Babysitting ★ MUSIC 214 ★ Composition Assignment #1

Composed on March 31st 2021
All sounds are MIDI generated and the singer is a Vocaloid (Cyber Songman, English)
Composer’s Statement:
This is my first attempt at writing a post-tonal piece and it was a lot of fun. One thing I tried while composing this was “speed-running”, which is writing the piece as quickly as one can and not being allowed to erase a note once it’s written. I ended up writing the piece in 1.5 hours.
I wanted to write a 12-Tone row piece, so I googled a random number generator and was given the tone row: 7 3 2 5 1 E 8 0 T 6 4 9. I decided to establish this tone row with a loud and strong introduction with the piano in the first two bars. That piano motif also established the rhythmic pattern which recurs throughout the piece. As the composition began to take shape, I started to get more chaotic and slightly derpy vibes from the music and was, for some reason, reminded of babysitting a hyperactive toddler. I
ended up continuing to write my piece accordingly. The lyrics are reflective of the babysitter getting very stressed with the toddler. Towards the end (bar 22 onwards), the lyrics repeat “I’m so done” along with the violin viola and piano playing a staccato tone row which slowly rises in pitch. This was done to show the increase in frustration and almost reaching a breaking point. Finally, the main theme returns and this time the tone row ends in a perfect cadence. Note that the rules didn’t have to be broken too much to write
the perfect cadence as I still employed the first 2 notes of various tone rows to achieve that. The perfect cadence along with the “I’m free!” was meant to reflect the parents of the toddler coming back and the babysitter leaving the house after being paid $29 (Can you guess why?).