Self Portrait

My self-portrait is a short and simple melody with straight forward harmony in A-minor. In this piece, I attempt to convey the everyday hardships of life and hope that gets each of us through the day. Musically, I do this by developing melody and harmony that is heavily centered on A-minor and then developing other ideas in C-Major to add a dash of hope. Then, I return to A-Minor to develop a new idea and finally end the piece by reintroducing the original melody to close it out. I created this piece because struggle and hope are common themes in my life and the lives of the people around me and I wanted to convey that through music. Most of my previous work has been electronically based with sampled sounds and looped tracks so taking on something based in composition was different for me. As far as professional aspirations, I hope to one day compose in the entertainment industry and I found that this piece closely resembles video game music which could’ve happened subconsciously due to my musical influences.

Some of my biggest influences are composers from all different corners of the entertainment industry including movies, television, and video games. From movie and T.V. my biggest influence has to be Michael Giacchino who has worked on Lost and The Incredibles to name a few. I didn’t find myself using any of his techniques when composing my piece, because I barely understand them, but I wouldn’t argue with anyone who claimed my rhythmic patterns are influenced by him in some way. I’d say my biggest influences, especially in terms of melodic content, would be Disasterpeace and Toby Fox. Both of these composers have made brilliant soundtracks for the best indie games to come out within recent years (Undertale and Fez, respectively).

Link to audio of piece: https://soundcloud.com/angel-rivera-315217494/self-portrait-project/s-p8w6N