# Pandemic Fragments



## jbuhler (Aug 5, 2022)

I posted this on a sample talk thread focused on Insanity Samples, since it features the Folk Fiddle 2, and thought I'd repost it here since I don't post that much music. The movement is called "Waiting for Omicron," and is part of my Pandemic Fragments, the 22nd of 23 (so far) string quartet movements that I wrote over the course of the pandemic as a kind of musical journal. The vast majority of these fragments, including this one, were written in one sitting.

View attachment Waiting for Omicron 1.3.mp3


Main quartet:
Violin 1: SF Solo Strings (SSoS), First Chair
Violin 2: Insanity Samples, Fiddle 2
Viola: SSoS
Cello: SSoS

SF Alt Solo Strings were used for sul pont trems. OT's Time Micro string quartet was used for one little accompaniment bit near the opening.

*Full List with links to post*

Book I
No. 1: Allegro Misterioso
No. 2: Awakening
No. 3: Allegro Agitato
No. 4: Nachtmusik I: Impressions of Noir
No. 5: Fevered Dream
No. 6: Waiting
No. 7: In the Quarantine Cage
No. 8: Masked Up
No. 9: Misterioso II
No. 10: Zoom
No. 11: Nachtmusik II
No. 12: Time Disarticulated
No. 13: Lullaby
No. 14: Presto

Book II:
No. 15: Little Burlesque
No. 16: The Dark and the Light
No. 17: Waltz Suburbia, No. 2
No. 18: Nachtmusik III
No. 19: Scattered
No. 20: Down the Rabbit Hole/Numb

Book III (incomplete)
No. 21
March of the Quacks

Book IV (incomplete)
No. 22: Nachtmusik IV: Moon Shadows
No. 23: Waiting for Omicron (this post)
No. 24: Superspreader/It's an Omicron Worlds (finale)


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## VVEremita (Aug 5, 2022)

Thank you very much for posting it! I love it (did already in the other thread  ). The libraries work really well together, the legato lines and ornaments form a coherent body of sound, but of course the composition is the star of the show. I will revisit this kind of writing with SSoS for sure, feeling inspired. I enjoy reading your posts, so it was nice to hear your music. I will listen to it more often and sincerly hope we'll get to hear more of your musical journal.


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## jbuhler (Aug 5, 2022)

VVEremita said:


> Thank you very much for posting it! I love it (did already in the other thread  ). The libraries work really well together, the legato lines and ornaments form a coherent body of sound, but of course the composition is the star of the show. I will revisit this kind of writing with SSoS for sure, feeling inspired. I enjoy reading your posts, so it was nice to hear your music. I will listen to it more often and sincerly hope we'll get to hear more of your musical journal.


Thank you for the kind comments! I'll likely post more of these fragments over the next few weeks.

I find the Spitfire Solo Strings work well for this kind of thing, and for my music the first chair violin works much better than the virtuoso. I use a lot of different libraries in the set as a whole, but I find myself always returning to the SF Solo Strings as a kind of default. Before I acquired The Fiddle 2, I was using a combination of SF's Alt Solo Strings violin and the Solo Strings progressive violin as my second violin. I still use the progressive violin when I want shorts matched to the Solo Strings instruments.


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## doctoremmet (Aug 5, 2022)

I said it before, but I’ll happily repeat it here:

BEAUTIFUL piece ❤️


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## jbuhler (Aug 5, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> I said it before, but I’ll happily repeat it here:
> 
> BEAUTIFUL piece ❤️


Thank you!


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## RemyB85 (Aug 5, 2022)

Before reading the description of all the libraries you've used for this piece, I was pretty sure that real performed instruments have been used ... great piece!


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## jbuhler (Aug 6, 2022)

Here is no. 10 from Pandemic Fragments, "Zoom." As best I can reconstruct I wrote this at the beginning of July 2020. 

Most movements in the set were written in one sitting—that's true of this one—and I wrote them in the DAW (I don't have scores for them yet). They are more like compositional sketches than finished recordings. And they were written with the idea that they might be performed.

View attachment 10 Zoom.mp3


The quartet here was my regular quartet at the time:

Violin 1: First Desk Violin from SF Solo Strings
Violin 2: Violin from SF Alt Solo Strings
Viola: SF Solo Strings
Cello: SF Solo Strings

In addition there are brief supplements of the viola and cello by SF Alt Solo Strings.


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## blaggins (Aug 8, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> And they were written with the idea that they might be performed.


If these are ever performed live, I hope you will let us Austin forum folk know so we can come!


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## jbuhler (Aug 9, 2022)

So here's a twofer, Pandemic Fragments, Nos. 5 and 6, because I like the way the two pieces connect with each other.

No. 5 is "Fevered Dream"

View attachment 05 Fevered Dream.mp3


No. 6 is "Waiting"

View attachment 06 Waiting1.2.mp3


The composition of Fevered Dream predates the Pandemic, as it was written initially as a test piece for the solo viola in 8dio's Viola Adagio library sometime in 2019:

View attachment Viola Suite, I.mp3


I then adapted that for quartet.

"Waiting" was not written to follow Fevered Dream, nor did I include Fevered Dream in the Fragments because it could introduce "Waiting." Instead, I discovered an affinity when I started sequencing the movements into a suite. The pizz that ends Fevered Dream seemed to neatly prepare the pizz at the start of "Waiting." As best I can reconstruct, "Waiting" was written in one sitting on July 1, 2020.

Quartet for both movements is my default quartet at the time:
First Violin: SSoS First Desk Violin
Second Violin: AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## Jett Hitt (Aug 9, 2022)

I really enjoyed hearing these. Thanks for posting!


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## jbuhler (Aug 9, 2022)

tpoots said:


> If these are ever performed live, I hope you will let us Austin forum folk know so we can come!


Will do!


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## jbuhler (Aug 9, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> I really enjoyed hearing these. Thanks for posting!


Thanks for listening!


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## jbuhler (Aug 10, 2022)

This is Pandemic Fragment No. 8, "Masked Up." I seem to have composed this in a single session on July 14, 2020.

The overall level on this is a bit low, but it doesn't get loud, so you can safely turn up the volume if you like. 

View attachment 08 08 Masked Up 1.2.mp3


This is not my default quartet, but is instead the OT Amber detuned quartet with a little assist from 8dio's Intimate Studio Strings violin.


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## NuNativs (Aug 10, 2022)

Excellent work! What is your writing process? Improvised, clicked in, notation?


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## jbuhler (Aug 11, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 15, "Little Burlesque," and it was written in one sitting on July 9, 2020.

I consider this to be something of a self-portrait. In any case, there's a lot of "me" in it.

View attachment 15 15 Little Burlesque 1.1.mp3


The quartet is:
Violin 1: SSoS First Desk
Violin 2: SSoS Progressive and AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola and AltSS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello and AltSS Cello


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## sostenuto (Aug 11, 2022)

Surely _ personal fav ! Lively, light, uplifting. Appreciate all you share here. 👏🏻


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## jbuhler (Aug 12, 2022)

Another Twofer. First, Pandemic Fragment, No. 1, "Allegro misterioso." This is in fact the first Fragment that was written to be part of the set, though I didn't really have a conception that it would grow into anything like the current form of 50 minutes worth of music. I completed this in one setting on June 23, 2020.

View attachment 01 Allegro misterioso.mp3


Quartet here is a bit of an odd duck:
Violin 1: SF AltSS Violin
Violin 2: SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SF AltSS Cello

And here is Pandemic Fragment, No. 2, "Awakening," written the same day as No. 1.

View attachment 02 Adagio—Awakening.mp3


The quartet is my default at the time:
Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: AltSS Violin and SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 13, 2022)

Today's fragment is No. 12, "Time Disarticulated." It was written on July 5, 2020 in one sitting.

View attachment 12 12 Time Disarticulated.mp3


This is my default quartet at the time:
Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## Tatiana Gordeeva (Aug 14, 2022)

Very interesting concept, so apropos and very well executed! The titles also fit the music perfectly. I hope you will elaborate on these fragments and turn them into some pandem(us)ic timeline suite.


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2022)

Tatiana Gordeeva said:


> Very interesting concept, so apropos and very well executed! The titles also fit the music perfectly. I hope you will elaborate on these fragments and turn them into some pandem(us)ic timeline suite.


Thank you for the comments and listening! 

Yes, I’ll put them some place where they can be listened to in proper order when I finish uploading them all. I didn’t really have a plan when I started this thread...


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## scoplunk (Aug 14, 2022)

These pieces ae great! What a cool concept. Like @NuNativs, I'm curious about your writing process. Do you fire up the computer and improvise until you come up with an idea you want to pursue or do you already have melodies or concepts in mind before you start? I love that you just do these in one sitting. This would be an excellent exercise for someone like me who can't seem to do anything quickly...


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## NuNativs (Aug 14, 2022)

scoplunk said:


> These pieces ae great! What a cool concept. Like @NuNativs, I'm curious about your writing process. Do you fire up the computer and improvise until you come up with an idea you want to pursue or do you already have melodies or concepts in mind before you start? I love that you just do these in one sitting. This would be an excellent exercise for someone like me who can't seem to do anything quickly...


Hopefully he responds as to his work flow. I believe he has me blocked for my patented "left of center" beliefs...


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## MartinH. (Aug 14, 2022)

I really enjoyed listening to these! Remarkable what you get done in single sittings! Like the others I'd love to hear a bit more about your writing process from the creative side. And I hope this thread encourages you to share more of your music with us. If you scroll through this sub forum you'll notice this is by far one of the most popular threads of someone posting original music that isn't a mockup or immitation of something popular. Thank you for sharing your music with us!


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## Jett Hitt (Aug 14, 2022)

NuNativs said:


> Hopefully he responds as to his work flow. I believe he has me blocked for my patented "left of center" beliefs...


I doubt that. He's a university professor. He lives in a world of left-of-center views.


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2022)

NuNativs said:


> Excellent work! What is your writing process? Improvised, clicked in, notation?





scoplunk said:


> These pieces ae great! What a cool concept. Like @NuNativs, I'm curious about your writing process. Do you fire up the computer and improvise until you come up with an idea you want to pursue or do you already have melodies or concepts in mind before you start? I love that you just do these in one sitting. This would be an excellent exercise for someone like me who can't seem to do anything quickly...


About process, I’m not sure really. Basic ideas come from the muse, which is my way of saying I don’t know where they come from, but I’m rarely lacking for ideas. It’s getting them to go somewhere productive that’s the hard part. Frequently I hit on an idea while noodling, and since these were written to both be playable by a real quartet and to sound credible on samples they had to be composed with the capabilities of the samples in mind. At the same time, a few like “Fevered Dream” were adapted from other things, in that case a noodle I did up to test a library. And the basic form of the fragment does relate closely to the abundance of noodles I improvise in testing libraries.

Sometimes, I use things like a bit of midi from one of the sonokinetic libraries as a seed for a fragment. Often I start with an evocative texture and build out from there. Sometimes I start with a mood that I’m wanting to capture. Other times it might be more an etude type study focused on a particular device or figure. Occasionally I’ll start with a tune that has come to me from who knows where.

I do have a good sense of how I think the music should sound before I start. I also have a strong sense of the kind of thing that belongs to the Fragments. And then it’s a question of working with the samples, sometimes coaxing them to do what I want, but frequently listening to what they want and hopefully finding a path that is true to what the music needs to do.

None of the Pandemic Fragments was written out in notation, and I'll have to translate the midi into notation if I ever have a real quartet play them. Oddly being a music theory professor by day and so quite skilled working with notation, I avoid notation programs like the plague when composing. Go figure. But beyond all the friction that notation programs introduce themselves, I find notation wants to saddle me with all sorts of taboos (occupational hazard of being a professional music theorist) that are not that helpful for finding where the music wants to go. Working in the DAW for whatever reason largely frees me from that. In any case, I completed a draft of a 90 minute symphony last year straight to DAW. I’m currently working on a very long symphonic cantata also written straight to DAW. (Any of you who caught the yoddler and the bear piece over on the Hster thread, that is an excerpt from the cantata. Also see below.) Sometimes I’ll sketch basic counterpoint on paper, but even that is very infrequent.

For input, I mostly click notes. For more lyrical lines that don’t really follow the grid, I’ll play those in, though even then I’ll often click in and then make timing adjustments. I also draw in most automation. I prefer elaborate tempo maps for humanization to the kind of irregularity and raggedness I get when everything is played in. I also don’t think there’s a right answer here and if I was a more proficient keyboard player I might also play the notes in.

I came at the idea of fragments because of the difficulty of writing quartet music with samples. I find I can write bits that sound very credible but connecting the bits together into longer forms is much more challenging, often impossibly so. The beauty of fragment as form is that I don’t have to worry about the connective bits. But there was also the historical moment itself, the Pandemic, that felt like it put life severely out of joint. The fragment seemed an excellent expression of that. And the fragment was something that could get done under those circumstances.

There were two other “rules” that I followed beyond the strictures that the music needed to be performable by a real quartet and sound reasonably credible with samples. First, I needed to complete each movement in the time I allocated, usually 1-2 hours but sometimes up to 4 (I didn’t always manage to live by this but I think all but three of the movements were done in a single setting and two of those that took longer are are movements that tie together more than one fragment attacca). Second, any revision outside the composing window should be minimal and related to fixing purely technical issues usually having to do with midi and mixing. One consequence of this is that I had to focus on finding endings for each fragment. But because they were fragments, the endings could be quite loose. It was nevertheless good practice in getting things to the point of completion.



MartinH. said:


> And I hope this thread encourages you to share more of your music with us.


one nice thing about the Fragments is that though they are numerous, and so currently total 50 minutes of music, each of them except the finale is pretty short. "Beware: the Bear" from the cantata by contrast is 8 minutes by itself, and it is the second half of a movement that is 16 minutes long. The shortest movement of the symphony is almost 12 minutes and the longest is over 26 minutes. These are all fairly unwieldy for the forum.

But to go back to the start of this post and how I work the material, Beware the Bear had its origin in an instrument testing noodle of Hster, and realizing I could sort of make the singer yodel:

View attachment Hster Yodel Test 1.mp3


With a little help from my inner operetta composer, that bit developed into this rough draft (WIP, same file as at the link to Hster thread). Here's the scenario.

A rambunctious youth jokes of the old tale about summoning a bear by calling it by name. He calls out its name, “Hrktos.” The bear lumbers in, creating much mayhem. The youth and others try to apprehend the beast. Finally, the youth manages to mount the bear and everyone passes through the final gate into summer.​
View attachment Beware the Bear 1.1.mp3


I've since revised the orchestration and midi on this as part of the full movement, "Portal to Summer," but haven't reprinted the mp3 for it.


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## scoplunk (Aug 14, 2022)

Thank you so much for that far more detailed reply than I expected. I remembered that you'd mentioned being a theory professor before, so I was thinking that you might use notation for at least some part of composing. That's interesting that you find it constraining. Since I'm much more of a self trained guy, I'm always intrigued by people who can compose by pulling out notation paper and digging in. I'm so used to composing at the piano or the DAW, I just naturally go there now.

I laughed when you mentioned playing with new libraries and coming up with ideas. I do that often. I'm playing with a new synth/instrument/orchestral plug in and all of a sudden it's "wait, what is that? I think I just wrote something!". I love how these great tools we have can direct us into musical territory that we might not have otherwise explored.

I'm totally impressed that you can produce these pieces in such a short amount of time. You're composing and doing the mockup that quickly? Plus, they're great! Wow. I'm so bad at working that quickly. A large tip of the hat to you. 

And finally, I loved Beware the Bear!

It's nice to have a thread like this about music and composition. Of course, it's fun to discuss all the new gear and plug ins out there, but, in the end, I want to make music with this stuff and not just talk about it. This has been really inspiring. Thanks again!


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## Jett Hitt (Aug 14, 2022)

It’s so interesting reading about how different people work. The worst music that I have ever written was composed in a DAW. I need to see it on the page. Not the tune and the harmonies, mind you, as those come from the muse, but the orchestration, the countermelodies, and the counterpoint—those I need to see. I need to see them and imagine the sound. I need to assess the texture with my eyes and visually determine when its breadth needs to vary. It is such a visual process to me. I can’t see it in a DAW. Perhaps it is because in the old days all we had was pen and paper, and this old dog can’t learn new tricks. I also get terribly distracted by all the sounds in a library, and then I start writing to the library instead of following the direction of the muse.


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2022)

scoplunk said:


> I'm totally impressed that you can produce these pieces in such a short amount of time. You're composing and doing the mockup that quickly? Plus, they're great! Wow. I'm so bad at working that quickly. A large tip of the hat to you.


Generally I find that it takes a surprisingly long time to go from something more or less at the state Beware the Bear is to something that is more finished. Beware the Bear went from that little sketch to full 8 minutes in about a week. So the average there was about a minute of music a day. But I’ve been polishing the movement now for about ten days since, longer than the drafting phase of Beware: the Bear. Beware: the Bear is only half the movement, and I’ve been rewriting the first three minutes of the movement as I tweak, but I think that’s characteristic for me that revising, restoring, tweaking the midi takes as long if not longer than getting a decent first draft. (I also find this to be true of my academic writing.) And it’s not that a lot is changing for the most part, but the little things are most time consuming and chasing those last few percentage points of improvement takes a lot of time. 

That’s one of the things I like about the Pandemic Fragments. They are designed to be completed mostly in one sitting, including the midi programming. They are mostly simple in form, so the composition proceeds quickly, probably around the rate of 1 minute of music per hour, depending on tempo. Having a very limited number of instruments to manage is a huge advantage here. And most of these instruments, especially the SF Solo Strings, are ones I know very, very well, which greatly speeds up the programming. But then just having this attitude that I’m going to get this to the best state I can in the time I have available has been very helpful to getting them done.


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## scoplunk (Aug 14, 2022)

Yes, I also find it sort of surprising that going from a fairly decent sketch to a completed mockup with more detailed attention to the full orchestration takes longer than I expected it would. I'm fairly new at this, so I assumed it was just my problem, but maybe this is more normal than I thought. 



Jett Hitt said:


> I need to assess the texture with my eyes and visually determine when its breadth needs to vary. It is such a visual process to me.


I totally get this. Coming from the pop world, I don't work with notation a lot of the time, but even I find it really helpful to see all the orchestration parts in Logic's notation. The notation is usually a bit of a formatting mess, but it really is useful when I've got some collision that I'm trying to track down. Also, as you say, you get a better idea of the textures in each section. I can easily imagine that if this was the way I was taught or got used to early on, I'd feel the same way you do about it. 

Sometimes it seems that I just wind up doing things because that's how I did them in the first place. But, that's what I find so interesting about @jbuhler's experience. He purposely broke away from his usual way of working because he didn't think it was as efficient for his current projects. It's a good reminder that I should explore other ways of doing things, also. There's never enough time to learn all the things I would like to, but I do love seeing how other people approach the creative process. It's always interesting and when I'm lucky, I manage to grab a few new tricks as I go along.


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> It’s so interesting reading about how different people work. The worst music that I have ever written was composed in a DAW. I need to see it on the page. Not the tune and the harmonies, mind you, as those come from the muse, but the orchestration, the countermelodies, and the counterpoint—those I need to see. I need to see them and imagine the sound. I need to assess the texture with my eyes and visually determine when its breadth needs to vary. It is such a visual process to me. I can’t see it in a DAW. Perhaps it is because in the old days all we had was pen and paper, and this old dog can’t learn new tricks. I also get terribly distracted by all the sounds in a library, and then I start writing to the library instead of following the direction of the muse.


I agree with you completely about a score allowing you to see the music better. And when I’m studying music I certainly prefer to do it with a score. And when I come back to a piece I’ve been working on but have put aside for awhile, I often wish I had a score because it’s hard to get back into the headspace when I can’t see what’s going on. 

But in the moment of composing I really prefer working in the DAW—of course I read piano roll very much like I read notation but what I “see” there is often more helpful to me at the level of composition once I’m in the headspace of the piece. Still there is a real loss that comes with not being able to see the whole effectively. (And something like score view in Logic doesn’t fully replace the score.)

The other thing the DAW provides me, for whatever reason, is a better sense of temporality. I’m not sure why but I find it easier to misjudge timing when I work in a score compared to a DAW. It may be that elongation, say, can look so peculiar in score form in a way it doesn’t in the piano roll. 

But it’s probably mostly the taboo thing that the DAW lets me get around.


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## NuNativs (Aug 14, 2022)

Wow, that was above and beyond, a lot of great ideas to digest. I love hearing about different composers thought process and working methods. Thanks for taking the time to type all that out. Food for thought!


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## Jett Hitt (Aug 14, 2022)

I’m not sure why no DAW provides a decent notation editor. The one in Logic makes me crazy, and Cubase isn’t any better. I had high hopes for Dorico, but it’s just too painful to mess with the expression maps in their current state. Before StaffPad came out, I had completely returned to pencil, paper, and Finale. It’s how I had learned to work. It’s how I wrote Yellowstone. When StaffPad came along, it was a breath of fresh air. It accommodated the way I worked, and it made the process faster. Now, I just wish my muse could keep up with StaffPad.


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2022)

Today's Pandemic Fragment is No. 16, "The Dark and the Light." It was written in one sitting on Jul 17, 2020. The opening gesture in the ISS cello and viola was the originating material for this one, which I devised noodling with those instruments.

As the name implies it is a two part fragment, or two fragments connected attacca. The opening returns in even more fragmented form at the end. The movements toward the end of the set increasingly take the form of multiple fragments. 

View attachment 16 The Dark and the Light 1.3.1.mp3


This quartet uses a real assortment of libraries:

Violin 1: SSoS First Desk; Olafur Arnalds Evolutions (OAE), Violin 1
Violin 2: SSoS Progressive; AltSS Violin; 8dio Intimate Studio Strings (ISS) Violin; OAE Violin 2
Viola: ISS Viola; OAE Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello; ISS Cello; OAE Cello; 

For the OAE instruments, I didn't use the grid but instead loaded the articulations for each instrument into a single instance of Kontakt and used midi channels to call them with keyswitches so they could be used as special long articulations. The ISS instruments used only the solo instruments from the set.


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 14, 2022)

These are quite wonderful! Very well done.


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 15, 2022)

What library is SSoS?


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## jbuhler (Aug 15, 2022)

Dr.Quest said:


> What library is SSoS?


Spitfire Solo Strings. (SSoS to distinguish it from SSS Spitfire Symphonic Strings and SStS Spitfire Studio Strings.)


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## jbuhler (Aug 15, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 20, "Down the Rabbit Hole." This was originally called "Gallop" and I also toyed with the name "Long Way Home." It was composed on Oct. 16, 2020. 

This started out as an exercise and I wasn't initially thinking about it being part of the Fragments. But it has a frantic and obsessive character that I came to rather like and seemed fitting. Because it wasn't written to be a fragment and had its origins in an exercise, the midi is a little less polished in certain respects. (I may break my rule on this number and go back to work the midi further.) It originally ended with a very, very long held chord, added after I incorporated it into the Fragments, that leaves a very enigmatic impression, and my thought at the time was to come back to that.

This is the original version.

View attachment Gallop 1.0.mp3


Last week (Aug. 7. 2022), I did come back to it and extended it, attacca, with a new fragment. The new fragment was composed in the usual way, in a single sitting (around an hour as I recall). My thought here is the sentiment of the penguins in _Madagascar_ when they reach Antarctica.



In any case, here is the new version.

No. 20, "Down the Rabbit Hole/Numb"

View attachment 20 Down the Rabbit Hole-Numb.mp3


The quartet is the usual one for "Down the Rabbit Hole":

Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: ALtSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello

"Numb" Substitutes OAE Viola and Cello for the SSoS instruments. SSoS Cello returns for the final lyrical phrase.


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## MartinH. (Aug 16, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> About process, I’m not sure really. Basic ideas come from the muse, which is my way of saying I don’t know where they come from, but I’m rarely lacking for ideas. It’s getting them to go somewhere productive that’s the hard part. Frequently I hit on an idea while noodling, and since these were written to both be playable by a real quartet and to sound credible on samples they had to be composed with the capabilities of the samples in mind. At the same time, a few like “Fevered Dream” were adapted from other things, in that case a noodle I did up to test a library. And the basic form of the fragment does relate closely to the abundance of noodles I improvise in testing libraries.
> 
> Sometimes, I use things like a bit of midi from one of the sonokinetic libraries as a seed for a fragment. Often I start with an evocative texture and build out from there. Sometimes I start with a mood that I’m wanting to capture. Other times it might be more an etude type study focused on a particular device or figure. Occasionally I’ll start with a tune that has come to me from who knows where.
> 
> ...


Thanks so much for the thorough explanation of how you approach composing these, super interesting! I guess I can safely say I'll never reach the professor level of music theory knowledge, but it is still heartening to know it's possible to write such wonderful short pieces in such short sessions.


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## jbuhler (Aug 16, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 4, "Nachtmusik I: Impressions of Noir." This was composed on June 29, 2020. Given the length and delicate complexity of the midi (which could still use more work), it must have been a long session, and I see I output the audio at 2:30 in the morning. I usually started work on these at 9 or 10 at night. (On days I'm composing, I usually write from 10pm until 2am. Yes, I'm a night owl.)

The name refers to a seed I used to start this piece, which came from the Sonokinetic library, Noir. During the spring term of 2020, after in-person classes had shut down and we moved online, I created a character, a spoof on a Noir detective, who appeared in some of my videos and I used the Noir library to score him.

View attachment 4 Nachtmusik I—Impressions of Noir 1.4.1.mp3


The Quartet here is all SSoS, with the first desk violin serving as first, progressive violin as second.


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## sostenuto (Aug 16, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> Today's Fragment is no. 4, "Nachtmusik I: Impressions of Noir." This was composed on June 29, 2020. Given the length and delicate complexity of the midi (which could still use more work), it must have been a long session, and I see I output the audio at 2:30 in the morning. I usually started work on these at 9 or 10 at night. (On days I'm composing, I usually write from 10pm until 2am. Yes, I'm a night owl.)
> 
> The name refers to a seed I used to start this piece, which came from the Sonokinetic library, Noir. During the spring term of 2020, after in-person classes had shut down and we moved online, I created a character, a spoof on a Noir detective, who appeared in some of my videos and I used the Noir library to score him.
> 
> ...


Cool to hear Noir used throughout this 'fragment'. Glad to have been patient through for .49 _ which set-up remainder. THX for this.


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## jbuhler (Aug 17, 2022)

A triple today, three very short fragments. These were all evidently was also written on June 23, 2020, the same day as the first two pieces of the set. It seems I had a very productive day! (I think it likely that these were all done over two days, and I printed them all the second day. But my record keeping on this isn't exact.) In any case, four of the five are very short, so it's possible that I did them all in one go.

No. 7, "In the Quarantine Cage." The idea here was capturing something of the stir crazy aspects of the early days of the Pandemic, when we weren't supposed to go outside at all. I originally called this "Practice Makes Perfect" for obscure reasons. 


View attachment 07 In the Quarantine Cage.mp3


No. 9, "Misterioso II." No. 1 is misterioso I. This was a kind of alternative take on the opening number. The Pandemic was and continues to be very unsettling and uncertain in a way that I find fits with the misterioso musical topic.

View attachment 09 09 Misterioso II.mp3


No. 14, "Presto." For a long time this served as the finale of the collection. Then I added more Fragments... Which also meant rearranging some things. But this piece is now also something of a divider, concluding the first part of the Fragments, the subset of Fragments where I have put the most thought into sequencing. 

View attachment 14 14 Presto.mp3


The Quartet for No. 7 and No. 9 is:
Violin I: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin II: SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello

No. 14 substitutes AltSS Violin for the SSoS Progressive.


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## sostenuto (Aug 17, 2022)

All quite enjoyable just standing alone. 
No. 7 & No. 9 especially so _ now looking back to Summer 2020.


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## jbuhler (Aug 19, 2022)

Missed yesterday's post due to work—I had a full day of beginning of the semester meetings—and then being inspired to compose. I've actually finished four new Fragments since I started posting these. In any event, here is today's Fragment, No. 13, "Lullaby." The accompaniment pattern is based on a little bit from Sonokinetic's Noir. This one was composed on July 2, 2020.

View attachment 13 Lullaby.mp3


The quartet here is the standard one:
Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 20, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 3, Allegro Agitato. I wrote this in one session on July 3, 2020. This started as a noodle for the OT Amber detuned quartet as I was learning that library. It's curious, because I find the material does not exactly suit the library: there's a kind of lumbering character to it. But that character is also expressive in its own right. I also very much like slide into the cello pizz in this library.

View attachment 03 Allegro Agitato.mp3


I tried an alternate take of the opening with a set of different instruments (a combination of SSoS, ISS, and AltSS):

View attachment Agitato Opening SStS-ISS-AltSS.mp3


This inflects the composition in a different topical direction (still agitato but more incisive) and has compositional changes (sul pont), but I also find that it loses something of expressive gesture of the Amber quartet pushed to the limits of its speed on this material. I may, however, use this second version in a later portion of the Fragments, that has a working title of "Second Harvest." We'll see how things go as I fine tune the sequencing of the second half.


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## scoplunk (Aug 20, 2022)

Wow. Those two libraries are very different. I like the heft in the OT quartet, but it always seems like it's slightly struggling to keep up. Lumbering is a very fitting description. Also, it might have a longer release time which makes it sound less precise? Maybe it's the reverb. Not sure. The second version seems positively nimble by comparison. It's smaller sounding, but I like its urgency. 

As always - nice!


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## jbuhler (Aug 20, 2022)

scoplunk said:


> Wow. Those two libraries are very different. I like the heft in the OT quartet, but it always seems like it's slightly struggling to keep up. Lumbering is a very fitting description. Also, it might have a longer release time which makes it sound less precise? Maybe it's the reverb. Not sure. The second version seems positively nimble by comparison. It's smaller sounding, but I like its urgency.
> 
> As always - nice!


Yes, I rather like the heft too, and I find the expressive character to the lumbering appealing in its own right, even if it doesn't necessarily put the best face on the library. But I often find there is quite a lot of expressive potential that can be mined where an instrument meets its limitation. 

My recollection is that the reverb is the same for both recordings—though the selection of mics can change the impression of space too, as can, as you suggest, things like release time. I was still learning my way around Sine at the time and Sine functionality was much more limited than it is now (Amber basically didn't work for me for several months after I purchased it because of Sine issues), so I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything like adjusting release times to improve agility.


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## STMICHAELS (Aug 20, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> Another Twofer. First, Pandemic Fragment, No. 1, "Allegro misterioso." This is in fact the first Fragment that was written to be part of the set, though I didn't really have a conception that it would grow into anything like the current form of 50 minutes worth of music. I completed this in one setting on June 23, 2020.
> 
> View attachment 01 Allegro misterioso.mp3
> 
> ...


Wow excellent so lively and emotional. The way you put feel into these pieces. Well done..


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## jbuhler (Aug 21, 2022)

Today's Fragment is No. 11, "Nachtmusik II." It seems to have been composed in one session on July 1, 2020. 

View attachment 11 Nachtmusik II 1.1.mp3


One surprising finding going back to these now is how many of them I wrote in a 2-3 week period of the end of June, early July 2020. I was doing them in one sitting. But I was also evidently doing several a day, so it seems like I must have been working 10-12 hour sessions (which I sometimes do, when I lock in on something, both writing scholarship or composing). I can't sustain that kind of intensity over long periods, however, so my normal sessions are 2-4 hours, whether writing music or writing up research. 

I had also come off a period of the second half of spring semester 2020, where I was effectively producing four hours of TV a week in lieu of class lectures. Two lectures were more or less live and once I figured out the technology needs, didn't require much more than what I would do for a regular lecture. But the other class involved making prerecorded videos, often close to two hours of content per week, with no real experience making videos and no staff to help. So I was researching and buying equipment (lights, cameras, various other helper equipment) and software for production; learning software; writing scripts; playing the talent (as talking head and voiceover); writing and editing music for video where needed; recording and editing everything. Little time to find decent B-roll much less capture anything. So it was like 7 weeks of 12-14 hour days, 7 days a week, and it was utterly exhausting. Basically I collapsed in May and June, and the first batch of Fragments came as I was coming out of that and evidently spending time composing as part of the recovery.

This used the default quartet:
Violin I: SSoS First Desk
Violin II: AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## STMICHAELS (Aug 21, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> Today's Fragment is No. 11, "Nachtmusik II." It seems to have been composed in one session on July 1, 2020.
> 
> View attachment 11 Nachtmusik II 1.1.mp3
> 
> ...


This one is very good! Appreciate the little details you put in to this and explain the time and reasoning when you put this together. I like this fragment 11. Prob on my top 2 including the prior fragments.


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## jbuhler (Aug 22, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 19, "Scattered," though I'm not committed to the title. (The numbering after No. 14 (the end of book 1) is also somewhat in flux as over the last week I've added 6 new Fragments.) As with a number of these Fragments, the idea of the piece seeks to capture ways in which the Pandemic messed with my sense of time and purpose, how boundaries between work and life and various other boundaries within life dissolved leaving the feeling of a tangible lack of structure to which the form of the fragment seeks to give expression. The subtitle of Pandemic Fragments is "Pieces from a Broken World," which is a riff on the subtitle of Adorno's _Minima Moralia: Reflection from Damaged Life_, the Fragment in my sense of form being somewhat akin to a musical aphorism.

This was written Oct. 12, 2020, so from a second compositional phase than the first set of Fragments. The Fragments in the later phases are generally longer, sometimes formulated as longer bits, as this one (with some actual development!), sometimes made longer by grafting together a set of distinct fragments. The intuitive idea behind this change, I think—though I did not formulate it as such until after I had written the finale—was the idea of piecing things back together, albeit imperfectly.

View attachment Scattered 1.1.mp3


@doctoremmet will appreciate that the base quartet here consists of the XSample Contemporary Solo Strings, for violin 2, viola, and cello. The first desk Spitfire Violin continues to assume responsibilities for violin 1, and so also carry most of the lyrical burden. XCSS is an excellent set of instruments, and they have an extraordinarily wide set of articulations, especially lots of subtly different shorts. I believe the legato is scripted but it is very well done, and it allows for better control of portamento than most solo strings. Yet I find that these instruments are difficult to get to sound dolce on long lyrical lines. For me, that's the library's major shortcoming, along with not having a second violin. <cue no second violin jokes>


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## BlackDorito (Aug 22, 2022)

Very much enjoyed these Fragments .. many of them composed in one sitting, no less. Given the rhythmic style of some, you might enjoy listening to the Kronos Qtet renditions of various Terry Riley pieces. I believe you built up from seeds in some cases - Terry Riley does the same. Also it's inspiring to see what can be accomplished with SSoS (a library I purchased but have barely touched). Obviously with enough inspiration (and perspiration) it can be very expressive. Bravo.


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## jbuhler (Aug 22, 2022)

BlackDorito said:


> Very much enjoyed these Fragments .. many of them composed in one sitting, no less. Given the rhythmic style of some, you might enjoy listening to the Kronos Qtet renditions of various Terry Riley pieces. I believe you built up from seeds in some cases - Terry Riley does the same. Also it's inspiring to see what can be accomplished with SSoS (a library I purchased but have barely touched). Obviously with enough inspiration (and perspiration) it can be very expressive. Bravo.


Thanks for the kind remarks. I do like Riley’s music, and yes some of the pieces draw on minimalist techniques, maybe more influenced by Adams or Glass than Riley directly. I was listening to the Glass quartets quite a lot in the early days of the pandemic. 

I have a large number of Kronos quartet recordings, though oddly I don’t think I have them playing Riley. I’ve seen/heard Kronos live on many occasions over the years, and I’ll admit they form something like the quintessential sound of contemporary quartet playing in my mind. They have also commissioned so much new music over the years.


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## jbuhler (Aug 24, 2022)

Today's Fragment is no. 17, "Waltz Suburbia, No. 2." This is a piece where the first part predated the idea of the Pandemic Fragments by quite a lot. Its original form was for string orchestra, and this is a transcription and recomposition of that for string quartet. Even though the first part had been composed long before, this one was not made in one sitting. And it proved very challenging to execute with samples. I'm still not especially happy with the results, though I think you can hear the compositional intention in the current version well enough (as well as the extent to which the samples fall short of it in this case).

I completed this on Aug. 4, 2020, and seem to have worked on it, on and off, for about a week.

View attachment 17 17 Waltz Suburbia No. 2 1.3.mp3


Here's more or less what I started with, a string orchestra version of the opening in very drafty form:

View attachment Waltz Suburbia, No. 2.mp3


That string orchestra draft dates from June 2016, and my midi programming skills were much less developed. (I believe this is Berlin Strings, but my records aren't clear, and I had difficulty tracking down the DAW session where I made this.)

You can hear that besides extending considerably what I had, I also added a layer of composition (especially introducing the repeated three note figure that is something like an _idée fixe_ of the Fragments) to bring the waltz over into the world of the Fragments.

The musical idea here is capturing something of the complacency and self-certainty but also weirdness of suburban life. On a personal note, I moved to the suburbs from a small town when I was 14 and have had let's say a fraught and complicated relationship with the suburbs (and I live now in a suburban enclave as well). But its placement in the Fragments had to do with ways that suburban life intersected with the distortions of Pandemic time.

The quartet here is:
Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: SSoS Progressive Violin & AltSS Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 25, 2022)

Today's Fragment is No. 18, "Nachtmusik III." It was written on Nov. 10. This one is unusual in that I made a fairly substantial revision to it two days later, Nov. 12.

View attachment Nachtmusik III.mp3


Quartet:
Violin I: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin II: AltSS Violin & SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola & OAE Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 26, 2022)

Today's Fragment is No. 22, "Nachtmusik IV: Moonshadows." This was written in one sitting on June 17, 2021.

View attachment Nachtmusik IV; Moonshadows.mp3


This is a varied quartet, and draws on the Westwood series of solo strings for the outer sections of the fragment.

Violin 1: Untamed Violin; 8dio ISS Violin; SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: Untamed Violin; SSoS Progressive Violin; AltSS Violin
Viola: Untamed Viola; SSoS Viola
Cello: Untamed Cello; SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 27, 2022)

I've updated the full title listing on the OP, now with the Fragments broken down into "books." The first book (nos. 1-14) is set. The second book (15-20) is mostly set. The third and fourth books are not yet complete. No. 21 has not yet been posted, but the numbering scheme is no longer correct after No. 20, since I've composed 10 new Fragments since I started posting these.

Today's Fragment is—or rather used to be—no. 24, the finale, "Superspreader/It's an Omicron World." It was written over several sessions while I was grading final exams between May 12 and May 20, when it was completed. This is by far the longest and most thoroughly composed of the fragments and is indeed made up of a number of interlinked fragments played attacca, but it has two main fragments, the second fragment repeated with changes and at a much faster tempo, and those two main fragments are represented by the title. It might be interesting to know that the fragment uses canon extensively, at 4 measures, 2 measures, 1 measure, 2 beats and a beat, as well as bits of inverted, retrograde, and double canon. I should also add that I don't think that elaborate counterpoint is the main musical impression that fragment gives. The canonic work seeks to represent something like the ubiquity of omicron and how the world must adapt itself to its presence, but canon is a constructive principle, not the expression itself. In any case, I rather like much of this rendering, especially how the fragments coalesce into something like a piece and how the coda hurtles to the conclusion after the big viola tune.

View attachment Super Spreader 1.3.1.mp3


Quartet
Violin I: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin II: Folk Fiddle 2; AltSS Violin; SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola; AltSS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello; AltSS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 28, 2022)

Today's Fragment is one of the new ones, part of what I call the Rogues Gallery of Book III (Occultation). "Occult" here refers to hidden, obscure, esoteric meanings of the sort that belong to magic realms but also conspiratorial ones. The structure of occultation is also present in a common view of scientific realism (where scientific discovery is the revelation of the (hidden) order of the world), and there is something about the situation of the Pandemic that seemed to scramble these circuits.

The title of the Fragment is "March of the Quacks." It was written in one sitting on August 16, 2022.


View attachment March of the Quacks.mp3


Quartet:

Violin 1: SSoS First Desk Violin
Violin 2: SSoS Progressive Violin
Viola: SSoS Viola
Cello: SSoS Cello


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## jbuhler (Aug 29, 2022)

Today's Fragment is called "Unmasked." It was composed on Aug. 23, 2022 in a single session. 

View attachment Unmasked 1.0.mp3


Quartet
Violin I: XCSS Violin
Violin II: XCSS Violin (2nd instance)
Viola: XCSS Viola
Cello: XCSS Cello


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## STMICHAELS (Aug 29, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> Today's Fragment is called "Unmasked." It was composed on Aug. 23, 2022 in a single session.
> 
> View attachment Unmasked 1.0.mp3
> 
> ...


Like the realism achieved here too with the small extra little nuances and attacks.. Almost can imagine putting a nick in the body of the violin or something


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## jbuhler (Aug 29, 2022)

STMICHAELS said:


> Like the realism achieved here too with the small extra little nuances and attacks.. Almost can imagine putting a nick in the body of the violin or something


Yes, XCSS has a great range of shorts—by far the most extensive of the solo instruments I own—with a lot of appealing performance noise included in some of them. The instruments have a fairly steep learning curve for virtual instruments, and it took forever to set up the articulation maps, but it's definitely worth the effort. The long notes are serviceable, and I used a few of them in this piece, but they come nowhere near the sweetness you get out of the SF Solo Strings. 

One thing I dislike about the XCSS instruments is that due to how they are scripted you have to do most volume trimming with CC7 rather than CC11.


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## jbuhler (Aug 31, 2022)

Today's Fragment is "Esoterica." All except the opening incipit was written in one sitting on Aug. 24, 2022. The opening incipit (the first 4 bars or so) had been sketched earlier, likely last fall. I do this quite often when I'm just noodling about and stumble on to something I think might have potential but don't have the time to work it out. I leave them in the file and then will come back to them.

View attachment Esoterica.mp3


Quartet: 8dio Intimate Studio Strings, with two instances of violin, one each for Violin I and II.


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## jbuhler (Sep 1, 2022)

Today's Fragment is "Normal Not Normal." It was composed on Aug. 21, 2022 in one sitting. This is a different quartet than I usually use, based around the Berlin First Chairs, and leaning into the lovely portato articulations from that library. 

View attachment Normal Not Normal.mp3


Quartet
Violin I: Berlin First Chair Violin 1
Violin II: Berlin First Chair Violin 2
Viola: Berlin First Chair Viola, Amber Viola, ISS Viola
Cello: Berlin First Chair Cello, Amber Cello


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## jbuhler (Sep 2, 2022)

Today's Fragment is "Jokers Play." It was composed on Aug 17, 2022 May 24, 2022 This started as a test noodle for the Spitfire Sacconi Quartet, which I bought during the summer the spring sale but didn't get around to fully exploring until around the time this was composed. It was composed in a single sitting, though I did make minor revisions the next day. 

_Having looked more carefully at the files associated with this fragment, I see that I drafted this as a noodle (under a different name) soon after purchase, and then did some subtle reworking of it on Aug. 17 to create this version. The original version was drafted in a single sitting on May 24, and the revisions were done on Aug. 17._

View attachment Jokers Play 1.2.mp3


As I mentioned, this is the SF Sacconi Quartet, which has points of real difference with the SF Solo Strings or AltSS. I quite like the sound; but due to inconsistencies it's not the easiest library to work with. There are also not a huge number of examples of it in use, and I will be posting a few more Fragments that use it.

The Sacconi does sound like a quartet with the sound of each instrument fitting neatly with the others. There's a coherence to the playing as an ensemble that sometimes emerges. I'm still learning my way around the library, but I'm hoping I can lock in on that coherence. I've also been most impressed by the viola in particular, which is currently my favorite solo viola of those I own even if it doesn't have trills. Yes, it doesn't have trills, even though all the other instruments do. And in general though the quartet plays well enough together, it takes real work to get them there, as the scripting of each instrument and even the levels of each instruments out of the box are really all over the place. Even by SF standards it's a wildly inconsistent library; and for a library billed as a quartet at that. It's a real shame. Another shocker: the cello has a very restricted range, reaching only to A above middle C. So there's a lot of standard quartet cello parts that are out of its range. The cello also tends to have a bit of a boxy sound too, at least in the stereo mixes I've been using thus far. I find the cello the weak link in the library, and I may well replace it with either the Berlin First Chair or SF Solo Strings Cello.


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## jbuhler (Sep 3, 2022)

Today's Fragment is "Doom Scrolling." This is also the Sacconi Quartet and it was composed on Aug. 18 in one sitting, with small revisions done on Aug. 19. This presents a different side to the Sacconi.

View attachment Allegro Agitato—Doom Scrolling.mp3


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## QuiteAlright (Nov 17, 2022)

Really great pieces. I find no. 10 "Zoom" particularly beautiful.


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## jbuhler (Nov 17, 2022)

QuiteAlright said:


> Really great pieces. I find no. 10 "Zoom" particularly beautiful.


Thank you! I find it captures the mood of the early days of zooming.


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