Although we’ve been apart these past few months, our Spectrum community has continued to use the creative arts as a way to stay connected. We have been so impressed with the resilience and creativity we’ve seen in our students with this transition. This week we are thrilled to feature Josh Hauck.
Josh is a talented musician, playing a variety of instruments and creating musical compositions. During one of his virtual sessions, Josh wanted to share a poem he wrote about the pandemic. Josh was then challenged to use his poem as inspiration to explore an original composition for piano and solo instrument. Through improvisation and other composition techniques, Josh crafted a beautiful melody for his piece and incorporated our intern, Chey Eagle, who is an oboist. Josh’s next step was to then score a piano accompaniment to create a duet. He then named his composition “Shelter” and both Chey and Megan Resig (piano) recorded their parts at home.
What types of programs did you use to create the score and performance video?
“The program that I have used to create this collaboration includes the following: Finale v26 by MakeMusic and LogicProX by Apple. I used Zoom to showcase these programs.”
How do the poem and the composition relate to each other to tell the overall narrative you are conveying?
“The composition is called “Shelter” and when I hear shelter it reminds me of safety and being at ease. The composition is in a minor key, which resembles the anxiety that many people are struggling with in this pandemic. As the melody changes, it touches on different aspects such as loneliness, uncertainty, and reaching out. At the end of the piece, it goes to a major key representing everything being back to normal, like it was before.”
What other types of compositions have you done?
“I have written lots of different compositions, oh my goodness! For a while, I have written compositions and songs for myself and other people. Some songs have dealt with social skills and others have dealt with expressing with my emotions. I also enjoy writing instrumental pieces. In 2012, I took applied composition at Roberts Wesleyan College. After that, I formed a website with the help of Megan Resig called “Note for Note Music” to showcase my compositions.”
What was unique about the process you went through to compose the melody and harmonies for this piece?
“What I found unique about this process was that I did not do it by myself, I worked with Chey Eagle. Chey led me through an improvisation-based process which helped me to solidify my musical ideas. We were able to screenshare in my virtual sessions using Zoom, which helped a lot because everyone was able to help edit in real time.”
