Archive - November 2005November 6, 2005: "Improvisation" Had an interesting weekend, getting ready to do some electronic work for the Kronos piece this next week in which I'll be both manipulating some live sounds and generating some new music from raw waves. This doesn't feel like part of composing the piece to me since I tend to be a pencil-and-paper kind of guy, but the realization that it's actually a major component of the piece has psyched me into drafting some sketches for the new sections—so I'm looking forward to detailing the process of working with electronics next entry… Meanwhile, I've gotten enough questions from readers that I'd better address them before another week of work-filled Kronos-related activity hits. Here goes! (Note—all questions appear as-received from their authors): Q: Do you get to go to Yale for free now, or is that just a rumor? If not, for how long is this offer open?
A: Doubtless you've heard all the excessive hullabaloo about The Yale School of Music receiving a million-dollar endowment, ho-hum…oh wait—did I say one million? Make that 100 MILLION DOLLARS! (that's a 1 followed by 8 zeros…it helps to get your head around the idea!) The word on the street is that this gift from an anonymous donor was actually donated last year before Robert Blocker's resignation as dean, but for obvious reasons the school wanted to sit on this golden egg and get its collective PR-battalions all in a row before it bombed the world with the news. Obviously, this Big Juicy Secret was leaked as early as the spring, but was kept quite effectively under wraps until two weeks ago, when the formal announcement was made. It's a fine testament to the School of Music's priorities and values that the first official dipping into the endowment was declared to be for the express purpose of waiving tuition for returning students beginning in the 2006-2007 academic year. This seems to immediately have been broadened, and currently the plan is to make it a tuition-free school. On this note, I should probably add that the Yale School of Music is open only to graduate students majoring in conducting, composition, or instrumental performance—undergrads and musicology, theory, or history majors enroll in the Department of Music at the University. So we're talking about a small school with a body of about 200 students, students who often leave school over $50,000 in debt with no assurance of a job involving music. The Curtis Institute in Philly, which caters to undergrads mainly with a non-degree “certificate” offered for the few graduates, has been tuition-free since the late '20s. I think the implications of this situation are vast, but its immediate effects are clear: Yale can afford to be a good deal more selective, and students can afford to…well, attend school without breaking the bank! Clearly, this gift confers enormous responsibility on the school in addition to status, and I'm certain that much of this current year will be devoted to ascertaining how the gift can best be used for the advancement of Yale's long-term goals. I think it's premature to speculate on later developments, but it's my personal wish that Yale will use a portion of the money to a) consider offering stipends to students in need, or at least to doctoral-level candidates, b) create a new, state-of the art performance space for the Philharmonia which could redress the many acoustical and design problems of the historical (and thus un-renovate-able) Woolsey Hall, and c) increase its outreach activities locally and finance a viable after-school program for New Haven schools in general music as well as individual instruction. Q: How do you finagle your schedule between composing, classes, and teaching? Do you think it's something you can do for the rest of your life? A. Often, very poorly! It's a constant struggle to keep things in equilibrium, especially since I find it necessary at times to “borrow” time from one of these other spheres in order create time for another. I think this juggling is largely beneficial, as I prefer to do anything I'm engaged in excellently rather than poorly, both of which are better than all-out-crappily! Having a clear set of priorities and a protocol for dealing with crunch times BEFORE things get out of hand is also useful, and planning—sometimes even two years in advance!—has become a necessary part of my work habit. So to answer your specific question, I tend to view teaching as the activity of the those three which is least expendable and cannot be fudged—and because of this, it's lucky that I've taken time off this semester and don't have to deal with it for a while! Very close behind is composing, which, as a type of learning, often trumps class work. I'm of course not encouraging anyone to underachieve (cough), but I certainly think that many students seem to have an unhealthy obsession with ephemeral achievement, especially as is expressed in the accursed letter-grade system. In addition, classes can be caught up with, especially if you're more concerned with learning than with performing for a grade, but deadlines for commissions, while often slightly flexible, can't be bent too much without breaking. Also, as I have aspirations to continue making a living composing after I've formally left life as a student, it seems ridiculous to short-change one's career as a composer for one's career as a student. I've been having more than a bit of difficulty resolving my real, un-academic desire to learn and grow with the feverish amount of composing I've been engaging in to fulfill a good run of commissions of the last year-and-a-half. A school such as Yale has wonderful challenges to offer, but like most institutions it's entirely possible to squeak by with having accomplished only very little in pursuit of that funny little piece of paper called a diploma. I feel very unsuited to taking advantage of all that Yale has to offer, especially if the necessary turning-down of commissions would in any way jeopardize my fledgling career. Even so, being that lucky might also force me into the position of being an uneducated derelict for the remainder of my life, and I've got to weigh in the pros and cons of each. That said, I certainly have thought of leaving school after this semester if I can't take advantage of what school has to offer, but this is both a very disorienting and risky move that I'd like to keep up my sleeve until other possibilities are exhausted. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep these concerns in balance forever, but I'm fairly certain that letting them get out of hand at this early stage could only skew things further in that direction. Q: What kind of equipment (technology) do you use for composing? What kind of role does technology play for you as a composer? A: Very little! I'm a very old-fashioned pen-and paper kind of guy (never pencil—it makes more sense, but the feel of a pen is something that satisfies me on the sensual level to an extent in which writing with a pencil does not, and if I'm going to be composing the better part of my life I might as well enjoy it, scratch-outs be damned!). As I've mentioned in previous entries, I tend to do a lot of sketching on white paper, and then try to lay out a rough score on manuscript paper, often with the aid of musical instruments when appropriate--sometimes this has been a guitar or a real piano, but usually it's the Casio. I like using the Casio because it is so utterly limited in its sonic capabilities and so deficient in expressivity that it forces me to keep a sense of the sound I'm looking for in my head even when I need to venture outside of my head to experience pitches, chords, etc. that I'm unsure about. The danger with big sample libraries or even a good piano is that one can easily confuse the sensual beauty of that present instrument with the ideal instrument of one's imagination, and I suppose this little arrangement I have is a self-imposed check on my own inclination to get swept up in one type of experience just because it's more physically immediate. Otherwise I end up producing decent piano music that isn't really idiomatic for, say, string quartet, and the more obvious and unacceptable my reality is the more I can stay in touch with my imagination. I also use Finale 2004, which I'm quite adept at, and I know (but politely refrain from using) Sibelius for reasons I won't go into now. Occasionally I run CoolEdit, Pro Tools, or a bare-bones editing program like Audacity, this all on my PC laptop. This is the extent of my home setup, but I'll have some fun new toys to talk about when I invade Yale's rig this week. I think this kind of technology is indispensable to a young composer working today, but it's also worth taking time to understand it so that you feel like you're creating music through it, and not the other way around. I think there's been a real decline in engraving standards over the past ten years as well as an increase in the chances for charlatans to make their wares look respectable. Not that I mind the influx of “outside” composers who come from a less traditional background—far from it! It's just that I think it's often possible to use all these toys we're lucky enough to have access to in a way that appears very impressive without actually meaning something very impressive, and I feel in many ways like the playing field is being leveled. While I like the idea of equality of opportunity, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's an equality of ability, and I think that the main imperative that music-lovers should take from this situation would be to become more informed and cosmopolitan listeners while demanding more for their musical entertainment. Which leads me to our next question: Q: Why do you hate the Funboard? Why can't I find this model..has it been discontinued? A: There is no such animal as the “Casio Funboard”, although I'm charmed its existence evokes the same kind of fervent nostalgia for you as for me! Its technical specs are: “Casio CT-638”, to which the footnote “465 sound TONE BANK!” perhaps merits a mention. “Funboard” is just an affectionate name I use for the reprehensible rapscallion, born out of a certain work-induced delirium as well as the keyboard's innate appetite for Fun. Speaking of things Fun, check out this ad I clipped from a Toys 'R Us mailer—the caption reads as follows: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Sewer Spewer—radio control lets you control the moves. Includes one can of fun string. Ages 4-up.”
Latchkey kids of the world, rejoice! Q: You've won a lot of competitions in your time. What is their role in the professional development of a young composer? Are they necessary to have on your resume? A: Competitions have to do with perseverance, skill, originality, visibility, and most of all, luck. They're helpful to have for several reasons—not the least of which that they often involve the transfer of cold, hard cash! In addition, many competitions result in some kind of musical opportunity such as a commission or a performance, and even if you don't win it's not a bad way to get your music out there for anyone who might be interested. That said, competitions take a good deal of time to prepare for, and some have astronomical entry fees which might be forbidding (if not prohibitive) to young composers. You'll also have to sort through lots of paperwork, put a lot of effort into presentation (slick-looking bio and resume, lots of clean copies of scores, etc.), and most of all, deal with a load of rejection. How does that stack up for you? Winning a competition or three can certainly help a fledgling career on top of simply building resolve and self-confidence, but it'll never make or break you. Some of us do absurdly well in competitions without being extremely gifted composers, while likewise some very special music languishes, often to the detriment of both the entrant and the competition. Dealing with acceptance and rejection can be a wild roller-coaster ride, and moreover it's a two-way street. Think your bad run this year can be explained away on the basis of stylistic bias or poor management? Well, that's fine, but next time you've got something in the bag you'll have to at least consider the possibility that you were the fortunate recipient of bias and maybe your piece was on top of the stack, when the panel was in a good mood and hadn't started slinking behind schedule yet. So while competitions aren't an utter crapshoot, don't internalize things too deeply—or, as a friend of mine once said, it takes at least a halfway-competent composer to succeed, but many brilliant composers have swallowed their fair share of failures. So practical advice to you and your ilk? Keep abreast of opportunities that you might be eligible for and select a small, manageable proportion of those mainly on the basis of the entry fee amount (if any) and the amount of work involved. Seek out student composer awards like those offered by ASCAP and BMI which are free to enter and offer potentially lucrative awards and high visibility. Then forget about entering them until you hear back. And remember: these little badges aren't bad to have on your resume, but it's ultimately your music and your personality that'll make or break your career, and a resume is just a way to get your foot in the door and show what you can do. If your resume simply attracts attention to some inconsequential musical doodlings or a grating, unpleasant personality then not much has been achieved. So while those kinds of people shoot themselves down make sure that you've got some goods to deliver if someone comes knocking—it's as sound an investment as you'll ever make. Q: I have been writing songs for a few years now. I also play in two bands, and now we've started to play some of my own material. I'm interested in a lot of progressive music from the '70s and am trying to find ways to deal with that. I am also new to classical music [and am] trying to work on longer songs that don't feel bogged down. Any advice that could get me started would be appreciated. A: During most the '60s and '70s there were basically two ways or extending the short pop-song form into something more massive (though not necessarily profound!). The first was simply to incorporate an improvised jam or “freak out” section, usually in the middle of the piece as a replacement to the bridge or as a kind of extended outro—and some songs, like Traffic's “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, do them both! The other popular way to extend material was to simply tack separate songs together in a kind of medley—the second side of “Abbey Road” is a particularly successful and nuanced case, as there are several melodies, themes, and tonal areas that recur and are developed. Less extreme examples would include “Happiness is a Warm Gun” as well as many Lennon/McCartney compositions, in which the elements of reprise and contrast hold things together. To my knowledge, Jethro Tull's “Thick as a Brick” is the first rock album to be based largely on the idea of motivic development, a technique employed in much classical music. Although “Thick as a Brick” still relies heavily on improvised filler and linking, it's a pretty decent attempt at a truly convincing 45-minutes of more or less continuous music. The second half is kind of a bummer, but they make it work for a good while before things start to “bog down”, to paraphrase your e-mail. I think that there's a lot of variety in these three approaches, and of course there's always room for your own personal stamp—try thinking of the whole song as an arch or a story, and keep in mind ways that you might be able to relate your other musical ideas back to that, like spokes on a wheel that all point to the central hub. Also, I'd highly recommend Radiohead, Wilco, Tortoise, and even Modest Mouse to you as inspiration—you're probably already familiar with most of their music, but listening to them with an ear to their own disparate takes on your current dilemma might be useful. Hope this helps—oh, and congrats on your accomplishments! Thanks to everyone who wrote in. To be honest, I was initially worried that there wouldn't be enough of these to fill a whole entry, but things really picked up this last week and now I've even got a few extras, which I may save for a later date. Next week we return to the Kronos piece and hopefully some pictures of New Haven's weather behaving itself. [BACK TO TOP] November 6, 2005: "Improvisation" So it's beautiful and autumn-y in New Haven, as we're now in the midst of the nice two weeks which precede the following 6 months of icy, windswept terror—I'll try to capture a little bit of west rock for next time, as well as BETHANY BOOK BARN, which I've been hunting harpoon-in-hand like the white whale itself, albeit a landlocked, inanimate one lined with purchasable books. I've been cleaning up my orchestral “Black Bend” score this week, which is kind of a pain but providing me with a useful breather as I prepare to embark on two new compositional projects as well as keep an open mind about possible tweaks to the Kronos piece before the premiere. I dragged out my guitar for the first time in, well, some unspecified unit of geological time. I can barely play the damn thing anymore, but did manage to come out of the ordeal with quite the shiner on my left ring finger; I was savvy enough to take a picture this little badge of courage, savvier still to realize that no one else is probably interested in seeing a gaping open wound on my web journal. I mention it because it's one of those good kinds of pain that serve to inform you that you should really be doing this more often to keep your finger tips as hard as week-old dinner rolls. It was also refreshing to engage in a musical activity that was both completely private and non-teleological, especially after directing so much of my energy of the past several months toward an end that was of its nature extremely public. Anyhow, I thought that today might be a good time to bring up the topic of improvisation and what it might mean as a tool for the composer of written-out concert music. As I'm something of a guitar anti-hero more than a Jeff Beck-type, my experience with improvisation is extremely limited; however, my status as a card-carrying guitar dropout conveys a certain perspective to what little performing experience I can still semi-competently engage in, and from that perspective is born a certain desire to plunder the improviser's way of thinking in service of musical activities that often seem inhospitable to improvisation.
Most non-musicians or even exclusively classical musicians view improvisation as something akin to spontaneous creation ex nihilo but it's a good deal more grounded than that, most of the time. The improviser takes as building blocks certain stock materials of his or her genre, materials which are often but not limited to melodic fragments, rhythmic profiles, patterns of phrasing, and idiomatic playing techniques. Most of the time, an improviser is creating something more original than his or her sources yet also closer to them than truly independent musical ideas; sometimes, literal quotation often serves as a springboard for later flights of fancy within a single number, and the gradation between appropriation and almost unclassifiable moments of invention creates the opportunity for much musical interest. This is not at all to say that improvised music is either in theory or practice unoriginal, especially compared to classical concert music. It's more a statement of where the creativity does or doesn't lie—in this case, often between the literal notes and rhythms of the performance in the subtle realm of personal delivery, connotation, and subtext. This is why improvisation, even when partially de-mystified, can be an extremely forbidding arena for the non-initiate. Learning the stylistic rubric and key performances in any improvised tradition can be a daunting task in itself, and the art of ensemble playing in real-time without note-for-note scores simply exacerbates the challenge. What I'm interested in doing in this entry is to provided a few simple guidelines which might help interested parties strike out developing their improvisation chops at their own pace and without the need for other like-minded individuals to be on call. I'll choose the specific genre of blues/rock as it's both a genre I've delved into earlier in this journal as well as a style explicable in less arcane terms than jazz. I've tried to make these comments and examples universal, however, so that they might be equally applicable to any number of other styles. First, let's listen to the kind of improvising we've become very accustomed to hearing, often emanating from a Marshall stack at the back of your neighborhood corporate music shack or anywhere where ponytails call home: I think we all must have heard this kind of thing before, even perhaps impressed by it when executed by fingers more accomplished than my own. And certainly, there are some things to be proud of if we can make it to this point—first a real mastery of a certain timbral world, and also some halfway-decent chops at an instrument. The problem is, it's just an awful lot of jacking around without any sense of direction or control; the “emotion” is all applied from without to a musical endeavor that is, upon examination, pretty uninteresting. This kind of playing appropriates the kind of surface characteristics of fiery players like Jimi Hendrix without apprehending the underlying logic and restraint which bring the wildness into sharp relief. So let's try building a phrase from something simple and unhurried, like these notes of the major pentatonic scale: Same notes (transposed to another key) as the first sputtering example, nothing special there. But this time, let's restrict ourselves to the clarity of a single melodic idea: To me, this is so much more musical than the first example, and I think, more interesting too. The important question to ask is, why did the example which at first seemed full of excitement and variety in retrospect reveal itself to be a bit of a bore, while the longer excerpt which held itself to a single musical idea unfolded in a way that's ultimately more compelling? Part of the answer, to my ears, is that while this second solo is more singularly focused, it is not doggedly so. I didn't play the same phrase exactly three times, not at all: the second time, I altered a single note, a very subtle change but one which lent a distinctly different flavor to that phrase; the last time, I accelerated my presentation to twice the rate I'd established, snowballing the level of activity and tightening the focus on the alteration of the natural and flat versions of the note B. Also, because there's more of a consistent rhythmic pulse, there's more room to breathe than in my first, rather congested solo—nothing there was shaped, allowed to bloom and grow, and this ended up lending a certain blank quality to the music. So with this principle to guide us, we've got some solid direction to our improvisation, something my first example lacked. But to a newcomer, the task of generating any material at all, even that first undisciplined outburst, may seem like quite the hurdle to overcome. In fact, I might wager to say that this might be the biggest hurdle to overcome. Let's cheat, then, and just get something out there, something we can listen to and think about and play around with. It doesn't have to be anything even remotely interesting, just as long as it isn't inhibited! Even whacking away at an open string in a constant rhythm: There, the hard part's over. Now we can ask ourselves some silly, obvious questions, but obvious questions that can make us think. Questions like: how could this little riff be improved? What could be more exciting about it? Just going one step at a time and, say, creating a more interesting rhythmic profile, varying pitches, etc. can be a very practical way to chip away at a seemingly daunting task while at the same time learning about the kinds of musical parameters that make up a successful musical gesture. After all, a riff like this one from “Communication Breakdown” on the first Zeppelin album uses just this kind of dumb, static platform as a base for a simplistic but memorable little pattern: Now, this stated, I'm going to have to admit that all this has been something of a set-up. Does great music, or even great rock riffs, get written this way ever? And if so, are they really conceived in a musical way, or just cobbled together without any expressivity? Clearly, you'll never become a great improviser by practicing exercises such as the one I've just outlined, and I'd like to let it be known in no uncertain terms that I think this piecemeal, overly finicky approach to be deeply anti-musical. Why have I been expounding upon this theme, then? Because the musical values that one internalizes from creating these overly-wrought, chimerical compositions are just the thing we need to have in place when we stop trying to control them. There's a purpose in all of this nitpicking, but it doesn't actually reveal itself in the kind of little anemic compositions which are its immediate result, but rather in the kind of choices we make on the fly, seemingly unthinking. What's important to us sticks, and what isn't melts away as we discover ourselves, what we are and what we aren't. This certainly isn't an argument against craft, against the need for learning and skill, but it seems to me that the main reason a musician ought to learn all these little rules is in order to have the luxury of forgetting them—not ignoring them, but internalizing them to the point where one feels comfortable maneuvering outside of the box and thinking more in single creative flashes. I'm not sure there's a way to teach someone the ability to conceive of a single great, compelling musical thought all at once, but by learning how to hack together some pretty-good musical ideas we might make the appearance of the lightning bolt more likely. The riff from “Communication Breakdown” is competent, but it's not especially striking or personal. Compare that to this from “Black Dog” several years down the line, which begins their fourth album: I think it's a much better riff, more memorable and more personal. It has a certain halting, monolithic character, but at the same time the melodic figures roll about themselves, imbuing everything with a kind of ballsy swagger. Consider how, like my earlier example of the slow, restrained blues solo, it's easy to point at its defining qualities in retrospect, easy to appreciate them and how they really serve to bring the musical idea into sharper focus where it becomes distinct and real for us. Yet it's not easy to do the opposite, and imagine these excerpts as the result of a series of musical chess-moves, which I suspect is because they weren't conceived that way. Much of what really compels us in music has that one-way street quality, the quality of making sense in retrospect without seeming so pedantically overt in its designs on first listen. One reason, then, that I've been harping on improvised music in this entry is that improvised music is largely the kind of music we create without the conscious imposition of our own learned notions of what that music should be. When we have to react, when there isn't time to think or to sit back and tap into our vast repository of learned skills we tend to reveal what is deepest and most characteristic of our musical selves, even when what is revealed isn't as perfect or developed as what we might be able to touch up given a chance to breathe. I want musical quality to be my only criterion for evaluating music, and for that reason I'm open to the point of view that sometimes these touch-ups are useful or necessary just as I feel that those of us working from the more classical end should entertain the possibility that a master improviser's thumbnail sketch might be as or more valid as something that's been slaved over for months on end. This is one of the reasons I think that all musicians should be somewhat fluent in the technique of improvising, not necessarily to make a career out of it but as a special way of coming to grips with ourselves and our most personal musical intentions.
One other area which I've found improvisation to be useful in is in the analysis of existing pieces. Don't treat the music as sacred when you're confronted with a new, unfamiliar work; constantly think about how things could be done differently, how things either confirm or dash your expectations, how, maybe, you would have liked to realize something differently. The reason that so many of us today have a hard time imagining a better world is that sometimes we can't even imagine a different one—and taking both one's life and music for granted seems like conceding a big part of one's humanity. Sometimes seeing things that aren't helps us find a better solution, but when no better solution presents itself we can be sure to enjoy a renewed confidence and appreciation in the way-things-are, a new sense of special-ness and perfection that now engages a fuller portion of ourselves. I've got some good questions for next week, so keep them coming if you can…next week looks like it's going a be a fun round-robin of career advice, songwriting tips, and even some of the equipment I use when I work (and that means you, Casio!) [Back to Top] |
