After a month of on again, off again composing—with a good chunk of “off-again” in there—I have finally finished composing “Japanese Trapdoor Snails.” I started the work on 15 April 2026 and wrapped it up late on the evening of Wednesday, 13 May 2026.
It’s an unusual piece, as snails are unusual creatures. I wanted to capture something mystical and contemplative—and, in a hackneyed kind of way, something vaguely Japanese—in the opening bars, with are a slow, flowing 5/4 time. I thought 5/4 fit the slow movements of snails, as if they need an extra beat to get where they’re going.
The “B” section, of sorts, shifts to 3/4 (after some shifting from 5/4 to 4/4) in the same tempo, with the flute moving in dotted quarter notes and the oboe moving in quarter notes. My goal here was to blur tonality and, again, to depict the kind of shuffling crawl of snails along the edges of a pond.
After a recapitulation that shortens one 4/4 phrase to 7/8, I launch into a lively 3/8 portion that has a sort of gypsy and/or Slavic feel to it. In retrospect, I think of this section as capturing the trudging lives of a Japanese Trapdoor Snails going about their never-ending business of pond cleaning. Note that I wasn’t quite sure how this portion fit thematically with the rest of the piece until after listening to it, which happens sometime—an idea pops into my head, I develop it, and then try to figure out if it should stay with that piece.
To be clear, I’m still not convinced it does fit, but I like the contrast and I think it gives some life to this otherwise contemplative and reflective piece.
No New Music Tuesday today, I’m afraid. With the school year winding down, several aspects of the job are winding up as we enter into exam review season. I’m attempting to squeeze in one last mini-unit covering the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and European exploration in the span of three lessons, so my unstructured time has been spent putting together slides for those quite vast topics. We’ll see if I can speed run the biggest events of 1300-1600!
The point is not an in-depth analysis of these major movements, but to keep the students a taste before they head into United States History next year. The first part of United States History examines the political, social, and religious context of late medieval/early modern Europe, as that context is significant in the exploration and colonization of the Americas. I’d like the students to finish the “story” of World History in such a way that it dovetails with the “story” of United States History.
I’ve tinkered with my latest composition, “Japanese Trapdoor Snails,” slightly, but have hit a bit of a block with it. As with writer’s block, the solution is simply to write—in this case, music. To do that, though, I need to have a bit more unstructured time, and what I’ve had has been dedicated to more pressing matters.
It’s a quick installment of New Music Tuesday today, friends. I’m working on a piece called “Japanese Trapdoor Snails”; I’m attempting to capture a quintessentially “Japanese” sound, although I’m not sure if I’m succeeding just yet.
It’s for flute, oboe, classical guitar, and drums (so far). I’ll likely continue to add instrumentation as needed.
Here’s a thirty-second bit of what I have so far:
Still a bit static, but what do you think of this odd little piece in its current form? Does it have legs—or one big, fat, muscular belly-foot?
Sometimes as an artist you create something that seems to stand apart from your other works. I’ll be the first to admit that some of the pieces I write are exercises in composing and musical experiments that don’t always succeed. Implicit to the concept of New Music Tuesday is the chance to workshop pieces and to see what catches attention. Some pieces seem to have their brief moment and then fade away, to the point that even I start to forget about them. Others, however, leave an impression.
Sometimes what starts as a musical exercise in form and restraint can lead to stunning results. Like poetry, restraint and structure and rules make the work better, not worse. Consider all of the free poetry you’ve heard or read. How much of it can you remember? But everyone remembers Robert Frost’s poems.
I’m not comparing today’s piece to the poetry of Robert Frost. I did, however, follow a (somewhat) strict set of internal rules when composing it. I never could wrap my head around formal counterpoint (although I was eighteen when I last tried, in an introductory music theory class at the University of South Carolina), but most of my chorales follow a set of self-imposed rules.
For example, the Oboe 1 part consists (until the sixth and seventh measures) of a whole note tied across the bar line to a half note, followed by a half note tied to a whole note. The Oboe 2 part follows the same pattern except in the first and seventh measures (each phrase is seven measures). Both parts must be stepwise in their motion.
I can’t remember off the top of my head what rules I imposed on the Bassoon 1 and 2 parts. They’re slightly different but follow a similar pattern. By forcing myself to stick (mostly) with these parameters, I ended up with some truly beautiful moments of dissonance and consonance. I especially love when the Bassoon 2 part—the final part to appear—enters in on the third time through the form. It enters on a haunting seventh interval interval, and it was fun bending it slowly towards a rich, four-part triad.
The piece starts with Oboe 1 and 2 playing through seven measures. Bassoon 1 joins on the second time through the seven-measure form; Bassoon 2 joins on the final section. Naturally, I had to add an “Amen” sequence.
With that, here is the double reed quartet chorale “Koi Chorale”:
Here’s the original manuscript, which just has the two oboe parts; note the mistake I made in the top line, which—because I wanted to stick to the rules—ended up changing the melodic line of the piece:
I may go back and try a different set of rules with that Oboe 1 part to see what I’d originally written sounds like.
Regardless, I am really pleased with how this piece comes out. My former neighbor, Across the Field Jerry, told me that it reminds him of the organ preludes at his old Lutheran Church. That made me happy—I love it when reeds, even digital ones, blend so well that they create an organ-like sound.
I added a “Cathedral” preset reverb effect and applied a mastering preset in Audacity to the track. The cool video effect is called “Vaporwave,” and is a preset effect in the YouTube Create app. The images were compiled in the iPhone version of iMovie, and come from our koi pond.
I had fun making the cover art (as always, in MS Paint Classic—ha!); I suppose I should have made it four fish:
The koi pictured is Cobbler, our blue koi. He is a big boy, and when it’s warm out, he loves to skim the surface of the pond looking for food. I thought his mouth looked like a fishy chorister:
What do you think of this little piece? Do you prefer writers, composers, etc., adhere to a set of rules and structure when creating, or do you appreciate less stringent creativity? Let me know!
I’ve been catching up on composing and arranging some pieces that have been sitting in my music journal for a month or two. This week’s composition is one such piece, with a distinctly medieval feel.
