Been gone FAR too long.

I apologize to all my avid readers (HA!) for being gone so long. I have a glut of material to speak on and will try and catch up.

First a few general happy pieces of news. First off, congrats to Paul Rudy on winning the American Rome Prize. He'll be spending the next year hanging out in Italy. Coincidently, i will not be spending the next year studying with him, which makes me quite sad.

Also, had a successful performance in NYC with my latest piece "It Was Raining" with the fabulous vocalist Sarah E. Fox. We also performed (as a duet, somewhat, heh.) Aphorisms of Futurism by Andrew Seager Cole. It was a fabulous concert and i really hope that Sarah and I can take those couple pieces around a bit.

Now for the sad news: The monitor on my laptop is not happy. At all. Apple wants to charge me something like $1300 to replace the whole thing. I'm not actually 100% positive it needs replace. The way it's acting reminds me of just having a bad connection. I'm going to tear it apart with a friend of mine and see if we can fix it. If not, i found a place that will replace the monitor for $300 plus shipping. Screw you Apple!

That being said, i'm going to do a couple quick posts, mainly just to separate them. The first will be in regards to my recent teaching. I haven't been blogging about it like i should. I have fun adventures but i have been a little...pre-occupied. Still am in some ways.

Now then, with "It Was Raining" finished (for now. It needs MASSIVE revision and programming, but it's gonna sit for awhile.) i have a film score for an animated short. It's about a village of flying hamsters that keep getting attacked by a troll. There is only dialogue during the first 20 seconds or so, and from then on, it's all score. There is also going to be no foley. we decided to do everything in the score. It'll be a fun challenge, especially since i'm doing it 100% electronically.

After that, i'm going to work on a Pierrot ensemble piece. I actually dislike Pierrot ensemble greatly. I think it is mid heavy. I'm definitely going to add some metallophones to the mix to give a little brightness to the mix, as well as specifying a soprano for the vocal part. I'm actually thinking of writing it using "micro-poetry." It's quite the fad at the moment, with published twitters and such. I'm going to talk to some folks i know that do "that writing thing" and see about ways to get tons of submissions. i think it would be a lot of fun to do a contest for it, with the winners getting put into my piece (which is being entered in a competition). It would be a fun form of collaboration, i think.

woops

So, it's been a long time mr. blog. sorry bout that.

Anyway, i'm not sure what to write about at the moment. how's about, talking about teaching. yeah! we'll do that.


Met with my mentee on friday. as always, it was a good experience. I treat this "relationship" not as a student/teacher relationship but as a "let's hang out and talk about music for awhile. and if you have questions or want some feedback, i'll speak my mind." i generally speak my mind though. heh.

Anyway, it was a good conversation. Love working with this guy because it's, well, "easy." lol. easy might not be the right word. He always has questions. Always wants to hear ideas. Usually, before i say anything, he's asking me "what about this section." or "i'm not really please with this. what would you do to make it better?" talk about a dream "student." LOL. I do my best to try and work within his style. he's in a "free tonality" phase of working, mainly. His interest is very much in modalities and other more far reaching tonal ideas, but still very much within functional harmony. absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, especially since he finds interesting ways of presenting the material.

In fact, he asked me about one section. he wasnt sure if the clarinet could pull this off, and wasn't sure what else to add. So we talked about the limitations of the instrument (running 16ths for, oh, 9 measures, is a bit long. they do need to breathe. might as well decide what notes will be lost. lol) and in talking about what to add, i did a lot of "well, what's most important? what's going on in the line?" we sketched out an "order of importance" map for the piece. (it was mainly about exploring harmonic relationships.) We then talked about ways that some of the lesser parts (timbre, for instance) could be used as ways to bring out the main part (orchestrational changes to help show a harmonic change, that kind of thing).

and he has a lot to say, musically speaking. Sometimes, almost too much. it seems like my job is more of "WHOA, hold up a bit!" than so many ideas. all over the place. he came to me with what appeared to be a 10 part form. for...a 2.5 minute piece. lol.

so, i mentioned that, first, let the piece be as long as it needed to be. if it's longer than 2.5 minutes, then you'll just get that much recorded (they are recording the pieces. which is awesome). secondly, you might want to step back and look at what you have. there is a TON here! and you've only done 3/10 of the piece! he then said "well, i know developing ideas is a weaker point for me. How do you develop ideas?"

Oh man, was i not ready for that one. i stopped for a minute and said "ok...this...is going to be a long conversation...let me use the bathroom first." LOL. well, after i told the computer to bring up Grooveshark. to listen to

Beethoven

No matter how much music i study, when i think of general development ideas, no one shows it off in such a clear way as Beethoven to me. so, we started up "what's music made of?" then into the specific terms "fragmentation, diminution, etc" all the while i'm popping up bits of Beethoven's 5th. we had a great conversation, i pulled in another passing DMA student to help me clarify the difference between "motive" and "melody" (always a tricky one for me but my friend put it quite well...and i won't misquote him right now, so you'll have to live in suspense.)

trying to sum up ways of development, and continuously saying "ya know, they normally do a bunch of these at once." and "these terms apply to multiple things...you can do diminution on all sorts of music ideas" and so on. took me back a bit to my first "formal" composition study, winter term '05 with James A. Beckel. and we worked on, mostly, development of ideas. basically a solid month, two meetings a week, for a couple hours at a time. it was a lot of fun. and, tonight, as i went through my external drive grabbing sound samples from my archive, i found that piece...and listened to it. and it was, most definitely, a study in development. with a horrible horrible melody. thankfully, i spent 8/10 of the piece developing it. lol.

it was a good conversation, but hard. there's a lot to development, and the art/craft of taking a melody and turning it into something else is quite difficult. I know that the professor has given them several assignments on it, and i help him with it as much as i can. but he has so many ideas...i remember those days

i heard music in my head this week. it's been...a long time. but, it was muted...very muted. it wasn't even the full parts. it was more like me singing it. and i could shut it off, just took me shouting, in my head, "stop, stop, stop" and then it did. It was some pop song, i can't even remember which. lame.

in other news, i went shopping. and there is ice cream. makes me happy.

and nothing seems to fix my audio monitors. makes me sad...tired of hearing the voices, especially on a clear night. blech. so freaking loud!!!

public forums

I often think of what i should put here. What should be personal? how much of my art is personal? quite a bit, after all. I'm putting myself out there with every piece. Sometimes, explaining them...well...it's like doing an interview in the dark with a voice changer, then cutting away to a newscaster that gives my name and address. lol

and, right now, there are pieces of me floating around that need that veil.


All this is just to explain why i haven't blogged about my current piece...


yeah, the premise is almost silly. but...i'm creating a dialogue. a dialogue that i think is important to me at the moment. It's why i'm performing part of it...


and, it's probably why i'm scared to finish it...


you'll just have to see/hear the piece, i guess, because this is all i shall say about it for now. Other than the title

It Was Raining

a short rant

Ok, this is a quick rant about the sales of pro-audio equipment.

First off, the majority of equipment you see walking into a Guitar Center (and even a Sam Ash) is hardly professional. Anyone using an entire low-end Peavy Set-up* does not have a professional set-up. your "Professional Tube Microphone. A Professional Behringer Condenser" is about as professional as me running in a marathon. Yes, i could run it, probably finish it...dead last.

There are uses for such things, but calling them "professional" is misleading. Then again, people claim to run professional studios when all they do is pop out unmastered demo tapes for local groups. I guess in the most literal sense, yes, this is professional. You are, in fact, getting paid to do this work, but is it professional.

So, let's say you're planning on starting up a "real professional studio" and you're off to buy gear. You think "well, buying used is fine for a lot of the gear, and can save me a bundle" so you start trolling eBay. you go to musical instruments: pro audio: microphones; wired microphones; recording condenser and you're bombarded with a couple thousand entries. And you start seeing the following things over and over: "CAD Professional Studio Condenser!" "Behringer Professional Studio Condenser!" "Professional USB Condenser."

This is not a huge dig on CAD and Behringer. They definitely have a place. I used Behringer mixers regularly for small live set-ups, like bar bands, small events and parties, etc. CAD, especially their vintage Equitek line (ie the e300), has some nice microphones. I'm not saying they are terrible mics...

It's just that you get what you pay for with pro-audio gear, and there is a reason studios have started carrying specific mics. Take the Behringer microphones and boards. They are definitely bargain priced. If you're just starting a home project studio, getting into beat making and a little rapping over top, having a Behringer mixer, with a couple Behringer mics, and, oh, let's make it complete, some Behringer Truth 2031A monitors, running into a Behringer ADC, wouldn't be a terrible set-up. But...it'll be noisy, for sure. The mics will have a definite brightness to them, with a mid scoop and a lot of proximity effect. The speakers will have a mid-scoop. And, your ADC may not be good enough to handle better than 44.1Khz 16 Bit and, may in fact, have problems with all the data you're throwing at it (especially if it's USB 2.0). ah, latency...

You can repeat this set-up however you wish. Let's say you're doing Samson, and you don't want to mess with a lot of stuff. So, you buy a G-Track USB microphone (with an extra XLR input, and a stereo headphone output) and a pair of Samson SH700 headphones, etc. You're mainly working out of Fruity Loops, and the free version of Cubase LE4 that comes with the G-Track. Is this a terrible set-up? For a beginner, not at all. It's all about getting your ideas out onto the computer.

Is it "professional?" I don't think so. Does a studio need to have Neumann's, DPA, Earthworks, Manley Labs, and maybe an old RCA 77 to be a professional studio?** Nope, not at all. Maybe you need a Neve console or at least a couple Avalon pres? Nope, not at all. Oh, and it HAS to be PRO-TOOLS (HD, of course, though most people won't think about it). Again, nope.

It's about finding the right gear for your style, in the end. Price is always a problem, so scouring for deals is fine. But, i don't like the idea of "settling" too much. My home set-up isn't amazing

Event TR5 monitors
PreSonus BlueTube
Sennheiser HD280s
Shure SM57
Oktava 219A (old 319)
Soundcraft Spirit Folio 16 (w/ 8 direct outs and inserts on all mic inputs)
MOTU Ultralite Mk II

That's not an amazing studio. The Shure was a parting gift from my old sound company, Concert Quality Sound. The Ultralite i bought in 2008 as i became desperate to do some work at home (i was borrowing mics from CQS at that point). Everything else has been e-Bay trolling. and i have reasons for all the gear. The BlueTube isn't about the tube at all, actually. It was a cost efficient way to add 2 pre-amps to my ultralite in an easy to move format. at $100 that's not bad. The cleans are clean and actually pretty decent sounding. Yeah, not Neve or Avalon, but all i want from my pre-amp is CLEAN. lol. The TR5s were just a steal at $125. Same with the Soundcraft board at $125. The Oktava was on a suggestion from my brother after i mentioned to him that i really like dark vocal tracks and using dark microphones***. So far, i like the sound, as it makes my voice not quite as grating to my own ears.

Anyway, for what i'm doing, it's a good set-up. I could use a pair of DPA mics. LOL.

anyway, i've ranted long enough. here's the ultimate tip for n00bs going and buying gear off eBay.

1) do your research on the gear. If it looks like an awesome deal, it's probably cheap to begin with and you should buy new. don't buy a used MXL, Behringer, Samson, CAD (unless vintage), Nady kinda mic. They are inexpensive to begin with, so don't take your chances on what some other guy has been doing with it. The biggest thing with them all is that they aren't sturdy, so new is definitely better.

2) if someone feels the need to put "professional" in the headline, he's either trying to cheat you, or he's an idiot

3) don't buy a USB mic if you're serious about it. If it's for a 10 y/o and they want to play and sing and do podcasts, that's fine. if it's to do some home project studio work, get an interface. there are inexpensive good ones (like the Presonus AudioBox.).

4) don't buy into the hype of any given program. Test them out (you can get trials of most of them) and see what one you like. You may find yourself wanting different programs for different things. Case and point, i have Logic and Ableton Live, Pd, Spear, Peak, and a host of others. and i use each one for semi-specific things.

5) did i mention do your research? there are a lot of interesting mic companies out now: Charter Oak, Chameleon Labs, Cascade, sE Electronics: that seem to make well-reviewed products for a bit less money than the mint you pay for a Neumann or DPA microphone.

end rant. time for coffee and class. AH, in 30 minutes!!!


*There is some good Peavy gear. The Black Widow loaded speakers are pretty good. and, surprisingly, their line array has gotten really good reviews. Still, i seriously doubt it compares to, say, a Meyer or L-Acoustics rig. Probably not even a JBL rig.

**without even naming mics, other than the RCA, i can tell you that microphone set-up, new, is going to set you back at LEAST $15K, i'd guess. The DPA and RCA mic could cost you about $10K by themselves...

***I generally think of dark sound coming from the low-mids and mids. I generally like a high end roll-off, actually, on my vocals as well. dark dark dark dark. LOL

those troubling students

Working with CITS has been an interesting experience. First off, trying to find time in an hour to see about 10 different compositions is incredibly challenging. Also, just how many different experiences i can get in that brief hour (actually, it's 50 minutes. lol)

I am really amazed at the level of creativity paired with the level of laziness i see in the group. It's frustrating, to say the least. They'll kinda loosely jot down something...that almost looks like western notation, but with the stems going the wrong way, no dynamics, durations being quite relative. heh. And then, the student will play it and, boom, makes sense.

Still, here's a run-down of some of the commonalities i am seeing in these young composers

--fear of rests.

--repetition (direct and possibly changed by octave)

--homophonic part writing (single melody, sometimes with accompaniment, sometimes harmonized in thirds, but always exactly together)

--performance vs. notation (playing only one sharp, but writing in two; playing more dynamics than written; not playing written dynamics, etc)

-- lots of ideas

--"i don't want to write it down" (i have heard this way too many times. lol. to me it sounds of laziness or insecurity in their own skills as far as transcribing their ideas).

--"I don't know what to write" (i believe this is related to the above, mostly thinking they CAN'T write. they actually do have ideas up there, lots of them, just have to coax them out)

--"But does it sound good" (there's a general fear in this age group of rejection, and they seek peer acceptance. So, "does it sound good?" is certainly a social statement more than anything. if you talk to them one on one they will say "Well, i like it!" I try to stress that is most important.)

some of the problems i attribute to age and practice. one must practice notation, just as one practices anything else. I still get my stems going the wrong direction sometimes (i cover my tracks by suddenly writing another line on the other side, like i was THINKING two things, and so that's why the stems are doing that...mmmmmhm.) the same with the performance vs. notation. they are only in 7th grade, i don't expect them to read with perfect dynamics every time yet.

The fear or rests is inherent in a lot of music. Actually, i think fear is the wrong word. Confusion might work better. One student embraced rests, and had them throughout her composition. But what ended up happening was that it sounded like it either needed a second line with her that would play through part of the rests, or it was just a very fragmented piece. So, when to use rests?

I try to tell younger students that rests are more like accents. They focus the ear on what just happened and on what will happen. it's like a build up in a song, with a big crescendo, getting louder and louder, then suddenly, a brief silence, then BOOM, everyone enters in the loudest passage of the piece. That loud moment was made louder and more unexpected by that brief silence. The crescendo into it makes us believe that it's going to that huge loud moment. but that brief break makes the mind go "Oh man, wtf is going to happen!" it could drop to nearly inaudible dynamic levels, it could explode in cacophony. who knows!

So, i usually begin students thinking about rests as accents. The next step i usually through in is rests as breaths or sighs. It is a release after a moment of high energy in a piece. This energy can come from any number of places; harmonic tension, active rhythmic schemes, etc. Sometimes, it's nice to just stop and take a breath.

The biggest problem is probably the "I don't want to write it down." I've tried a few ways to get students past this. Questions like "how will others play it? how will you remember it in 20 years?" and then ideas like "sometimes seeing what you're hearing can give you more ideas of what to do with it." heck, even sometimes i try "well, i can't make you write it down. i gave you some good reasons [above] but, in the end, your teacher has given it to you as an assignment. if nothing else, you better get something down." I dislike that last option, but, for some students, the fear of "F" is more than fear of peer mediation. mostly i try and coax the music out of them onto the paper.

One student, in particular, is giving my trouble with this. he has tons of ideas. every time i come in, he plays me something different. this week he said "i have two ideas, and i think they'd go great together. but how would i put them together." He then proceeds to play me two short phrases.

This student has not written anything down all semester. My answer (which as truthful) "It's hard for me to come up with something off the top of my head on one hearing. If you write it down, it's easier for me to see it and hear it in my head. Then i can come up with some ideas. Just jot those two ideas down and we can work on how to get them together."

His answer was "i don't like writing them down." and i replied "I really want to help you, but i am not the kind of musician that plays by ear well. You've got a gifted ear and gifted memory. I just don't have that. If you write it down, i can come up with lots of ideas. I just need to see it."

after that he just stared off into space and started playing. It's an interesting problem. He has some definite social problems, namely missing verbal and physical cues in conversations quite often, borderline obsessive interest in specific things (for him, music), difficulty with authority, a lack of interest in socializing, and sometimes seems to go into fugue states, where he'll just start playing and be completely in his own world.

Ok, fugue start is far to harsh of a term for what happens. its not like he forgets who is, wanders around the school, and comes up with a new identity, and then his memories come back in a flash. lol. it actually reminds me almost of a complex partial seizure, where he gets stuck in a bit of a repetition and spaces out doing it. his teacher thinks he has symptoms of Asperger's. I agree with that in some sense, but i'm not professional, and i don't see him every day.

Did you know that they think Mozart may have had Asperger's Syndrome? seriously, i had no idea until i looked up some more info (one student has been diagnosed with Asperger's so i was trolling info to see how i could best help her) and it was up on a couple different articles. random. Anyway, there's a single-mindedness to what this student (the one not diagnosed with anything) does. He does quite well in school, when he does his work, aces tests, and gets preoccupied. hm...sounds a lot like me in school. LOL. except i did turn in my work, i just happened to do it moments before it was due. I am merely lazy

Anyway, it's a conundrum. I'm just trying to get him to write it down. If i was any good at transcription (easily my weakest point of being a musician), i would just write it down as he plays it, and then get him to work with it after that step. Alas, it's not my forte at all, so i have to find a strategy to get him to notate something. I get the feeling like if he breaks that one barrier, he could write whatever he wants.

hm, maybe i'll address my thoughts on the other things later. This has gone on long enough. lol

best idea ever

Totally had the best idea ever. Record a rock album using giant horns, onto a wax cylinder

for pressing CDs, just do a set-up like a turntable, run it stereo, do little more than adjusting volume for the mastering, and call it good.


That

would

be






AWESOME!!!!!

the pain in my leg

So, i've continued to run the general course of the piece, and it continues to not want to run along. Gargh. this thing needs done a week ago, at least, and here i am, not able to put a decent line together. it's all figured out...just needs to happen. normally i'd let it gestate for awhile, but i do not have the time for such things at the moment

The weather has turned sunnier. such things make me happy. it's been proven that sunlight helps increase serotonin levels, which generally means more happy feels. i could use them

and it allows me to wander, to walk, a little more freedom in a city i still feel like i know nothing about. I've probably traveled more of it than i ever did of NYC, but i felt NYC's soul from the moment i stepped foot off the train, heading to Brooklyn College in spring, 2007, for matriculation exams. I knew it then, what the city was. Kansas City...it's hiding itself a bit. perhaps i am too distracted

And my leg hurts. this happens when i walk more. My shoulder aches from the change in weather. my leg hurts because, for quite some time, i've had the ligaments on one side of my leg pulling a little tighter than the other side. when i look down, i have one straight foot and one foot cocked a little bit outwards. I've started stretching it again, but i don't see it helping much at the moment. I presume i probably actually really hurt it at some point and ignored it. That's how i usually was in sports. Half the time i didn't notice. Damn pain threshold...

Just ask Cory. :)

anyway, i'm going to bed or something. if it won't flow, it won't flow. I blame spending a fair amount of the weekend thinking technically. that usually does in my creative side.

as a coworker of mine once said "you can only be an expert at one thing. You may be very good at many things, but it is impossible to be an expert at more than one thing." As i get older, i get it...and i realize that when i actually have to switch my concentration fully to make it work. So, if i don't actively think about electronics, hard-core, i won't be able to do any good with them. and if i don't think about composition fully, i can't get more than the basic grunt work down. It's really sad


Anyway, to bed.