Cleaning Out the Garage
summer is here and i’m actually think it might be productive. it’s not like i don’t need the break, i’m just not that productive when i don’t have any real structure to my day. overall the last few years have been a little too much drama for me and it’s time to “get my house in order” (literally as well as figuratively).
1st up is cleaning out my garage and turning it into a rehearsal studio/performance space. over the last few years i have definitely outgrown my “office” and now that i’m teaching private students at the house i need a bigger space to work in. after editing and mixing three albums (not to mention most of the composing that i do at home)i also have to admit that i really need a change of scenery. even though i wasn’t writing that much music this past year i found it very hard to want to sit down at my desk to do anything creative so i ventured out anywhere i could think of as an alternative creative space (including different rooms in the house) and came to the conclusion that having a larger space in my garage should do the trick for now. it will also allow me to setup and properly practice with the all the gear i’m using with my “music for controllers” setup. instead making music through headphones i really have needed to spend the time figuring out how to play these pieces “live” and have come to realize it’s much more involved than when I just played trombone.
the main problem is getting a proper balance when you are mixing live acoustic instruments (trombone, voice) and controllers (kaossilator, drone/scruti box, buddha machine, ableton live, launchpad, etc…). i also have realized that mixing electric and acoustic instruments without sound reinforcement can be very a very disjointed listening experience in a live performance and in many ways my even though much of this music is not technically hard to perform my “practicing” centers around how to setup gear, mics, and amps which means that i have to pretty much be practicing/performing with a stereo/PA system to make my performances aurally make sense.
with all that being said (and after trying to mostly “practice” at other locations) the reality is that the setup and teardown of this technological spectacle (a few amps, mic/stand, laptop/keyboard stand/table, MOTU traveller(digital/audio interface), and 2 pedal boards) can take almost as long as the rehearsal so for the time being i’m going to be only performing solo or with whomever musicians that can make it to the 90042 for a weekly rehearsal.
after driving down to fullerton and back for the last 20 years for PBE and DIE rehearsals can really take it’s toll and at this point in my life i think it’s only natural to change things up and make music in a different way. to me it’s kinda funny b/c on one hand i know there are a lot of people who over the past few years have been introduced to my “Retrace Our Steps/PBE 1.0″ music who really wish i was making more music with the larger group and really like the strings/winds/rock band orchestration. there are also another group who have only seen the “PBE 2.0 rock band” (as we jokingly called it) and keep asking when that group is going to perform again. all i can say is that part of making alt-classical music is not really having the control to make those choices which leaves me to make music with the equipment and musicians that are available (and not continually banging my trying to fit a round peg in a square hole)
the good news is that if all goes well I should be performing on a regular basis soon. when and if there will be a PBE 3.0 is yet to be seen. right now one step at a time is fine with me.
Do You Realize?
Armando Bayolo posted interesting question at Sequenza 21 about composing and and the implications of performance practice with computers
“It made me wonder, also: are such views prevalent among any composers working today? Are any of you fellow composers out there dissatisfied with the level of performance available to you (or perhaps it is simply the unavailability of performance outlets) and thus driven toward electroacoustic composition not for the compositional possibilities and expanded palette such electronic tools present but because, quite simply, electronic realization is the best performance you dream about?”
via Sequenza 21 “where to turn and why”
"Obama has four of his concertos on his Ipod"
famous orchestrator (and our 2nd vice president) John Adams “celebrates” the “130th” birthday of Elliot Carter:
The composer, long a New York resident, was born in that city in 1908. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Carter’s family was “well to do.” He recalls how, as a young boy, he witnessed his irate father throw out an itinerant salesman who came to the door of the family’s brownstone pedaling life insurance policies. That salesman turned out to be a part-time composer, Mr. Charles Ives, of the firm Ives & Myrick.
[snip]
Elliott Carter only sets poetry by WASPS: John Ashbury, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. (He is suspicious of Williams’ middle name and suspects it’s just a fancy addition by the poet to sound left wing.)
From the start Carter’s music has been rapidly absorbed into the cultural mainstream of the USA. President Barack Obama claims to have no fewer than four Carter concertos on his iPod. The President is quoted as saying “I’ve been a big Carter fan since my days as a community organizer in Chicago. I only wish I understood Italian better.”
check out the rest of the fun at john adam’s appropriately titled blog, hell mouth
links for 2010-04-05
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“A year-old music blog. (Wow, time flies.) Dallas based, but needs a transfer to Montreal, stat. First to scoop “Creep” by Radiohead. OK, scratch that: like I said, they’ve only been doing this a year. But if Radiohead ever records a second track named “Creep,” they will definitely scoop that one.
No affiliation with the prog-rock band Muse, especially after The Resistance. Contributors are co-workers Patrick and Fred, the lives of whom are otherwise so packed to the gills that you should have no doubt that The Muse encroaches on their work day. They only really agree on Deftones; Fred otherwise describes Patrick’s musical interests as “strum strum hippie yodel.” Just as Patrick describes Fred’s as “terrible.” Yet somehow the two reach a daily armistice; the written, ever-evolving text of which is known regionally as The Muse in Music.” -
“These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests.
They all feature “creative” spelling or grammar.
This new dialect of the English language shall be known as “Teabonics.”
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“Though it looks kinda boring and unspectacular, this is easily the best example of the dish I’ve had to date. Never mind that the rice and beans were perfect, which in itself is an odd occurrence. The tortitas were the right balance of nopales, tortas, and chile sauce. Even though it was a quite mild sauce in terms of spiciness, it was rich with flavor, the kind you just want to spoon up and drink. Plus these tortas were soft and pliable, though they kept their form. Too many as of late have been quite hard and tough to eat. Not at Lencho’s.”
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“Three weeks ago the hard drive in my MacBook Pro went bad. So far as I can tell, I didn’t lose a single byte of data. Here’s how:”
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“A tribute to the slowness of anxiety, by Instructor of Music at California State University, Fullerton Paul Bailey. His introduction speaks of his distress over the current economic downturn, but the music itself is absolutely timeless.”
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“See, Dr. Drew never met Corey Haim, the police haven’t determined what substance (if any) killed him, but Dr. Drew is pretty certain he knows what killed this total stranger—that’s how great of a doctor he is. He can diagnose and determine cause of death just by hearing someone’s name! He’s basically Miss Cleo but with a medical degree so people (wrongfully) take him seriously”
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“So why don’t I charge? A large part of it is that composing is something I do because I want to, and because I really am passionate about it. Call it a “hobby” or whatever, but it’s what I enjoy doing, and once you start monetizing that, I think it becomes more of a job than something you do as an escape. Don’t get me wrong-I like my day job, I like being a physician, etc. But you can like your job and still get paid for it. For me (and I stress, this is just what works for me), charging for my music is not something I’m interested in. I’d feel like a prostitute. We don’t parent for money, right? I also don’t compose for money. QED.”
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“Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don’t like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here [indicates top of the G-I axis]. You will see this story over and over again. People love it, and it is not copyrighted. The story is “Man in Hole,” but the story needn’t be about a man or a hole. It’s: somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again [draws line A]. It is not accidental that the line ends up higher than where it began. This is encouraging to readers.”
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“I was pretty confident that ‘In C’ was going to have a life, even in the beginning,” he says. “It was a pretty startlingly original idea in its time, and it just came to me. It developed out of a lot of interests that I had at the time. Being able to get this piece written on a piece of paper and still have such a vast potential, I think, is an unusual accomplishment. I saw that, but I didn’t realize how pervasive the influence of that piece would be over the years.”
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very reasonable take on educational reform by the union rep of deb’s middle school
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“Black settlers from what is now Sonora, Mexico, helped establish the first settlement in 1781. The labor of Tongva Indians helped raise the plaza’s church in the 1820s. The histories of L.A.’s Latino barrios and Chinatown also begin at the plaza, which was the site of one of the great crimes of Los Angeles history, the Chinese Massacre of 1871.
In 1909 the City Council banned free speech in public areas except for the plaza — which became a gathering spot for anarchists and radicals of various stripes, including the Mexican revolutionary Ricardo Flores Magon. Chinese nationalists founded a military academy there in 1903 to train men to fight the Manchu dynasty.”
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“Having 80.8% of the alphabet available is significantly below the 99.9% full letter uptime reliability we strive for. Since identifying the root case of this issue, we’ve started bringing vowels back to Gmail, so you should see them back in your account within the next few hours if you don’t already. In the meantime, while you may still see this issue in Gmail’s web interface, both IMAP and POP access are functioning normally. We’ll post an update as soon as things are fully resolved and, again, we’re v3ry s0rry”
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“Minimalism taken to a new level.
Unfortunately for Eastman, he did not live long enough, and these works have been resurrected with great effort.” -
“THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. YOU THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE EVERY SCENE IS DRAMATIC”
Bookmarks for December 5th through December 10th [del.icio.us]
![Bookmarks for December 5th through December 10th [del.icio.us]](http://www.paulbailey.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/moretoys2-thumb-640x426-347281-150x150.jpg)
Bookmarks from December 5th through December 10th:[del.icio.us]
- Take a poll: Should I review Bocelli? – The Arts Blog : The Orange County Register -
“A classical music critic is always a little out of place at an Andrea Bocelli concert. Generally, he’s the only one who doesn’t want to be there. A Bocelli concert, for all the tenor’s merits, for all his charisma, is about as classical as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I’ve written reviews of Bocelli concerts before. As recently as last June. It’s kind of a no-win situation for a critic. If you’re totally honest, which I try to be, you always end up pissing someone off — i.e. usually the people who are bothering to read your review…”
- jacktrip – Project Hosting on Google Code -
“jackTrip is a Linux and Mac OS X-based system used for multi-machine network performance over the Internet. It supports any number of channels (as many as the computer/network can handle) of bidirectional, high quality, uncompressed audio signal steaming.” You can use it between any combination of Linux and Mac OS X (i.e., one end using Linux can connect to the other using Mac OS X). It is currently being developed and actively tested at CCRMA by the SoundWIRE group.
- subway architecture -
“london’s underground became the first subway system in the world when it began operation in 1863. since then, underground subways have been built in almost every major city of the world. from new york and paris to hong kong and dubai, subways are an essential part of public transportation in cities. within these systems, architecture plays a big role in defining the environment of the subway. here is a collection of some of the most architecturally interesting subway stations. “
- RjDj -
RjDj is a music and sound application for mobile devices with microphone and various other reality sensing sensors like accelerometer, touch pad, GPS etc. Currently the iPhone and iPod Touch are supported devices.
- Cal State gets the wrong number in answering budget crisis — latimes.com
“We seem to be quickly moving toward the day when the once-great Cal State system moves to a three-day week, with academic buildings rented out to storage companies and professors teaching class in parking lots and under trees. But even so, I was taken aback to hear they might be shutting down phone service at Cal State Long Beach. I drove to the campus to see if it was true. When I got to the office of Lisa Vollendorf, who runs the Romance, German and Russian department, I noticed that she still had a phone. “I still have mine, too,” said Jeff High, associate professor of German studies, who wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to make or take calls. Vollendorf, who is on the university budget committee, said turning off the phones campuswide was recommended by committee members as a way to avoid further cuts in instruction. The thinking was that professors could use personal cellphones to conduct school business.”
Bookmarks for October 24th through October 31st [del.icio.us]
![Bookmarks for October 24th through October 31st [del.icio.us]](http://www.paulbailey.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/writing-on-walls1-150x150.jpg)
Bookmarks from October 24th through October 31st:[del.icio.us]
- Brow Beat : The DORF Matrix: Towards a Theory of NPR’s Taste in Black Music -
“In the weeks since the publication of the All Songs Considered list, I have been puzzling over NPR’s musical coverage—in particular, its approach to black music. I wondered: Could NPR’s musical taste be as lily-white as the “The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)” list? After scouring NPR’s Web site and studying its broadcasts—All Things Considered profiles, Fresh Air interviews, even the music interludes played between segments on NPR’s marquee programs—I can report that the answer is no. It’s not that NPR doesn’t like black music. It merely maintains a strict preference for black music that few actual living African-Americans listen to.”
- why i’m not afraid to take your money« by amanda fucking palmer -
“I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
- Why did Andre Agassi hate tennis? | Sport | The Guardian -
“I know this for myself – it’s something you’ve done since you were six years old, and there’s a sense that if you stop giving 100% you are doomed to failure, and that is unacceptable. No wonder so many players hate their sport – the surprise is that so few admit it.” And despite all the kudos, money and silverware, there’s a reason it’s the top players who suffer most – because they’re the ones playing the most tennis, as they don’t get knocked out in the first or second round. So they have the least free time, the most mental stress and suffer the most physically. Agassi’s avowed hatred for his sport is far from exclusive to tennis. British cyclists Chris Boardman, the former Olympic pursuit champion, and Tour de France star David Millar have both admitted to not really liking cycling. “In Boardman’s case,” says William Fotheringham, the Guardian’s cycling correspondent, “he liked the winning not the cycling itself, and he drove himself to win.”
- don’t care about old composers-rogerbourland.com -
“I asked Aaron Copland what he was composing in fall 1976: “Nothing, and I am not accepting commissions; if people want to play my music, there’s plenty of it available in my catalog.” Today I went through an old journal, listing old UCLA Music faculty and their appointments and salaries. I looked at all the composers and saw their careers over a span of decades. I sighed and thought about how none of their music is heard these days. And I’m sure that this is true for every music school in America.”
- Brand (Dis)Loyalty « The Quick and the Ed -
“A couple of days ago a message popped up on my Tivo informing me of a new service, “Blockbuster on Demand.” Ah, Blockbuster. That takes me back, to that period of about four years when all of the mom and pop video rental stores had been driven out of business but Netflix hadn’t yet arrived, so the only way to rent a movie was to drive to the nearest Blockbuster, spend ten minutes trying to find a place to park, discover that your first eight choices were unavailable, wait in line for fifteen minutes, and be informed by a surly, inattentive clerk that you owed the Blockbuster corporation 27 dollars in late fees and other assorted charges. snip This is what happens when organizations use their monopoly status to mistreat customers. Sooner or later the world changes, your monopoly is gone, and you pay the price… If there’s one thing that’s pretty certain, it’s that people will have more education choices in the future than they’ve had in the pas
- Music review: ‘Einstein’ at the beach | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times -
So “Baby Einstein” won’t make your kids smarter after all. Last week, the Walt Disney Co. confessed that plopping kids in front of its video does not count as instant education and offered to refund gullible parents their money. But the few enlightened parents who tried “Einstein on the Beach” instead may have a wiser tale to tell. Saturday night, Jacaranda, the West Side’s new music series, concluded its first concert of the season at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica with excerpts from Philip Glass’ groundbreaking opera he conceived with director Robert Wilson in 1976. Glass offers the option of replacing the women’s voices at the end with a children’s chorus and that is what Jacaranda did. Asking youngsters to show up late at night to sing the last eight minutes of a five-hour avant-garde work is, obviously, unreasonable. Then again, little about putting on “Einstein on the Beach” has ever been practical…”
cartesian nostalgia
from a performers point of view this weekend’s RealNewMusic 2008 festival was one one of those rare events that was a joy to participate in from start to finish. no backstage drama, rivalries, one-upmanship or back handed compliments. walking in to soundcheck and seeing scott mcintosh (pbe partner in crime) playing in john mahr’s group [...]
the sandbox
after another long day of composing and video editing the wife unit looks over and states “its an addiction, right?” i nod silently in her direction and realize its probably a good time to stop for the day. although we have been married 15 years, i don’t think we have had the conversation that followed. [...]
learning a new instrument
this spring continues to be a steady progression of ups and downs. the flu was a 5 week body blow to start the year and this past week (welcome spring!) allergies have been kicking my ass. that all being said, i’m finally back to my routine of transcribing, writing and arranging except this time (instead [...]
the sausage factory
as you can see on the right side of my blog i have decided to start twittering my new project. so far i’m about 2 weeks into getting my chops back after spending the last 8 months editing, recording, and promotion of my retrace our steps EP and life’s too short CD. the whole process [...]
access to the audience
kyle gann’s recent post that quoted cornelius cardew got me thinking about this whole alt-classical thing.
“access to [the] audience (the artist’s real means of production) is controlled by the state.”
for the past 5 years playing and composing outside the mainstream has had a lot of advantages:
1. i write what i want and for who i want
2. the time from composition to rehearsal is usually a matter of days
3. i get everything played that i write (the good and the bad)
4. i perform with who i want and where i want
cardew’s statement implies that gaining access to the concert halls (the means of production which is controlled by the state) is the primary path to gaining access to the audience. while i prefer to play in non-traditional venues it has some limitations:
1. concert halls are definitely not a priority, but it is any art music composers main access to press and reviews. its kinda ironic that we don’t really matter until we play a concert hall though our best shows and crowds are occur in the alt-venues.
2. playing in clubs works the best, but in los angeles the problem isn’t about finding a place to play, but to find other groups who share a similar aesthetic sensibility to put on a decent show. booking a show can easily devolve into a vaudeville act.
3. galleries can be great place to play, but if they don’t already host musical events getting an audience to come out to a new venue takes time.
4. of course there is no money playing these alt-venues, and the freedom that i have to write our own shows and work out my material on a consistent basis (like any rock band or standup comedian)
5. if i wanted to have a paying “career” as a composer then my options of “making a living” are all clearly controlled by the state. if i took this path i would have to embrace the “work for hire” attitude and become a plumbers of art music taking whatever commissions and projects that came my way.
there are some pretty obvious limitations to the whole alt-classical thing. this is not a path you choose to pay the bills. i was lucky to learn early when i was playing at disney that making money doing your art can be highly problematic and have embraced the model as composer as musician and educator (much like bach and vivaldi).
these days we might have the we have the power to self publish, record and perform our own music.
the composer's ear?
this week i was interested in reading marc grant’s newmusicbox article titled, How Good is Your Ear (part 1). grant uses as a starting point out gunther schuller’s seven skills necessary of a conductor’s ear: 1) harmony; 2) pitch and intonation; 3) dynamics; 4) timbre; 5) rhythm and articulation; 6) balance and orchestrational aspects; 7) [...]
how wonderful is brian ferneyhough?
so this is the post where i’m supposed to give you some special reason to come to our next show on tuesday september 25th. i just got back from a really great rehearsal and ready to start spreading the propaganda.
with the traffic in southern cal i know it takes a special kind of person to drive anywhere after a long day of work. the real question is why is this concert worth attending? first off we are sharing the concert with the new kids on the block of new music (NKOTBNM or as they liked to be called real quiet) the nyc based chamber group is making its first los angeles/oc appearance the just released their new album tight sweater (featuring the music of marc mellits)which is pretty frakkin’ great. besides mellits music they are playing music of phil kline, and annie gosfield.
as for the pbe. i’m kinda surprised that we are even playing this show. last may it looked like curtains for the us, carl, ryan and bruce would all be leaving the pbe after graduation. thankfully bruce decided to stay for the time being and our original bass player matt menaged moved back into town this summer. this lineup is a powerhouse and has gelled quite nicely. i’d say its pbe 3.o.
so what about the show? or as they used to say “where’s the beef?”our goals are very consistent and simple. we want to entertain you, we want to make you think and we want to have a great time performing music that we wouldn’t get to play anywhere else. entertainment wise, its the strongest set we have yet played. as a show its got something for everybody; garage band jam’s, covers, vocal fun and some modular improvisation. so go ahead see for yourself…
cheap admiration-
its technically a harmonic deconstruction of johann pezel’s sonata ciacona in B. its a great introduction to what we do and always lets the audience know we are more garage band than chamber group.
fearless leader-
this tune has had more versions than a cat has lives. it started very unsuccessfully as an ambitious modular experiment that failed miserably in a live reviewed performance at whittier college (thanks again to the oc register’s tim mangan for a really polite review of that debacle). over time it became more of an orchestration study. its not a perfect piece, but at the time i think i was creatively blocked and i looked at finishing it as a challenge to overcome. i keep asking the group if they want to take it out of the set, but they seem to like it more than me.
eye for optical theory
this probably has to be one of my favorite michael nyman tunes. i have never been able to find a score of it, so one summer i decided to write it down. its based on a repeated ground bass (kind of like fearless leader) and about halfway through i realized his “trick” is that he only was using combination of about 8-9 repeated melodies. my version plays on this and i just started with my sheet of melodies and hooked them together like lego’s to make my own version. in last nights rehearsal i added a call and response introduction where our keyboard player eric plays one of the antecedent licks and we play its consequent answer. we play this game until he wants to start the piece and then plays the first line in octaves to let us know to go on. its fun way to bring a little life to one of our fluffier pieces. i also strongly feel that a night of any one composers music can be pretty exhausting. a little nyman along the way sets up the rest of the show really well.
life’s too short
this is the showpiece of the night. its one of the few compositions that i have written that came out effortlessly fully composed and orchestrated. in our first rehearsal we played it head to toe without stopping once. its a pretty damn good piece and i’m still couldn’t tell you how i wrote it. what is it about? self actualization through nihilism, nietzsche meet tony robbins. its in english. you will be able to understand the text. its over the top. its funny. its in your face.
in many ways i think its a conceptually a reaction of going to a very well performed master chorale concert in which all the music was by american composers but none of it was in english. everything was well written and orchestrated, but the concept of having your audience sit and listen to some “secret code” was insane. scanning the crowd from the back row of disney hall this performances seemed more dehumanizing as the evening wore on. the audience wanted to like it, and seemed desperate to connect with the music. (it was beautiful) but what kind of conversation goes on for an two hours in a variety of assorted foriegn languages? sitting in the audience felt like a strange ritual listening to an evening of recently composed choral music without theater or narrative.
anytime you add vocalists to anything its like hearding cats. on most nights the energy they add to an instrumental show can be hard to control. when they come on stage its easy for me to forget my job (the cues and conducting) because i really love to hear them sing. over time i realized that once i get them to the middle of most pieces we loosen up and have a lot of fun on the back end.
principle of sufficient irritation (11/25/05)
this is probably or favorite piece. its written in a modular style with a variety pre-composed melodic syncopated and ostinato lines. (terry riley’s in C is the most famous example). overall its more similar to the improvisational process used in tv shows like curb your enthusiasm or any of christopher guest’s wonderful movies. the piece has a very clear beginning middle and end and we all know our responsibilities in each section. for instance i play some melody in the first section, lead the group into the canon in the middle, and play ostinatos in the third. how and what i’ll play i can choose every night. over time there are happy accidents that turn the piece in new directions. each new player that comes in also brings their own personality into the piece. one of the good things about 11/25 is that its got a nice rhythmic/melodic turn when it we start moving from the submediant to the tonic moving from a hard charging 6/8 to 3/4. (and back to the original opening statement) while it serves as a very energetic totem that no matter how the evening is going that once we get rolling towards that ‘turn’ its a very simple engine that creates quite a lot of energy. some nights we even feel like we can levitate the stage during this section which is the whole reason i got into th
yle=”font-size:100%;”>is racket.
are you sold yet? still skeptical? i know i have been to more bad new music concerts than i count. please don’t hold that against me. i hated them also. how about if i sweeten the deal with a guarantee (of course i can’t really afford to give you a money back offer… i’m only public employee) if you don’t like the show i’ll buy you a beer, i just don’t want to hear about how wonderful brian ferneyhough is.
back to school part II, transcription tips
get the music in your ear, sing it back to yourself, play it on your primary instrument and then try and write it down. focus on what you hear well, most people hear either the soprano or bass lines the best. work on one part or element at a time. if you are transcribing a [...]
back to school edition
do something musical every daylearn your languagetranscribe by earanalyze pieces you likesome pieces (your favorites) you will want to know everything aboutkeep on the lookout for things that make you go hmmm.why does it catch your interest? what makes it different from the other pieces?you might just focus on one element (form, harmony, melody, orchestration, [...]
mother tongue
just to start this off on the right foot let me point out that i really like going to la master chorale concerts. i’m really glad they tackle so much new music and i thought the concert was very well performed. i’m not sure why i’m so snippy about this gig, but here are my [...]
vacation?
i guess this past week i have been adjusting to what many people would call “vacation”. its been a bit disorienting because for the first time in a long while i don’t have anything that i have to do until i go back to work in late august. i still have the retrace cd to [...]
monday morning quarterback
d.i.e. had a pretty good show last wed night in which we premiered david toub’s piece this piece intentionally left blank. i thought it was a very effective composition and pretty good first performance. enjoy the mp3 mp3.
this performance represented the best of social networking and was made possible by david having a well designed website with scores and mp3′s. he also is very smart by having some pieces in open c score that are easily adapted to any instrumentation (most pbe music is written this way) which is the point of the diverse instrument ensemble.
anyway ,it was a challenging but fun piece to play and great example of the exchange of ideas by making your music public. i look forward to playing more of music like this and encourage others to follow.
"now " and "then"
last night was a great example of what i find frustrating in undergraduate comp forums. i know that composition is one of the “black arts” of teaching, so i am really not here to throw stones at students our students. all of the pieces were very well prepared and performed (except for one piece that [...]
looking for you
shane cadman (illustrious theatre orchestra/new music impresario) is looking for an southern california based “art music” composer/performer (solo or ensemble) to perform for approximately 30 minutes on his realnewmusicfestival in whittier on june 23rd. More info can be found at www.realnewmusic.com, or can also contact him for more info. when i was helping shane look [...]
horse sense
last saturday was the 2nd rehearsal of life’s too short which focused on the having the group sing and play. its clear now that hubris got the best of me. my idea was to use the ensemble as a greek chorus to accompany the soloist and to rotate the orchestration so that 2 or 3 [...]
best laid plans
i’m back from a working spring break here in lala land. just finished booking a few shows through may and i’m back to working on the vocal piece i started in the fall (life’s too short). the original version was quickly improvised using the abelton live software program. its a very powerful looping program/sequencer that [...]
because i can't be beethoven
i’m taking a quick break from a very fruitful writing session on my new vocal piece (life’s too short)((yikes, serendipitous irony alert!!)) rehearsal starts tomorrow, more to come later.
okay, quickly i was scanning my newsreader and can’t believe i missed parris patton’s great performance art last weekend at the dangerous curve gallery. link to lovely linda’s review at the losanjealous blog and original the because i can’t be beethoven site.
piano hacks unite! bravo! bravo!
pictures from losanjealous.com
newmusicland
daniel wolf cannily points the limitations and travails about having a blog and dialogue it spawns. Personally, I think that Newmusicland is a microeconomy (or a series of microeconomies within a microeconomy) without much real at stake. Sure, there are prizes to win and teaching gigs to hand out, but in the end, it’s a [...]