Two notes on music composition

First Note :

I had my music composition lesson with Steve Kuykendall yesterday, and he brought up a good point about tempo.  I'm writing a psalm setting of Psalm 69, and there's alternating slow and fast sections.  The fast sections were almost too fast to be understood.  I couldn't say the lyrics fast enough.  But if I slowed the song down, then the slow section would be too slow.

He pointed out that I could slow down the fast section without slowing down the whole piece.  Composers do that all the time.  It never occurred to me to do that.  Almost all the modern music I'm listening has a constant beat to it, probably because most music is composed on computers and looped and layered, and that doesn't work at all if the tempo isn't maniacally consistent.

I learned about that while trying to record tracks in the Digital Music / Technology class I took last fall.

If I change the tempo in the piece, it will solve a musical problem I'm having, and also make the music stand out and sound different.  Interesting.

Second Note :

Youtube threw up an ad about Hans Zimmer's online master class while I was searching for Barber music.  In the ad, he says that music is like a story.  There's a call and response.  I hadn't thought about it that way before.  Thinking in terms of call and response might add more natural counterpoint to the pieces I'm working on.  I'm going to have to give it a try.

Also, I might have to take the class.