To Precomp or not to Precomp

One of my friends here in town, a fellow composer, made quite the case against too much precomp over the weekend. He actually dislikes a famous composer for his large amount of precomp.

Ah, for those not in the know, i should explain precomp before hand. It's the plotting of the piece before you write it. It's figuring out form, melody, motives, rhythmic ideas, energy, orchestration, pitch, harmony, etc before ever putting a note on the page.

so, my friend made a rallying cry against going too deeply into precomp. His biggest attack was the music should be spontaneous and free-flowing, an extension of the composer. The composer should use his intuition, his feelings (the Force?), to figure out passages.

And i agree with that. Music should be an organic process of creation.

but...

When my buddy was discussing the styles of precomp he is against, they were practically everything i just did with a piece. a piece that i had "intuited" the beginning and now was thoroughly stuck. As in La Brea Tar Pits stuck.

as in Groundhog's Day stuck.

So, after having what i called an intervention, I went and analyzed what i had written. broke that puppy down, looked at the big picture, the infinitesimal picture, pitch, rhythm, groupings, phrasings, form, energy, i overlaid several astrological charts and plotted my future, even took the sketches to the top of Mt. Fuji and conferred with the dragon regarding a certain sequence which spelled out a day that the astrological charts pinpointed as his day of reentry to this world.

And now i'm unstuck (the dragon was most helpful. as was Miss The Asha).

why did i get stuck? simple. i didnt have a clear enough picture of where the piece was going, how it needed to proceed. I had some notes written down, but obviously not what i needed.

I'm all for intuiting pieces, but process definitely has a place as well. I usually do things in a bit of a jumbled order. I'll do a small amount of pre-comp, get some ideas written down that are important (instrumentation, moods, usually some doodles in the margins, basic form). afterwards, i jump write in with both feet, get some really awesome lines, usually about a minute or so of music, then flounder around, throwing out page and page after page of music. finally, after the intense shedding process, i'll sit back down and pre-comp the rest of the piece much more hardcore. then, i'll take my rules, and intuit from there

That was the biggest point my friend rallied against: the creation of artificial rules. This was the first thing a comp professor taught me. why? Because, at least for me, my music will wander. Wander near and far, from my studio apartment in KC, to Mt. Fuji, to NYC, to Rigel 7, to Earth, 2014 with the Robotech Masters invading and the SDF-2 out of commission...

Music can't be a formless, shapeless thing moving from cool sound to cool sound. I feel a piece really needs connections for it to work. and, for some people, it's hard to create and maintain those connections without something over our heads saying "DUDE, YOU CAN'T GO THERE! THAT'S WHERE THE MAN-EATING BENGAL TIGER LIVES!!!" otherwise, i'd go there, lose a foot and a lot of blood, and get stuck in the jungle again. and need Miss The Asha there to pull me out, which is kinda awkward since i'm at least 2 of her, if not 3...however, i'm positive she would tame the Man-Eating Bengal Tiger and make it a lap cat...

anyway, i digress. Point being, i see nothing wrong with doing a large amount of precomp, setting up rules, limiting oneself. in fact, some composers need that restraint. and, trust me, it's not like we don't break those rules. I quite often do...it's just a point to help me stay focused, and then i can break the rules as i go. I remember one of my earliest "successful" pieces. It started out as a 12 tone exercise. probably the first third is solidly 12 tone. Then, i stopped doing it. I ran out of places to go, so i went elsewhere. I had no problem breaking the rules. But, it was nice having them at the beginning. it definitely helped define the piece at the time

Some people are able to intuit entire pieces. other need to do a large amount of precomp. Neither style is any reason to dislike the music. if you don't like the music, you don't like the music. you don't like how it sounds so "formulaic?" then you don't like tightly formed music, nothing wrong with that. but don't hate on the process just because it's not right for you. cause, watch out, someday you'll have a student. and he'll get stuck

in a forest

with a man-eating tiger

and he'll need to come up with a plan rather than "intuit" an answer

and you won't be able to help him

and he may lose a foot, and Miss The Ash may not be in the area to save him

a change in program

Ah, seems it has been far too long. I apologize. since my last post i struggled through borrowing money to pay bills, had an amazing birthday which included my bff Chris flying out for the weekend (always great to see her), getting offered a couple classes at KCKCC (one is set, one might not reach the minimum, and the third, well, i haven't heard from that area coordinator as of yet. so, i'll teach between 1-3 classes. heh), getting a scoring gig for a civil war musical (which the guy paid his deposit immediately. a very pleasant surprise), and, finally, got my website up and running.

visit www.johnchittum.com

have i written any music? well...no. and that's a large problem. a gigantic problem.

I'm way behind. One piece, tentatively titled Black Paper Moon (I am doing a series of pieces named using English lyrics from J-Rock songs) for Trombone and Organ, is due ASAP. i have several parts sketched, the overall idea, energy, form (poor word), and style figured out. it's just notes...but the notes won't come...

Dance of Disillusionment and Despair for Pierrot ensemble, has one movement finished and a second nearly finished. that seems good, except that's only 2 minutes of music. I am thinking of adding a couple instrumental movements...either as singer reading the line and then the instruments playing, or people just reading the lyrics. prolly just having them read the lyrics but not having anything sung. that trick only works once though...maybe twice.

my webpage was all consuming for a couple days. not sure i mentioned it on here before, but i spent a large chunk of the summer trying to learn Drupal. CMS seems like a system that i should really learn, as more and more developers head that direction. But, i had three months of Drupal, and while i learned the terminology (i get that it's based on nodes, and you can have different types of nodes. you can specify different content types beyond what it comes with, blah blah blah), I still don't understand how to get a page up and running. I was able to do some rudimentary work, got a link in place, moved some things around. but, yeah, i gave up.

The main reasons was for the final hiring interview with the Dean of Arts and Humanities at KCKCC, they wanted a full portfolio of anything i would be teaching. One class i may teach is Music and Multimedia which includes rudimentary web-design. Well, since i hadn't made a webpage since, oh, '03 or so, i decided i better do it.

The web has changed so much, but putting together a basic site that at least looks clean is still the same. that sort of surprised me. as did my ability to go in and edit the CSS without screwing it up, edit various html bits as needed (mainly things like meta-tags and sizes).

I have decided to leave this blog here rather than migrate it. I will change how it's pointed (right now it's just a link on the "links" page) but this is staying put. Might as well. Anyway, maybe i'll get cross-talk between the sites. that would be nice..

oh yeah

music.

I should write some

today.

That requires coffee...and possibly, a scone

1 outta 100

I'm taking a bit of a page from my all my writerly friends.

They have told me "if you send out 100 submissions, 1 will probably be accepted"

I felt that way about jobs, but, i'm starting to think finding a job is a lot more luck than perseverence. even if you're qualified and sending tons out, you're fighting that 100-1 ratio for applicants at every job it seems.

But, in submissions in my professional realm (sending out scores, auditioning for ensembles, etc) that's a different story. I'm really new to that market and so i'm pushing on. Still, it's been a rough summer for me. gigs falling through (i've learned to charge about 1/10 of what i'm actually worth professionally here. if i'd charge $1000 for an arranging job, charge $100. then, i might have a crack at it...), submissions rejected, and not winning auditions. throw on top the lack of a job, no money, having my car broken into, well, i prolly have a right to feel a little down...

But i don't really. My friends and family are being quite supportive. without that, maybe, i'd be done. But, instead, i'm taking a different approach.

I'm not working hard enough.

This summer is almost over and i don't have any new pieces written. why? there is no reason i shouldn't have written at least a couple major pieces by now. had the time.

So, it's time to man up even more. More submissions need to go out. put myself out there even more. Send my works around, get them torn apart, or maybe even accepted, and just keep on keeping on. i love doing this too much to quit. i won't waste the last 8 years of my life...

People put their faith in many different things: God, Allah, Buddah, money, the internet, other people.

I put my faith in myself first. Good thing will happen if i just work harder. just. work. harder.

Troll Trouble

here it is, the animated short i collaborated on. I think it's pretty freaking awesome!

writing for piano

Over the past 7 months, i've been to one masterclass on writing for piano, one piano performance masterclass, and spoken to many individuals on how to write for piano. some of the things i've heard have actually really upset me.

the reasons that the "advice" i've heard upsets me is because it really seems to narrow down what exactly piano literature should be. some of the things i've heard for "strong" solo piano writing:

1) uses the entire keyboard

2) makes use of extended techniques, especially playing inside the piano

3) does not have large amounts of direct repetition (say, playing the same chord, repeatedly, in sixteenth notes, for two measures.)

4) has all those things but is basically sight-readable "because pianist don't have time to sit down and work things out."

5) no large jumps (over a tenth or so), most especially during fast passages.

Ok, so the last one was a paraphrase and me getting irritated, however, it's not far off from what exactly was said.

now then, i understand some of these things. from a technical perspective, it is incredibly difficult (and sometimes impossible) to do a wide leap incredibly quickly. however, "quickly" is pretty relative. depending on the leap, passage, etc, i can nail about a 2 octave leap and back pretty quickly and with decent accuracy, and i'm not a good pianist. yes, the passage would need more work than say a straight scalar passage, but it's not unplayable. my passage was a set of running 16th notes at 8th equal 168. so, yeah, pretty darn quick. and it was a series of repeated chords with jumps every 5th note of 2 octaves. when i brought this before a pianist at a masterclass, she said it was "completely unplayable." however, i had another pianist basically play it down, complain a little bit, then practice and nail it on a regular basis.

this gets to what is my main gripe with this idea of "how to write well for piano." It dictates styles of composition. meaning this, if i want to write something highly repetitive and bombastic, say, like "Great Balls of Fire," i would get shot down immediately. or let's say i'm doing a pointilistic piece that is entirely about wide jumps and timbre changes. make sure it's nice and slow...Or, let's say i want to write a somewhat minimalist piece that only uses the middle 2 octaves of the piano.

every piece written for piano that people love does NOT use the whole range of the keyboard. i can think of many of Chopin's etudes that, since they focus primarily on one problem, limit things such as range. also, there are highly successful pieces that use a large amount of repetitive chords (say, Hammerklavier by Beethoven?).

as for playing inside the piano...well...at this point, it's rather cliche. it's cliche because of the attitude "it's not a modern piano piece without playing inside the piano." just like on all the other instruments, it's all about extended techniques. why?

for those that have heard my music, you know i'm far from "neo-classical" or "neo-romantic." I use extended techniques, my harmonic language is usually much closer to atonal than Tonal. in fact, i'm never Tonal, but i do work in free triadic harmonies on occasion. and yet i'm insulted when someone tells me "piano music is only good if you use the whole keyboard, play inside the piano, don't have banging repetition, and avoid large leaps." great, i'll just go write against Listz. and fail.

the best part was in the masterclass when the pianist asked me "did you even play this at a piano?" and i responded "Yeah. i've played for about 19 years, taken lessons for about 12 of those years. I can hack my way through the piece pretty well. and i am most definitely not a great pianist." After that, the session ended. I more or less pointed out that this pianist was a TERRIBLE sight-reader. i mean, really really bad sight reader (messed up a couple easy pieces people brought in). i don't care if you have multiple CDs, if you can't sight read, to offer to read pieces. when i did a masterclass on writing for trombone, i said "please send me files ahead of time for me to look at. don't expect me to sight read them day of, cause they won't sound very good."

ok, end rant. At the end of the day, if you have an artistic vision for a piece, and it isn't completely impossible (some things are, like, say, a 18 note chord played without the aid of a special device.) then go with it, and don't worry about what some people say. there are millions of pianists in this world, more than likely someone will like your piece and be willing to play it. if not, you may find someone professional enough to play it anyway.

Interpretation

Ok, it's been forever since i wrote. My past month hasn't been spent very productively either. lol.

I have been practicing piano on a more regular basis. It's little more than trying to get my fingers moving in the right directions again, get a little speed back. My main reason for doing this is to help me in composition, so i can play through my parts a bit easier. I've also been practicing doing score reductions by sight, very slowly, to get a feel for things.

I don't have a great deal of piano music with me. most of it seems to have been lost in various moves, my parent's house being redone and subsequent storage of things, and my own disregard for piano music over the last six years or so. The only full "serious' pieces i have on hand are J.S. Bach's French Suites. I played the Menuet from Suite III long ago, so i thought, hey, why not?

The first thing i had to do was go back over my dance suite info. It's been way too long since i've thought about the dance suites and i really wanted to make sure i had an idea of the character of each movement. I did some light reading on the dance suite movements, a bit about the evolution to Bach's suites, and a little bit about the French Suites. after i did that, i went into practicing. at first i just kinda ran through things as quickly as i could, to just kind of get the idea under my fingers, feel where things went. i wasn't paying attention to strict time, i was noticing where the passages i would be working hardcore would be, and getting a general idea for fingering.

I'm now to the real practicing stage, going nice and slow. I take things in little chunks, starting at the beginning, and slowly add more. I think i'll try a different approach after that and go backwards from the end, just to hear it differently.

but this isn't what the blog's really about...

I was practicing the first movement of Suite III, an Allemande. I had worked out some of the phrasing issues early on, as it seemed pretty straight forward. I was practicing for correct pitches and rhythms, but, one thing was nagging me. I knew Allemande's are generally somewhat grave in character and not speedy pieces (leave that for the Menuet on Crack and the Gigue). I couldn't seem to figure out a good tempo for it. It definitely didn't want to be slow. So, i did something i rarely do

I pulled out some recordings.

I've said before, i'm not a fan of learning music from recordings. I like being informed of practices, of course, but i don't like being judged by "Glenn Gould's interpretation." But, i was struggling a bit since i'm out of practice and i'm not in lessons, so, listening to half dozen or so recordings to get a general feel would be good.

I hit up youtube first, hoping for Glenn Gould actually. lol. the first thing i got was a video of what appeared to be a 16 y/o male playing the first movement. The video was actually shot right before he played it at a recital...

and, well, it wasn't bad. But, he definitely played it too fast. and there was no phrasing. it was a speed fest. No nuance, just GO! i decided to read the comments and there were TONS of positive comments "You are so good. blah blah blah." One guy attacked him for "not doing all the ornamentation." Happily, the pianist answered in a great way "By 'missed' you mean omitted, right?
In that case, there are very few ornaments that Bach actually wrote in the score. Most are inserted by the editor who has done research on Bach. I used an urtext edition. Listen to multiples recordings of the piece and you'll hear that there's a lot of variation in ornaments."

good answer kid, and Bravo to fight the power. I didn't like your approach, personally, but i defend your right to play it that way! and good for you to back it up.

As for me, i listened to a half dozen more with speeds varying from Dirge-like to Gigue-like. I was more than a little surprised, actually. there's interpretation then there is "whoa, that's a lot of different opinions!" It was actually amazing to me that Glenn Gould's recording may have been the fastest. I mean he really blazes through the piece. and only has about 2 ornaments the whole time because of it. I'm not a big fan of Glenn Gould's interpretations of pieces, other than for the pure enjoyment of listening to an amazing pianist with a very unique perspective.

It was an interesting exercise, especially since i was focusing mainly on just getting tempo ideas. In the end, i'm going to go with a moderate tempo. someplace in the middle seems about right. now, if i could play the Gigue as fast as Gould, that'd be hott

statistics

I've gotten quite annoyed by some people's (and companies') use of statistics. Like, a recent Cherrios ad

"Reports show that people that consume more whole grains are shown to have healthier body weight."

or

"94% of all readers have engaged in an historical event or activity within the past year. this is based on 65,000 respondents. Our goal is to target this demographic"

So, it begs HUGE questions, which, at its most basic is "why?"

Why are people consuming more whole grains shown to have healthier body weight?

Why are readers attending historical events?

and, with the second, what KINDS of events or activities?

These statistics are incredibly misleading. let's take, for instances, the first.

Why do they have healthier body weights? Well, whole grains tend to be much more filling, so, perhaps, they're eating fewer servings. Or, perhaps, it's because the whole grain foods, especially cereals, aren't always covered in sugar. or, is it because those focusing on eating whole grains are also equally focused on eating other healthier foods. will eating whole grain cereal make you healthier. nope, not by itself, at all.

the second, well...

Without answering the "what kind of events" how can any company really decide on a product? saying "they like the civil war and will spend money on it, regardless" is pretty ridiculous. are they buying may different dvd's (the main product of this company)? are they going to re-enactments? or are the going to, say in the case of professors that subscribed to the magazine the stats came from, going to a conference over the Civil War. without that sort of info, WHAT are they ACTUALLY spending money on, it's nearly impossible to decide on a product. you can't just say "Hey, it's Civil War, they'll love it!"

Also, as i've noticed with a lot of Civil War buffs i know, they tend to gravitate toward specific events, battles, figures. It's not "OOO, CIVIL WAR! Let's buy a DVD!" also, the company is not paying attention to other figures, like money actually made in dvd sales vs. other products, such as live performances. Take a look at the film industry. They don't make their money back on the show from DVD sales, they make it back at the BOX OFFICE!

also, there's another VERY important part to the second set of statistics. how many people are actually in the demographic? in other words, when you break it down, is your primary audience 100,000 people? 1 million people? 65,000 people? and then, how many would really be interested in your product from that demographic?

so, yeah, i'm growing tired of this misuse of statistics. They can contain a large amount of info, but, c'mon. I'm not stupid enough to go on something that only offers part of the story. I'm especially wary of statistics presented just as percentages. so, let's say 75% of my friends on facebook are fans of my artist page. that sounds pretty good. but what if i said i only had 100 friends on facebook? all of a sudden, i only have 75 fans. well...that's pretty lame.

so, statistics good. bad use of statistics REALLY REALLY BAD. rant over