast than the 100-piece orchestra.

Musical Diplomacy

It’s not every day you get to say your music is going to be heard by a Kenyan and Albanian audience, especially not as a result of Beijing politics, but stranger things have happened.

Long story short, the Beijing Dance Drama and Opera is accompanying Liu Qi, the (this is rich) Communist Party Committee Secretary of Beijing, which is like mayor but actually a notch higher, on his diplomatic trip to Kenya and Albania early this month. As part of the trip, the dance troupe will be performing shows for the dignitaries of both countries. While the performances will primarily be of Chinese dance and music, the troupe wanted to open each show with a piece that reflects the host country’s music and culture, and that’s where I came in.

Dynamic Afrika

The instructions for the Kenyan piece were simple. As the opening dance, it had to be highly energetic, extremely percussive, and passably authentic. I decided the piece needed three main components: very dense and busy percussion, tribal vocals, and some convincing pitched percussion (marimbas, kalimbas, and xylophone). 

The percussion wouldn’t be much of a problem, but without the time to record actual vocals, I had to rely on prerecorded loops and samples, something I try not to do because it feels so…lacking in integrity. But nonetheless, I dug up some South African, West African, and Masaai vocals (I know, only one of these is actually Kenya-specific) and tried to construct a piece around them. A good trick for making the vocals sound more natural and less like a copy and pasted loop is by forecasting the melody, so in this case, letting the kalimbas and marimbas introduce it before you ever hear the vocal loop.

And as for the tribal percussion, let’s just say it was a lot of fun!

Albanian Eagle Dance

This piece was an especially interesting challenge since I had no clue what Albanian music sounded like. Even watching video after video on Youtube, it was still pretty tough to get a feel for it for some reason, so I synthesized a combination of Greek, North African, Persian, and Russian music. Hope it doesn’t offend anyone. I’m just a practically white Chinese guy with a keyboard.

The structure of the dance had already been planned out before I committed a single note, so the piece reflects the three parts of the dance: 1) the expansive sky, 2) the eagles, and 3) flight of the eagles. In case anyone’s wondering “why eagles,” it’s the bird on the Albanian flag.

My Take on Mulan

Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Mulan does a brilliant job of balancing her femininity with her obviously masculine badassery of, you know, defeating the Huns. It’s a tricky thing to do and a very interesting concept, so I wanted to try my hand at it, though through a different genre because, I mean, who among us mortals can even compare with Goldsmith?

Writing this piece has been one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in a while. I can’t tell you why, but I do know that everything from finding the basic tune all the way to producing an arrangement out of it was no walk in the park. Sometimes, I suppose, you’re struck by inspiration and all the elements of the process just gel. Other times, all you can do is muck about and hope everything you’ve done and learned up to this point can get you through it.

And funny enough, despite all the troubles involved with composing this piece, I really like it - especially the tune. I would definitely put it up there among the better melodies I’ve written, all of which came much more easily than this one - which just goes to show that sometimes the tenacity to see a troubled piece through is just as valuable as that elusive divine inspiration.