Row Row Row Your Boat

An old classic that I loved recreating again from scratch. I started the concept wanting a bass drone and this of course meant an exciting time playing with alternative harmonies that could sit nicely above the low C’s.

For the visuals, in my own quirky way, I liked having the repeated C notes drifting along in the sea (my sea of C’s). I know, it’s a terrible pun. The arpeggiated glockenspiels gave a pretty sparkly effect that mirrored the sparkles of sunlight on the waves, so I also wanted that bit of synesthesic experience for the students.

For the note-timing animations, my favourite is the fish, although, the drawing and animation of the turtle gave me a bit of trouble; my first attempts made it look like it was struggling in the water, drowning. Not the best look. Eventually by reducing the frame rate of the animation I managed to bring it to an acceptable standard.

The boat drifting along in the open sea is my little salute to the characters’ adventures in the animated film “Flow”, that got so much attention from the Oscars recently. Teachers could use this for students to imagine the vastness of the sea and how they would feel drifting in the boat - how do they connect that feeling to the instrumentation of this piece?

I love the effect that the fishes under the surface gave, the energy of them swimming around, matching the ebb and flow of the music during the interlude, and I feel that teachers could point this out to their students and let them feel the music more effectively with the visual aid of the school of fish - more fish = bigger music dynamics, slower fish = thinner instrument texture etc. I loved that the choir voice samples in my software helped to produce these interesting textures to the interlude.

I hope the combination of the interesting harmonies and visual animations help the students in their own individual interpretation of this well-known piece.