Last night I finished the first draft of my fugue. I say first draft because there are still a few notes that I am not happy with. In isolation each voice sounds consistent but all together… well there are some, not dischords exactly, but places I might be able to polish.

Eldest Brother asked me how I composed (did I use score?) so I figured I’d describe the process. Basically I have four MIDI tracks defined in a SONAR project, each configured to send to a single instance of the TruePianos VST instrument.

You can tell from the segments that I have been building it up a few bars at a time, and then I tweak the notes in the piano-roll view, selecting a voice at a time to edit:

This draft is very mechanical sounding. That’s ok given that it is a kind of “audio score”. In the final version I intend each voice to be performed in real-time on a different instrument (probably Piano, “Hammond”, Guitar, and Chapman Stick).

The end of the fugue leads directly into Part 4 of the full composition, which is why it finishes up with that shuffle chord sequence.