Before we get into the construction of this new piece of music, however, a brief review is in order.  An earlier blog article (Daft Punk’d) mentioned that I had, through the chance discovery of some film scores, been reminded of my experience with technology and how I’ve used it to my musical advantage in the past, and that I was searching for an opportunity to do so again.  That opportunity arose, and this is the result.

Let me be clear: I’m not pretending I’ve broken new musical ground here or anything.  Professionals (and even some of my own friends and colleagues) have been doing this for decades.  I’m just now amassing the skills, the opportunity - and the necessary toys – to do it myself.  My creative mind follows its own path, and it’s finally turned this corner.

First, the inspiration…

As mentioned, there were two soundtracks that really caught my attention with their composition, one being Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack, the other being Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack.  I’ve been listening to both of these intently, focusing on the mixture of sounds and the textures and environments they create.  The main thing I learned was that the incorporation of electronics into an orchestral environment doesn’t just happen by sticking a synth and a drum machine in the orchestra and hoping for the best.  If the mix sounds like R2D2 just crashed a performance of a Brahms symphony, you gotta start over.  It has to be organic – the electronic sounds have to sound like they want to be there and the instruments have to sound like they don’t mind the company.  For Threes, the template I studied most was ”Time” from the Inception soundtrack.  “Time” was structured closest to what I wanted for Threes, and also had a similar instrumentation to what I envisioned.  With so many ideas in my head, it was time to bring this piece of music into the world.

Next, the toys…

This piece came together through several different pieces of software.  Using Finale as a sequencer (go ahead, cringe) and a combination of professional instrument samples from the Garritan and EastWest libraries, I was able to assemble the orchestra: piano, french horns, trombones, a full string section (violin, viola, cello, bass) and assorted percussion.  I decided that the piece did not need woodwinds or high brass.  Amplitube was used to pipe in and process the guitar line, and Adobe Audition was used to assemble the whole piece.  Audition is a neglected little piece of software that’s quite powerful and underrated as an audio tool.  It used to be Cool Edit until Adobe bought it, and as far as I know, they’ve never really promoted or developed the application beyond a 3.0 version (that’s less powerful than 1.5 in my opinion).  Shame.  It’s a nice tool.  I’d rate it right up there with anything used in professional studios, but the only people I know who use it are me and the guys from Ghost Hunters.  But most importantly – and most incredibly – I was overjoyed to discover that I no longer need to cram my tiny studio full of expensive synth gear.  All I need is one iPad.

With several companies now making synth emulators for iOS, it creates a world of possibilities.  The iMS20 emulator that Korg makes is worth ten times what they charge for it, and they also make an app for the Electribe as well.  Add to that Garage Band (limited, but still useful), Rebirth, and any number of free or cheap synth apps with quality samples, I now have a full virtual studio that would have cost me thousands of dollars and God knows how much square footage.  I think I spent about $70 for the apps -  total - and they all fit on my desk, and I’ll use them on countless future projects.

Finally, the process…

Even though I used Finale, I opted not to make a print-quality score and tweak it to make a performance.  Besides, some of the modules wouldn’t allow that.  I used it as a sequencer and nothing more, only because I know it better than any other sequencer.  I wrote the piano part first (easy since it was only one line repeated 12 times) and recorded that directly into Audition.  That became the formal and dynamic template on to which everything else would be placed.  From there I divided the piece into 13 sections and mapped out roles for each instrument at each section – with room for flexibility, of course.

The climax of the piece came first, and most easily, and that allowed me to see a “destination” of sorts for each instrument.  I used the iMS20 emulator to create a simple techno beat that pervades most of the peice, and put it through layers of filtering to keep with the dynamic growth of the piece.  I then wrote two melodic sections – one introduced by the cellos and the second by a solo violin.  Those melodic sections each go through their own little stages of evolution as the piece progresses.  I built swells in the violins and violas for texture; those also worked well in the coda to help dissipate the energy of the piece.  The bass drum serves as punctuation throughout the piece.

Assembly was the time-consuming part – rather than play the entire piece as a whole through the sequencer, I would record each individual instrument one section or phrase at a time, some times even just recording one measure.  It was tedious in that I would have to record, EQ/filter/process and trim dozens of audio clips (half of which I ended up tossing anyway), but it also gave me control over the end product that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.  The guitar was the only thing I played live; it reminded me just how much my guitar skills have atrophied over the years, and it was the simplest guitar part I could possibly make!  I’m still not happy with it, but it’s necessary for the fabric of the piece, so I buried it behind the strings.

All told, from punching the first notes into finale to publishing it on the site, it took about eight days.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but when I have the entire day to do nothing but focus on the piece, it’s actually quite easy to get everything put together.

What’s with the title?  I’m not talking.  I’ll just leave you to put your own meaning to it.  I will say this: while writing it, I used Hungry as the working title.  But don’t try to read anything deep into that – I used that title because I was constantly eating the whole time I worked on it, and I don’t eat healthy foods when composing.

I don’t know what the next project is.  I still have “Lux Aeterna” listed as a work on progress on the web site, even though I haven’t seriously worked on that in about eight months.  I need to take some time and process everything I learned working on Threes before I decide what the next move is.  In the meantime, I like this enough that I may decide to put it into some venues I’ve never tried before, like YouTube, and see if it resonates with the public there.  (It would be nice if someone I knew was willing to make a video to go along with it.)

First, a little background for the uninitiated: the Virtual Choir concept came into being in 2010 with 185 singers performing Eric’s Lux Aurumque.  I don’t know for certain if Eric was the first person to think of the idea or try it, but I think it’s safe to say that his was the first successful attempt, with the Lux video coming up at 2 million views and earning him considerable publicity.  The idea is that several individual singers upload videos of them singing their parts to YouTube, and the videos then get assembled into the final product, as shown below:

That’s the one from March last year.   Here’s the new one, officially live as of an hour from when I started this article:

Don’t read on yet – take your time and enjoy these compositions.  I’ll still be here when you’re done.  In fact, make it a point to go full screen and high def.  It’s worth it.  My review just might contain “spoilers.”  You were warned…

Okay, ready to move on?

The visual differences are immediate and striking.  Because there is heavy emphasis on the fact that this a global collaboration between singers, the inclusion of the spheres (labeled by country) is very appropriate, and pretty darn clever to boot.  But it doesn’t stop there, seeing the pan-out to show the full choir is a stunning surprise, one that my mamby pamby little 22″ screen doesn’t do justice to.  It was a ballsy move, and I don’t want to think how much time it took to assemble that shot.  In addition to the creative, multi-dimensional presentation of the singers, much careful thought was put into the color scheme – clearly using the visual imagery from Eric’s new Light and Gold record – and the CG rendering is of infinitely higher quality.  Light years from the Lux video.

I found the inclusion of the text more distracting then helpful.  Of course, I know the poem and didn’t need it, but beyond that, while I really wanted to focus my attention on the other visuals or watch Eric’s conducting, my eye always got pulled to that text whenever it appeared.  Which is not to say that the text isn’t important, but it may serve the integrity of the video by placing it some place where it can be enjoyed all by itself, and leave us to enjoy those wonderful visuals.  The way it is now, they’re kinda like the lens flares in the last Star Trek movie – you either don’t notice them and don’t care, or they bug the hell out of you.

In order to truly listen to the performance, you can’t watch the video – it’s too much eye candy, for me anyway.  I’m in awe of anyone who can make an open-air recording sound good, because I’m not competent enough of an audio engineer to do it myself.  I can’t imagine what it takes to process, sync and mix over 2000 open-air audio tracks with the level of precision that was accomplished here, and all with exceptional overall balance and zero noise.  I imagine that the audio quality (native frequencies and resolution of the uploads) varied greatly, and I even made it a point to listen for artifacts.  I didn’t hear one.  Can anyone else besides me truly appreciate the level of engineering skill that went into this, really?

There’s one spot at 4:07 where the reverb drops out completely and in an unnatural way – I don’t know what happened there, but that deserves to get fixed in a remix at some point.

I’m sure that Eric and company have stumbled upon the one inherent challenge in a project of this scale, and that’s concerning the treatment of consonants by the singers.  It’s an issue even for expert choirs, and despite Eric’s excellent instructions and clear conducting, it’s something that stands out.  I hear it especially on /s/ sounds and certain plosives throughout the piece, and it seems to be less of an issue in more rapid, rhythmic passages as opposed to slower, more rubato spots.  That’s really to be expected if you think about it.  There is, however, something positive in even this imperfection.  The audio folks could have easily said, “Okay, track #756 comes in too early on that /t/ sound, let’s just edit that out so the choir sounds perfect.”  They didn’t.  This shows integrity in my opinion; the recording is a true, accurate representation of what the singers actually did.  So the challenge for Virtual Choir 3.0 will be to find creative solutions to this.  If it were me, I’d try a click track with subdivisions, but that presents its own array of problems, such as potential bleed-through or dealing with rubato.

Here is my biggest complaint about this whole project, if you can even call it a complaint: It deserves better screens than what it’s going to get.  No doubt the New York premiere tonight got its live presentation on the largest screen they could find, and that’s great for those who were able to show up, but Godzilla only looks impressive when you’re standing at his feet, not from across town.  So for the rest of us, we’re stuck with our laptops and desktop monitors with which to behold this mighty musical beast, and even the most obscenely large desktop monitor isn’t going to do this justice - I want to see this thing in an IMAX theater!

In fact, now that the big premiere has come and gone, it would frankly be a shame if this was only ever seen again as a YouTube-quality video.  I’d like to ask the fine folks at Whitacre HQ to seriously look into getting this into movie theaters.  They got candy bar commercials and National Guard recruiting ads in there now - why not include something people might actually appreciate and enjoy?  Put this in front of a captive audience of millions and it has the potential to create a firestorm of interest in choral singing and new music, both of which are currently on life support.

Okay, let’s wrap up with this final thought: You could use this amazing creation – the Internet – for several things.  You could choose to waste your time playing World of Warcraft, spewing ignorance on the Fox News reader comments, or you could choose to do something like this - join a group of strangers and create something amazing and bigger than yourself - and that could not have been done even just ten years ago!  This is technology made meaningful through its creative use by artists like Eric.  We may not all be meant to make lasting, meaningful contributions to the worldwide corpus of great music in the way that he does, but at least we can say that when he asked us to step up and take part in making some of that beauty, we said yes.

If you haven’t seen the video, first, get out from under your rock, go to YouTube and a search should produce it quickly enough.  Go ahead, I’ll wait…

To start, let me assert that this is a bad song, and I can back that statement up with sound compositional concepts that I’ll get into momentarily.  So far, a million or so people have clicked the ‘dislike’ button, gone down to the comments section to demonstrate their lack of linguistic skills, and gotten on with their lives.  It took me a few days, but it finally occurred to me that I was bearing witness to perhaps a key, maybe even pivotal, moment in popular music history, if the right people see it for what it is.

As I said, the song is poorly written.  Why?  Well, I’d start with the melody, but there isn’t one.  In fact, a pitch analysis of the entire vocal part reveals an almost monotone drone on scale degree ^1, treating even the slightest melodic movement as a novelty, and with an embarassingly conservative 1-octave range from a fourth below the tonic to the fifth above, and even that takes a good two-thirds of the song to flesh out.  Zero chromaticism.  Chanted psalm tones have more character than this, and that by itself is enough to severely handicap a vocalist, but then you have to factor in the Atlas-sized burden of the lyrics.  Strong lyrical content demands audience empathy, or it doesn’t sell the song, and it also has to elaborate on a single concept in an articulate way.  These words do neither, and in fact they seem to be asking the listener for forgiveness for being so incredibly worthless.  The subject matter of a song doesn’t have to be profound – there are lots of well-written songs about enjoying your time off - but they shouldn’t just tread water after making the main point.  The other elements of the song are equally unimaginative, from the uninspired, static harmony to the stock samples with predictable timbres with no surprises.  I’m sure it didn’t take longer than a single day to assemble the whole thing, a day that shall forever be known as “Failday.”

Now, having said that, let me say that once I got through the song and past the initial PTSD, I wasn’t content to do what others had done.  I had to find out just why the song and video had attracted the level of vitriol that it had.  In doing so, I’ve discovered that while much of it is aimed (very sadly) in the wrong direction, which I’ll get into, it’s also a healthy indicator of society’s musical attitudes and expectations when it comes to the music it consumes.

We need some perspective first.  The song was composed by staff at Ark Music Studios, not by Black.  Ark is a studio that gives young teenagers an opportunity to test the waters as a pop performer, by itself a noble goal.  They have several videos available of their young, ambitious clients, all of whom are hoping that the right talent scout will happen upon it and give them their shot at stardom.  The kids/families have an option to pay on a sliding scale, with the benefit owning rights to their work if they pay more.  In other words, if the performer opts not to pay for the service, they sign all rights over to Ark, giving them no recourse to collect royalties on the work.  That’s music business 101.  Black’s family paid a fee to retain certain rights to the ‘Friday’ video and recording, and that was wise, seeing as how it has sold rather well and they turned a substantial profit on their investment.

Rebecca, by herself, has a respectable, perfectly trainable voice.  There is an interview out there where she’s asked to sing the first couple of lines to the Star Spangled Banner - a melody that, by the way, accomplishes in eight seconds what ‘Friday’ couldn’t accomplish in four minutes.  She’s on-pitch, clear and articulate; perfectly competent singing for a kid her age.  I, for one, would be proud to be her voice coach.  So it’s clear to me that she’s not the problem, and undeserving of the negativity.  When Black solicited Ark for this service, they sent her two songs to choose from.  Rebecca’s sin was that she chose the one song she identified with more, and now she’s become the target of a tsunami of bile that should be reserved for the staff member at Ark that willed this lifeless sonic flotsam into existence.  They’re the adults and music professionals - they should be able to deal with the criticism, good, bad, friendly, or hostile, and take it and make a better product.  I have yet to see them publicly defend their client and take responsibility for what has happened to her.

However, in this whole, ugly debacle, I see somethig of a silver lining.  A glimmer of hope for humanity.  I see 90 percent of the listening population saying that they have no need for poor songwriting.  They dissect its carcass mercilessly and throw the rotten bits back at whomever they see as its creator.  And this, in my opinion, is not only how it should be, but how it must be!  The existence of this musical schadenfreude does not sound the death knell of popular music; the near universal rejection of the song in fact states the opposite: We will not allow lazy artistry to be a catylist for dumbing-down our society!  Lousy songwriters of the world, take notice, and if this is your day job, find another one!

There is a place in the world for songs like ‘Friday.’  My seven-year-old likes the song, because his world is all about eating cereal, making friends and the weekend, and he can barely sing an octave.  If it had been marketed in that direction, there would be balance in the universe once more.  What I hope to see result from this is that the Rebecca Blacks of the world learn a lesson in aesthetics and choose how to market themselves with greater care.  And when I die and go to hell, I’m sure that my eternal punishment will be to give composition lessons for free to the staff members of Ark Studios, using only Burp and Fart Piano as a teaching aid (although I doubt they’d notice).

Benefits? Depends on your point of view, I suppose.  That’s the topic of today’s article…

Several weeks ago, I found myself rejoicing in the success of my good friend and colleague, Gus Brockmann, upon his announcement that he was getting a choral work published.  (Um, it was a choral work, wasn’t it, Gus?)  As it happened, around the same time I read a blog article from composer John Mackey and his philosophy on self-publishing.  You can read John’s article in full here, but I’ll summarize: John strongly advocates for self-publishing, pointing out the fact that composers that go with a publisher see a mere fraction of what they may otherwise be entitled to.  Specifically, performance rights (ASCAP/BMI) royalties are split 50/50 between composer and publisher, and, more outrageously, that composers see only 10% of the retail price on their printed music.

I will not dispute John’s facts; they are accurate, and maybe even a tad liberal in terms of what the composers actually sees.  John drives the point home that self-publishing ensures that the composer, having eliminated all middlemen, receives his due.  He also makes some very good points about ownership and copyright that I certainly cannot argue with (although his example strikes me as a bit extreme).  There’s work involved, however; in order to get that 50% that would go to a publisher, you must register as both a composer and publisher with ASCAP, or whoever you go with.  Next, you must be prepared to accept the fact that when it comes to printing, distributing, and, most importantly, promotion and marketing, you are completely on your own.  This is where I begin to take issue with John’s otherwise understandable enthusiasm for self-publishing.

We live in a technological world where, for the first time in human history, creative artists have instant access to a worldwide audience.  Here’s the rub: you have to find a way to get that worldwide audience to pay attention to you.  We online artists, numbering in the millions, are all clamoring for the attention of enough people to make our efforts worthwhile.  In order for me to sell a score or land a performance, I have to first be loud enough to be heard over every other schmo who thinks he has a novel, concerto, painting, symphony, or short story worth selling.  Next, I have to have a product of high enough artistic merit to ensure that people won’t wish they hadn’t wasted their time on me.  Major symphony orchestras receive (and ignore) tons of unsolicited scores all the time; there has to be a reason for them to even open your score.  Enter the publishing house.

Technology lets anyone self-publish.  It does not let anyone self-market.  Publishing houses, to be frank, carry clout with major ensembles that we small-time composers don’t.  They can call up the fine folks who run these ensembles and suggest my music on my behalf.  If I’m lucky, that conversation will result in my music getting programmed, with the appropriate royalties that follow.  If I’m even luckier, that performance may result in some listeners purchasing my scores, either for study or additional performances, sparking a chain reaction of purchases and performances.  But let’s remember: if not for the publisher, who has that higher level of legitimacy and relationship with that ensemble, that conversation would never take place.  No performance.  No resulting score purchases.  No income.  At all.  For anyone.

You can do your own math, but the way I see it, 50/10 beats 0/0 any day.  But I’m not finished…

I work pretty hard.  I teach private lessons.  I have a part-time faculty gig that keeps me on the road a lot.  I do a lot of performing, which also keeps me on the road a lot.  Some time in there I have to ensure that I make time to be a husband and father.  Honestly, just finding an hour or two of uninterrupted composition time is a luxury, let alone finding the time to format scores, print and duplicate, and don’t even get me started on the tedium of making parts…ugh!  And then to find time to make phone calls, send emails, and other types of schmoozing – I would argue that it’s worth outsourcing a lot of that work, especially to people who are very good at it.  When you work with a publisher, that’s essentially what you’re doing – hiring a team of professionals to do the work on your behalf.  10% of sales might seem like peanuts, but don’t forget what’s being done for you.  It might be your music, but they’re printing it using their ink and their paper, on their presses, and storing it in their warehouses.  They’re listing you in their catalogs (also printed with their ink and paper) and shipping the scores out on their dime, to stores and distributors that list you as “in stock.”  And all the people that are doing this for you – they got mortgages to pay too, you know.  Feel free to question if 10% is a fair cut to the composer; I suspect that you would not be the first, nor the first to be shown that it works out fairly to everyone on the team, including the composer.  Maybe that 10% reflects the idea that the composer’s work represents 10% of the effort to actually get the music heard.  I know a lot of composers don’t want to hear that, because we see ourselves as the creative – and therefore, the most important – link in the chain.

To be fair to John and his article, he actually does concede these points, but still argues that doing the extra work is worth keeping the overhead that would otherwise go to other parties.  In the composition world, being accepted by a major publishing house need not be seen as a pinnacle achievement for a composer, but at the very least it has to be seen as a rite of passage.  Inspired by Gus’ success, I decided to submit a score to Shawnee Press just to see what would happen.  If it gets accepted, news of my existence will reach people I would not reach otherwise, and maybe that will raise my profile enough that I can drop a few students and compose a little more.  If my reputation as a good composer gains enough momentum, perhaps I could some day not renew that contract and have my good name sell itself.  Only at that point could I truly be successful at self-publishing.

This Spring I’ll be teaching an Intro to Music course at a Community College.  Already I can tell that the pre-selected textbook and I are not going to get along.  It cannot bode well when I disagree with the very first sentence in the very first chapter:

Music is the art of sound in time.

Yeah, that and about a gazillion other aspects that can define what music is.  You know, I can’t decide if the people who write these textbooks are trying too hard to simplify concepts like these, or simply don’t care if they insult the intelligence of their audience.  We’re adults; we can handle complexity.  So, our first task as a class is to completely destroy that puny definition and build a new one that attempts to capture the true essence of music, in particular who gets to define what music is.  To get us started on this task, I created the following humorous anecdote to drive home a point about musical perception (teachers, feel free to use this youself – I’d love it if it caught on):

An alien visitor comes to Earth and makes contact with all the world governments, offering peaceful relations with our planet.  The world leaders, in order to greet the alien guest and to teach him a little about Earth culture, decide to plan a concert in his honor.  They gather musical experts from all over the world  and plan an all-day concert that includes the best music from every nation and culture on the planet, from ancient to modern.  It includes all forms of Eastern and Western folk music, full symphonies, chant, opera, choir music even jazz, blues and rock music.  During the concert, the alien looked a little bewildered, but at the end of each musical number, he always applauded with enthusiasm.  At the end of the concert, everyone wanted to know the alien’s impression of all this music, and what his favorite part was.  The alien replied, “Well, my favorite part of the concert was, when the people stopped making that horrible noise on the stage, I got to make this beautiful music with the people sitting around me by smacking our hands together.”

The point being, of course, that musical perceptions and aesthetic sense vary greatly from culture to culture, and even from person to person.  Hopefully we can have some fun inventing our own definition.

From there, the course is the same basic overview of western music history that you would expect, presented with the usual narrow perception that the development of western music is a gradual, linear progression from the simple to the complex, over about 1500 years or so.  I’m also hoping to blow that out of the water.  I’ve got some wonderful ars subtilior samples at the ready, and my experience with performing chant in a Catholic setting is going to be valuable in explaining why such monophonic forms persisted that way it did.  I’m basically going in with the notion that many major musical stylistic innovations can be seen as a reaction against excessive complexity in a preceding style, and I have three specific points in history where that happens.

But all that is just a big digression – not even the point I’m trying to make today…

The thing about a 1-semester Intro to Music class is the significant challenge of deciding what’s worth presenting.  What minuscule cross-section of the entire western musical corpus will provide the least incomplete picture?  I could trust the choices that the textbook makes for me, and sometimes we agree and sometimes we do not.  I’m perplexed by the choices of chant melodies to present, only because I’m convinced they could have chosen prettier examples.  I’m disappointed – but not surprised – by their “safe” modern choices: Steve Reich and John Adams.  And that’s about as in-depth as it gets when it comes to music being composed in the here and now.

Why do I say “safe?”  Mainly because at this point, it’s safe to assume that Reich and Adams have earned their spots in music history.  They are celebrated international musical figures, as they should be.  It’s alarming, however, to note that Phllip Glass earns a paltry half-sentence in the book, and George Crumb gets about a fifth of a page.  It’s even more alarming that a textbook published in 2008 makes no mention whatsoever of James MacMillan, Arvo Pärt, Julia Wolfe, Tan Dun, Michael Daugherty, Barbara Kolb, David Lang…shall I go on?

The whole situation reminds of a poster I once saw – it was a large, horizontal chart of famous composers in history and their dates.  It was fascinating to look at, and one noteworthy aspect of the poster was that as it got closer to the present, it gradually got more and more dense, to the point that the names in the 20th Century were crammed in there, barely fitting.  It seems to suggest that as time progresses, different composers have more historical staying power (or maybe a better term is “compositional half-life”), and as you get closer to the present day, it’s harder to determine who’s worth mentioning and who’s worth forgetting.  I mean, will Philip Glass hold as much historical clout as Josquin?  I don’t know.  It’s not really my place to decide.  That will be up to people living in 200 to 500 years, for them to decide who’s worth still listening to.  For now, it seems that my textbook-colleagues and I share a radical difference of opinion on what’s worth discussing.  I’ll present that to the class and let the students make their own decisions.  They are also individuals, and just like my little fictional alien, their unique backgrounds and experiences are going to shape (indeed, already have shaped) their perceptions of what I’m going to present to them.

Being a National Guard bandsman, part of the move involved finding a nearby band to join, and that happened to be the 249th Army Band in Morgantown, West Virginia.  Serendipitously, their current staff arranger (although I would prefer the term composer in residence) happens to be leaving, and I was told that I’ll simply slide right into that slot, with my first assignment being to compose a fanfare to start concerts.

Such a fanfare would be maybe about a minute in length, maybe shorter, but I find fanfares to be intimidating little creatures.  I’ve written them before, both times for the 101st Army Band.  The first one was garbage, saw maybe three or four concerts on tour, and then was scrapped, never to see the light of day again, and that suited me just fine.  The second fanfare was much better, one that I was proud of, and launched several dozen 101st Army Band concerts for the better part of five years before being retired.  Actually, truth be told, I was equally sick of it as the rest of the band…I had even invented words to the main melody.  Very inappropriate words.  You’re not really interested in what they were.  :)

I find writing fanfares intimidating for one very specific reason: expectations.  It needs to convey something very specific to the audience in a way they anticipate and understand, within a very limited span of time, and I think it needs a degree of formality and dignity, and it needs to sound new!! It’s a cliche, really, one that makes for an aesthetic burden.  When you’re a composer, you have three options when it comes to cliches.

Option 1: Completely avoid the cliche. This means re-inventing the wheel, really – you’ll have to find a completely new way to do something that’s been done effectively a million times.  Not an impossible intellectual challenge, but I’d have a good-size bottle of Excedrin handy.

Option 2: Surrender to the cliche.  Do what’s been done a million times, make the audience happy, and quietly despise yourself for what you’ve written.

Option 3: Take ownership of the cliche. Which I guess is kind of a combination of the above two.  That is to say, don’t completely eschew something that’s a proven way to capture an aesthetic, but don’t just cut-and-paste the most trite examples into your own work.  Start there, then start molding, and don’t stop until you’ve got something that reflects your compositional voice.

I bet you can guess which option I prefer.  As I often say to my own students, don’t ever make music in a vacuum.  These days I find it very easy to be moved and inspired by a well-crafted piece of music, and when I finally do sit down to make this new fanfare a reality, that how I intend to go about it. There are a number of aesthetic angles to take…I could take the grand and expansive route, a la Strauss’ Zarathustra, or maybe something driver and hyper, like Jack Stamp’s Gavorkna Fanfare.  Or anywhere in between, or a combination – in my head the possibilities are endless on what the energy needs to feel like.

Right now I perceive the biggest challenge as conforming my aesthetic intent to two things: First, the expectations of the audience.  They will expect it to grab their attention and make a big announcement – a celebration of the patriotica to come.  Second, my new compositional style – I still feel like I need to be deliberate about this, as complex expressionism still comes naturally to my musical mind, and to the keybaord when I sit down to sketch.  I don’t think I will ever be instinctively minimalist.

It’s been several months since I’ve been able to dedicate any amount of brainpower exclusively to composing.  I’m looking forward to feeling that productivity again.  Until then…

Those of you who know me know I’m a full-on sci-fi nerd.  While lately my musical mind has been more focused on the performance and relevancy of ancient sacred music, when I come home from work I’m less inclined to tune into a Victoria motet than I am to zone out to an episode of Star Trek.  That I should find a musical aesthetic principle common to both of these worlds is unlikely, but that’s the beauty of artistic discovery. 

It started several weeks ago, one lazy evening reading through movie blogs, when I came across some music excerpts from the upcoming Tron: Legacy film.  I don’t normally pay much attention to film soundtracks, and that must sound like blasphemy to my fellow musicians and composers.  But, I don’t, never really have.  My first (and probably last) foray into film composition was an exercise in futility, ending with an utterly disengaged filmmaker who couldn’t even invest himself in finishing his own piece.  That I even went to listen to the clips was a fluke, and was more driven by my interest in the film than the soundtrack composers – a European techno duo called Daft Punk – and I didn’t expect it to hold my interest for very long.

From a musical perspective, this wasn’t innovative composition, but it was very appropriate for its function, and it did hold my interest.  I found myself listening for subtle (and not so subtle) changes in timbre, and excited by some of the non-pitched invented sounds that enhanced the mood and intensity, and which without the music just wouldn’t have been as fun to hear.  But it wasn’t like, say, a Varese-style of electroacoustic invention, which, while aesthetically liberating, often comes off as cerebral and pedantic…no, this was inherently listenable, and it led to further musical discoveries, specifically the brilliant soundtrack for Inception.

Okay, so what does this have to do with ancient sacred music?

My In Paradisum setting is decidedly minimalist in conception, taking its harmonic cues from the first four pitches of the chant of the same name, and that’s it, and that’s deliberate.  It’s meant to mimic the beauty and simplicity of plainchant with a 21st-Century flavor, with the goal of using a minimum of material to elicit maximum emotion.  When the recording goes up (hopefully by this time next month), I’ll let you all judge how successful I was.  Both the Tron and Inception clips I listened to approach their goals with that same idea.  Daft Punk’s Tron music took the road of repetitive progressions, using timbres and EQ settings to keep it interesting and build intensity.  Hans Zimmer’s Inception music was particularly fun to hear, as awe-inspiring music grew seemingly uncontrollably out of simple 2-note motives.  For me, the experience of hearing these clips was comforting and validating, as if someone finally told me, “You’re doing the right thing, keep going, and don’t forget where you came from.” 

While I’m certainly no stranger to the usefulness of electronics for compositional purposes, it’s been several years since I’ve taken any sincere attempt at using them myself, and the result has been high abstractions like Cavea and Supernova.  I let those experiences and skills atrophy, and I mistakenly purged them when I walked away from expressionism; I’m seeing now that I didn’t need to.  I have an unlikely source to thank for the re-awakening in me, and while at this time I have no idea what I’m going to do musically with this, for now that can wait.  First thing I need to do is convince my wife that I need to buy a new synth.

As little as six years ago, I might have taken that statement as an insult.  For someone who was initially drawn to the world of composition through abstract expressionism and actively sought to befuddle my audiences, recieving such a statement and appreciating the sincerety of its message seems almost surreal.  Consider also, that this is where many composers begin their aesthetic journey, and it took me 15 years to get here.

Last night was choir rehearsal at SHM, and we have slowly been picking at my In Paradisum as time permits.  Last night we worked on the first two pages and we are finally beginning to hear the piece come together the way it’s supposed to, and that statement spontaneously sprung forth from the alto section.  It wasn’t until later that night that I realized that I have never recieved a compliment to my face about my music that included the word, “pretty.”  I’m still processing the experience, and the reactions I have range from, “Dear God, what have I become?” to “That’s a refreshing change.”

The experience reminds me of composition seminars with Luiz Gonzalez.  For almost a whole semester he themed his discussions around the topic of “finding your voice” as a composer.  His intent was that we gain a unique sense of the elements of melody, harmony and rhythm that communicates our individual perspective and makes your style recognizable; for example, once you know Stravinsky’s “voice,” you can instantly recognize a Stravinsky piece from just a few seconds of listening, even if you’d never heard it before.  At the time, the idea made perfect sense; I’m not sure that it does anymore.

By the time I completed 2,982, coinciding with my graduating year at CU in 2004, I felt that I had indeed found that voice; that my journey through expressionism was complete and reached a final destination, and this was the quintessential McGarvey voice!  Having found myself satisfied with my own sense of style, why then was I so unhappy with performances of my music? Why was my next commission and premiere so incredibly stressful and unfulfilling?  Why did Brave never get a second performance, and more importantly, why did I give up and abandon the peice myself as I was working it up for a performance by the Boulder Concert Band?  I thought I was proud of that piece, and here I couldn’t even invest myself in the rehearsals for it.  What was going on?  Was I no longer proud of my work?  Did I stop enjoying composition?  Had I…*gulp*…had I lost my voice???

Yes, I had. 

Brave was a last, desparate gasp of life from the expressionist in me.  My 12-year journey from those first quirky piano pieces in the 90′s to Brave had left me at a destination I did not recognize.  It was a barren artistic desert, bleak and monotone, leaving me only with the realization that all this time I had been writing music for me and only me, and while once in a great while I might find a like-minded soul who appreciated my voice, for the most part I have been very much alone on this journey.  This is no way for a composer to function.

“People who live senseless or baseless lives will write senseless or baseless music.”

I’m not an overtly spiritual person – I don’t sing hymns to myself and I don’t stand on street corners and read the New Testament aloud to passers-by.  While I am Catholic, I don’t go around lecturing the virtues of Catholicism to friends…especially in Boulder!  But the above statement (relayed to me through my esteemed friend and colleague, Mark Nowakowski) was the start of a realization that something in me was undergoing transformation, and it soon became obvious that my need to change my musical aesthetic coincided rather conveniently with my change in career from public school teacher to church musician.  Mark further pointed out (as someone who had watched me grow and struggle at CU) that he wasn’t surprised at all with my change in style and my newfound vocation, observing that many composers who had been avowed modernists had a similar change in style once they turned towards the sacred.  He further paid me the compliment of comparing my In Paradisum with the work of Arvo Part.  Mark, you make me blush!

And so after 15 years of treating the elements of melody, harmony and rhythm as my punching bags and throw pillows, is this what it takes for a composer like me to achieve accessibility, to purge senselessness and baselessness from my style and my life, to get…pretty??? 

Have I found a new voice?

November 19th, 2007 since my last entry…the sun has risen and set 851 times.  Children that weren’t even born then are now speaking full sentences!  More importantly, Dan is still at it…not teaching anymore but directing full-time and composing whenever I find the time and can avoid life’s many distractions. The web site is in cobwebs…I need to do a complete overhaul and soon, but at least I’m keeping the Works page somewhat current.  Which reminds me…there’s a new piece up as of today, so go have a look.

There’s much to talk about when it comes to my composition…not that I’m suddenly prolific, but the exploration continues.  Thinking back to years and years and years of gut-wrenching premiers and nerve-wracking rehearsals, I’m come to the conclusion that I can’t control the musicians that I write for, but I can control what I ask them to play.  So I’m on a quest…purge all unnecessary complexity from my composition.  I’m studying the minimalists. 

Minimalism is a dirty word, isn’t it?  Luiz used to call it “music for morons.”  Philip Glass’ name is the punchline for several music jokes.  And yet here I am living in that world.  I have composed two pieces now that are specifically minimalist in their conception, which you can see on the site: A Tenfold Celebration and In Paradisum.

A Tenfold Celebration was, so I say, minimalist by necessity.  It was only the second time in my career that I wrote for a group of kids, and I felt it had to be accessible to their skills, and the turnaround time was pretty short as well.  I was astonished when I realized, a few days after its premiere, that it was the most successful public premiere of any piece I had ever written, by any group of any age.  If that doesn’t whet a composer’s appetite, I don’t know what does.  So, I’m hoping to re-create that success with In Paradisum.  This piece was spontaneous, written for a deceased friend, not commissioned.  But I have a couple of choirs at my disposal and while I loathe the idea of ever conducting my own music in front of a choir, it’s a good way to determine if my efforts are getting the desired effect.  Meaning, is what I’m writing accessible for the groups that I write for? Are the lines readable, the harmonic context understandable, and the overall piece effective aesthetically? 

I did it once…can I do it again?  Time will tell…hopefully it won’t be another 851 days before I announce the results.

A few people have asked me recently, “Well, how did it go?”  And the best answer I’ve been able to give has been, “Overall, not too bad,” which sounds like a generic platitude of an answer, but it really is truthful.  There were some very nice moments, and there were some moments that made me cringe.  At the end of the day, however, I have to say that I went home, if not walking on air, at least satisfied.  Here’s how the day went…

We were scheduled to begin rehearsal at 9:00, and end at noon, according to the schedule.  Of course, what happens is almost always different; little things like load-in and late arrivals invariably conspire to make the actual start time for the rehearsal late.  We didn’t start until 9:45, leaving just over two hours to rehearse the entire concert with the choir (and this was our only rehearsal with the choir).  I was pleased that the rehearsal for Testament of Freedom went relatively smoothly; that meant that my piece would have its fair share of rehearsal time.  When that time came, I grabbed my score and went and sat in the house and prepared myself to take lots of notes.  Turns out I really didn’t have to; it was clear to me that the huge litany of critiques I had sent to David Bell were in fact worked on, but there was still a bit to do, and time was not on my side.

It took a few attempts to get the intro up to speed, and I was never entirely satisfied with the dynamic or the choir’s initial entrance, but in the grand scheme of things, these weren’t the areas I was truly worried about.  I was worried about the Sopranos and flutes being together at J, and from M to the end.  To be fair, there were a few places that truly impressed me, such as the dense, more dissonant stuff at F.  It was clear that this was a section in the music they worked on very hard, and it came together extremely well, and this made me happy.  Sure enough, J was problematic; the Sopranos were rushing the rhythm, and something I did not anticipate: they could not hear the flutes at all! This made me nervous; I had written that section with the intention that the Sopranos and flutes would be able to use each other for support, but that went right out the window.  They rehearsed it once or twice and got it sounding respectable, but it ended up not being enough for the concert itself.  M completely fell apart; despite the cues I had given, no one in the choir got the unison B-flat.  I ended up having to interject at this point and teach them how to find that pitch, and they worked it several times and finally got it down.  Even though there was a lot of unfinished business in the piece, time ran out and there were several more pieces to rehearse before noon, so all in all I have to conclude that my piece did not get the rehearsal time that it needed.

Lunch came and went, and we got changed into our concert dress and I had a lots of time to think about what was about to happen.  I did take a moment to give a pep talk to the choir, and everyone seemed gracious enough.  The audience for this concert was HUGE!!! There was talk of having standing room only, and by the start of the concert I could see almost no empty seats.  1,100 people – it was the largest premiere of my career to date.

My piece was after the intermission, which was actually slightly advantageous; during intermission I recieved a lot of comments from audience members that the choir could not be heard over the band, and the choir was singing with all the power it could muster.  The reason, I soon discovered, was that the sound did not balance equally in the auditorium; if you were sitting in the rear, where you were at eye-level with the choir, you got a great balance, so if I found anyone I knew in the audience, I told them that they should change seats.

Intermission was over.  Moment-of-truth time…

Once the downbeat began, I found myself, rather involuntarily, taking mental notes on the performance.  Not that I had to, since it was being recorded.  I thought that the overall tempo was a little slow, but everything was together.  Folks in the band dropped a handful of entrances, mostly because those passages were high and exposed, so when I do a re-write I’ve already got it in my notes to fix those places.  The choir’s first entrance was better, but still a beat late and not in tune.  Some of the a-capella areas sounded blurry and under-articulated, but together.  F was fantastic, I thought.  J, sure enough, fell apart: the Sopranos floored it and actually ended up a full measure ahead, and about half the band followed them.  THANK GOD I wrote a Grand Pause at the end of that section!  Then something happened that I never saw coming.  At L, which had always been perfect in rehearsals that I went to, the Basses and Altos went a whole-step flat, resulting in a Tenor section that could not find their pitches, and a nervous Soprano section that, once again, came in a measure early.  it was only about thirty secons of the piece, but for me it was a loooooooong thirty seconds.  (Someone who was watching me said that, at that moment, my eyes got big.)  At the end, though, in the true character of a redemption play, M to the end was in-tune and glorious, and if anything, this is what really mattered.  A piece that ends well, in the ears of an audience hearing it fir the first time, is a piece that was performed well, and the piece did recieve its fair share of applause, and for this I was grateful.

The rest of the concert went as well as any other we’ve done.  It’s part of my job in the band to be out in the lobby after a concert to talk to people, and I was pleased that several people came up to me to congratulate me and remark what a great piece of music they thought it was, not the least of which was our Battalion Commander, and I think that’s pretty significant.  I felt better seeing that the audience accepted the piece, and clearly no one heard the mistakes that I did (naturally, since they didn’t have a point of reference).  I got the chance to speak to David Bell and thank him for the work he had put in on it, and he mentioned that he’d like another shot at the piece with the band, possibly for a professional recording.  I hope he meant that, because I do intend to follow up on this shortly, and I can use the recording to fine-tune the next time.

Lance was kind enough to send me a recording, which I had by Monday afternoon, in time for me to listen, make some edits, and bring it to school the next day to play for my classes.  (I actually sped up the entire recording by 6%, enough to hear it at the tempos that I preferred, but that’ll be our little secret.)  I decided that the recording was good enough to put it up on the site, so people who might be interested in the piece could hear a reasonable idea how it sounds.

Luiz Gonzalez once told me that getting a first performance of a piece is easy.  Getting a second performance is the hard part.  So now the first performance is done, let’s hope that the piece is valuable enough in the eyes of others to merit a second, third, and more.  Feel free to go and hear it four yourself – the score and recording are posted.