AOI3 Section 2: Process

 For my composition project, I decided to use Breath of the Wild's Main Theme, or simply known as "Track 1" in the game's track list, not only because Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games of all time, but also because I consider the Main Theme (along with the rest of the soundtrack) to be iconic. Melodically, the piece is very complex, but I thought I could tackle the challenge. In order to stay true to the original purpose of the stimulus piece, I attempted to borrow the exact same chord progression, with some minor changes. The original score I used did not have the most accurate chords, so I had to figure a lot of it out by myself. I also took out some of the more complex chord progressions in the piano part—either due to my limited technical skills in MuseScore, but also to give room to the Double Bass solo; for example, in measure 29 of my composition, it looks something like this: 








Whereas in the original, it looks something like this:








Given the context of the piece— it is meant to invoke nostalgia and represent Link’s first steps into an uncertain world—I figured it wouldn't make much sense to write a solo for the double bass in bass clef due to pitch issues, so I wrote it in treble clef, similar to a Cello solo. 


Part of the reason why this piece is so harmonically complex is because it has two main key changes: the piece starts in Gb Major (NOT F# major as I wrote in my road map), and then changes keys to become C minor.  The composition is in Gb Major throughout measures 1-17, and then changes to C minor in measure 18. Writing a bass solo for these key changes was hard, but also enjoyable. Here are some sample screenshots:


The main issue I had with my composition is that a lot of the time, I would have the bass solo follow the chord progression of the piano, which led to it being melodically stale in some places. This was partly because I was stuck on ideas as to what to write. This is evident in measures 5 and 6, and in measures 34-35. Apart from that, I felt like the melodic ideas of my composition matched the stimulus piece nicely. 


If I were to do this assignment again in the future, I would probably not choose such a difficult piece to compose for. I already made my life much easier by borrowing the chord progression, but given the melodic complexity of the stimulus piece (key changes galore!), it was hard composing a double bass solo regardless. Word Count: 448

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