On the Composition of “Spring Rain”

Alex Marthaler recently sat down with composer Aaron Morrison of Spring Rain to learn more about how he put this piece together.

What was your process in composing this piece? Was it different from your typical process?

This piece was a microcosm of my typical process. Usually I come up with a concept, but in this case, there wasn’t a concept. What’s the mood, what’s the style, what’s it about? But that wasn’t the case here.

This piece started with just those two piano chords that go back and forth, under a melody. I usually start harmonically and then come up with a melody on top of that. I started singing over it and just singing words, phrases, looking through books to find combinations of syllables and words that could fit into a melody.

There are a couple different versions of words to it. I didn’t like any of them, so I just kept it with a melody.

How did you choose the key? I’m curious.

It’s where my fingers like to go. I like flat keys a lot. I think generally when I improvise, it ends up in A-flat or E-flat. Somewhere in there.

CMU students take four semesters of eurhythmics and you’ve also participated in some summer workshops. Do you think that work has influenced your composing? How?

I sing a lot more when I compose, I try to embody it more. Having a physical connection to music has made my process different.

When I first started, I was more in my head about chord progressions, structure and form, and how it would all fit together. But now, I think a lot more about phrasing and how a certain gesture will transform to a different gesture naturally and organically. How would someone perform it?

I start a lot of pieces from improv, singing or playing at the piano. I’m always playing, humming. Sometimes I like to walk around the room.

Do you have any tips for how this piece might be expanded by a reader?

I don’t want to guide people to do any specific thing, because that’s the whole joy of improvisation. I’ll share some starting points for how this melody could be more interesting.

There are an uneven number of bars when the B section returns to the A section unexpectedly. Try feeling the B section as truly that many bars—the end of one phrase as the beginning of another. What else could you do with that transition? Where else could it go?

You might also try to have a contrasting character between the two sections, which are registrally different. You might move your body in a certain way when it’s higher up, then differently when it moves to the lower register.

You could also try to think of it in 6/8 if you wanted to. I didn’t try that, but it would be a challenge.