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Most of all, I think that you should get some other virtual-players involved to, shall we say, "jam" to it.  Let them start adding distinctly-contrasting musical ideas that can be fitted on top of this one.

 

Then – let somebody else "take the lead."  Take one of the contrasting motifs that another player is using, and let it now "take the lead," while cello3, momentarily content to "play second fiddle," :wink: follows it.

 

Since the attention-span of an audience is routinely short, let these changes occur fairly often – I don't really like to let even 30 seconds pass – but let each one make musical sense with relation to its successors and its predecessors (so that it sounds like you are pulling rabbits, not just any ol' farm animal, out of your musical hat).  And finally, be sure to "circle around to home base" so that we remember where we came from. Let us now hear "cello3" once again playing what we heard before, but with a little "twist of lime" – something new that our cellist just picked-up from some other player in the band orchestra.  (In successive passages, we hear that other musicians in like manner are "groovin' against one another," too.  The audience is treated to a pleasingly evolving musical experience that is clearly built upon ideas first introduced early in the piece – but can never entirely anticipate what will come next.)

 

We humans are good at pattern-recognition.  When we hear one musical idea, we remember it even as another idea plays.  We like to hear musical constructions that creatively build upon other things that we have recently heard, and yet we also like to once-again be reminded of the familiar.  We like "bridges" and "middle eights."  If you've got a classical streak (or if you've just read Aaron Copland's What To Listen For In Music), we like "fugues" and "sonatas," even if we don't know them by name.

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Most of all, I think that you should get some other virtual-players involved to, shall we say, "jam" to it.  Let them start adding distinctly-contrasting musical ideas that can be fitted on top of this one.

 

Then – let somebody else "take the lead."  Take one of the contrasting motifs that another player is using, and let it now "take the lead," while cello3, momentarily content to "play second fiddle," :wink: follows it.

 

Since the attention-span of an audience is routinely short, let these changes occur fairly often – I don't really like to let even 30 seconds pass – but let each one make musical sense with relation to its successors and its predecessors (so that it sounds like you are pulling rabbits, not just any ol' farm animal, out of your musical hat).  And finally, be sure to "circle around to home base" so that we remember where we came from. Let us now hear "cello3" once again playing what we heard before, but with a little "twist of lime" – something new that our cellist just picked-up from some other player in the band orchestra.  (In successive passages, we hear that other musicians in like manner are "groovin' against one another," too.  The audience is treated to a pleasingly evolving musical experience that is clearly built upon ideas first introduced early in the piece – but can never entirely anticipate what will come next.)

 

We humans are good at pattern-recognition.  When we hear one musical idea, we remember it even as another idea plays.  We like to hear musical constructions that creatively build upon other things that we have recently heard, and yet we also like to once-again be reminded of the familiar.  We like "bridges" and "middle eights."  If you've got a classical streak (or if you've just read Aaron Copland's What To Listen For In Music), we like "fugues" and "sonatas," even if we don't know them by name.

Hi Mike,

Great post! Thanks for listening as well. I happen to love Aaron Copeland's music so will check out the book you linked. Wasn't Beethoven the first to use a motif to 'play' with his audience? That is, he'll play the motif through a whole movement but never the same way twice...always with a twist. I call this 'playing' with the listener. Beethoven's famous 5th Symphony (First movement) is a great example of this I think. 

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Could be – "Beethoven's Fifth" is certainly a legendary motif, but then again, so is "Chariots of Fire," "Star Wars," and plenty of others.

 

Nevertheless – and, "nevermind 'motifs,'" I do happen to think that one very-important take-away is simply that "song forms do exist,"and that they're valuable and useful. (And not merely because listeners – even "pop music" listeners – are subliminally conditioned to expect some of them).

 

These are boots-on-the-ground pragmatic strategies – which have stood the test of time – for developing (several ...)  individual musical notions into a presentation that is bigger, more complex, and more satisfying than any one of them.  It points the way forward from "that handful of individual musical notions."  And it has musical history behind it.  "Hey! Try this, and see if it works!!"

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