The Dew Fairy : Update One
The Dew Fairy is the first piece of music I ever wrote. It was part of the entrance assessment for the music course I studied at Trinity Laban - to write a 1 minute piece for any instrument.
To say I was daunted by the prospect is a huge understatement. Previously the only bars of music I had ever written were for my grade 5 theory exam and a couple of bars to create a harp arrangement of Ludovico Einaudi’s piece, I Giorni.
In both these instances I had source material to work from. In the case of the former the ABRSM provided some words that required setting to music, in the latter I needed to arrange the last section of the piece to be more harp friendly to play - especially for my wee hands!
This complete blank sheet of paper was an exciting and intimidating prospect in equal measures. Especially considering tutors from one of the world’s leading music schools were going to listen to it and pass their judgement on it… no pressure.
Graham and I began by finding our own source material. We selected several of the ‘extra curricular’ harp pieces I was learning at the time and together we analysed the chord progressions, harmony and the overall structure of each one to try and figure out how they had been ‘put together’.
This gave us a very basic understanding of the technical details of the sounds I like. I then set about ‘constructing’ my piece from these building blocks.
The Dew Fairy is in D major, I chose this key because I think it has a joyful sound and also of the five pieces I picked to analyse, three were in D major. In choosing this key it meant I had a lot of harmonic material to reference to help me achieve the sound I wanted for my piece.
Midway through the writing process, whenever I listened back to what I had written, I kept getting images in my head of a little person dancing around in a very joyful and purposeful way. These images were quite fuzzy and it wasn’t very clear exactly what they were doing, but they did help inform the rest of the piece and evolved it into a piece of dance music.
Part of the assignment was to give the piece a title and write a bit about why I had chosen said title. So when it was complete, I pressed play and closed my eyes to try to get a clearer image of what the dancer was doing. After a couple of listens I realised it seemed like she was placing something down and then twirling around before placing something else. On the fourth or fifth listen, the image suddenly became very clear - a fairy dancing around placing dew drops on flowers petals and blades of grass early in the morning. ‘The Dew Fairy’.
Now with three years of writing music behind us and a much better understanding of the sounds we like and how to achieve them. We are in the process of revisiting my first piece to rework it into an Imaginarium project. I’m really excited to explore the world of the Dew Fairy and who she is. You can follow our progress here as we will be posting updates in the project journal.
