Brian Lee's College Portfolio
My Portfolio
Welcome to my portfolio. Here you’ll find a selection of my work. Explore my projects to learn more about what I do.
Conflagration
This is the first piece of music that I created that I was genuinely proud of. This was also the first piece that I created all by myself, as all of my previous compositions were from music class, where I had to collaborate with my peers. I originally created this piece for an English Project relating to the BLM movement, but it turned out really well.
I do not consider this exactly great now, as I created this piece with no regard for playability. However, I still hold this piece close to my heart as this was the piece that started my composing journey.
Software Used: Musescore 3
Time Spent: 2 weeks
Journey
This was my first piece of music that I created in Logic along with my music teacher (at the time). There was around a 2 year gap since this piece and the last one, and my knowledge grew much more since. I used several techniques from several different pieces of music that I liked (Can You Hear The Music & The Mandalorian by Ludwig Göransson, The Ecstasy of Gold by Ennio Morricone, etc), along with some music theory that I learned.
I submitted this piece to a few music composition contests, but unfortunately failed to win any of them. This piece took a very long time to make, and I felt that I lost some motivation along the way. Regardless, this was the piece of music that brought me back from the composing hiatus.
Software Used: Logic X
Time Spent: 2-3 months
Berklee
The next 3 pieces of music are music that I created at the Berklee High School Composition Intensive summer camp.
Serenity
This was the first piece of music that I created in the summer camp, and was a piece for solo piano. When I created this piece of music, I was incredibly jet-lagged, and we had to make this piece in around 24 hours. As a result, this piece of music was very rushed. The title is a callback to the first piece of music I've ever created, with the same name. I still thought it came out all right, but I do wish that I could have spent more time on this project.
Software Used: Musescore 4
Time Spent: 1-2 days
Everything's Okay
This was the second piece of music that I created in the summer camp. For this piece, I was tasked to create a duo piece for marimba and bass clarinet. I was pretty disappointed at this choice, as the other options (saxophone & Bb clarinet) were much more appealing to me. I originally struggled to create any ideas for this piece, and even pulled an all-nighter to create a piece I thought was decent. Thankfully, the ideas came in due time, and I was able to create a piece that I liked much more than the piece above.
While composing this piece, I decided that I wanted the three pieces of music I created at this camp to be linked, and wanted to show different levels of anxiety with each piece.
Software Used: Musescore 4
Time Spent: 2-3 days
Murphy's Law
This was the third and last piece of music that I created in the summer camp. This was the piece where I was able to spend the most time, which was around a week. This piece was also for a string quartet, which got me very excited, as string quartets sound phenomenal if done right, and I love listening to different string quartets. Before I started to compose, I wanted my piece to have the same feel as Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet Mvt. 2, as it displayed the emotions of "despair" and "panic" extremely well. However, I was able to listen to a live performance of the exact piece, and that confirmed my decision.
This is probably the piece that I am most proud of, as the quality of the music was great. I was able to capture the emotions I wanted to display perfectly, and in the allotted time, I was able to create a piece that I was very satisfied with. This piece was also played at the concert on the final day of the camp, which was also a very enthralling experience.
Software Used: Musescore 4
Time Spent: 5-6 days