Audio clip of the song, “There’s Something in the Woods.” The clip is 46 seconds long. Here is a PDF copy of the composition of the song, so you can follow along as you listen to it: there’s something in the woods.pdf (1)
For this page, I decided to go in a more unconventional route. I used the website Noteflight to write a rather short instrumental song, which is in the key of E minor, for the most part, and has a 4/4 beat pattern. French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier described this key as “effeminate, amorous, [and] plaintive,” and I followed this description as a loose guideline for what I wanted to do with the song. However, as I kept working on the composition, I found myself wanting to warp Charpentier’s words and really push them to their limits.
I used three different instruments in this composition: acoustic guitar, drums, and bass guitars, the latter of which has two different lines of playing, which can be seen in the PDF copy of the sheet music for it. The first bass line has the most complicated style of playing, as there are different pitches for each beat, and acts as a secondary melody for the song. The second bass line is simpler and is meant to mimic the notes in the first bass line; it consists of half notes instead of the former bass line’s fourth notes. The drums play a simple beat, playing three notes per meter (the fourth note is silent) which is repeated throughout the song. The acoustic guitar carries the melody the most strongly, consisting of chords moving up and down throughout the song in the key of E minor. The first bass line and the acoustic guitar’s section tend to conflict each other as the song goes along, which adds to the general feeling of uncertainty and dread.
The end result, while unpolished, sounds haunting, solitary, and a little lonely. However, because the song is an instrumental and doesn’t contain any lyrics, the listener is allowed to contemplate it themselves, and come to their own conclusions about the piece. It may be a short piece, being less than 20 seconds long in length, but it says what it needs to say, and then leaves.