Exactitude of language...

...is incredibly important. If you follow this blog, you've probably seen one of my trends over the past year is to critique the language used by critics, and to get around their troublesome use of words by finding definitions. These definitions are sometimes literal, sometimes societal, and usually a created through combining the two. This gets to a certain sticky point (and one debated by philosophers extensively): meaning.

   What does a word mean? From where does the meaning come? Is language innate, passed along genetically, and only nuance is given during learning phases--an incredible oversimplification of Chomsky, barely comparable to his thoughts. Meaning in words can be tricky, and that's why philosophers and scientists define their terms.

    When we get into the meaning of music, things can be even stickier. There are many camps debating meaning in music, from ascribing a narrative (or looking for inner narratives) to purely formal approaches. I'm a sucker for a story, and in the past looked at the idea of storytelling in various mediums. I've talked about meaning in music in relation to politics, and that is an ongoing area of study and thought for me. I've even gone so far as to define and defend experimentalism, especially in the collegiate experience.

    And now I find my fingers tapping the keyboard again in search of a definition.

     A little less than 2 weeks ago, I posed a question on Facebook: what makes music (ir)relevant? The responses were of course varied, and from multiple people. Of course my friend Marek chimed in with "inasmuch as relevance implies pertinence, that question seems, like, incredibly relativistic." And that's the rub isn't it?

    The word relevant keeps being used in connection to music. Groups should be performing music that is relevant to today's younger generation. This is often distilled down into triadically based, beat oriented, non-traditionally structured, but traditional in form pieces; music that relates to or is derived from popular genres, which often share these incredibly general and borderline meaningless aspects.

    In this sense, the word relevant means "related to a known popular quantity." Or possibly "closely connected to something people already like." This seems to sprout from a definition from the 1960s when relevance became a buzzword--relevance at this point was related to ideas of social concern.

   In education, we often see the world used in conjunction with choosing majors. The humanities are under attack as being irrelevant. The Daily Beast compiled a list of "useless" degrees, and the fine arts were up there in the #1 slot. This of course set of a slew of "Oh no they didn't!" type responses. There have been defenses for humanities degrees, ranging from a mother defending her daughter's work, to Brown University's President making an impassioned argument for the financial importance of humanity degrees.

  Relevance in all these cases is tied directly to economics. Are humanities and fine arts (and music) degrees going the help students make lots of money?

  So, what does Greg Sandow mean when he talks about relevance? It's been a head-scratcher for me. Most of the time it seems like he means "music that is related, in some fashion, to music that people already like." His latest post he praised a concert of Nico Muhly and Pekka Kuusisto for their originality and fresh approach. I was perplexed at first, because he addressed Muhly's music as being "relevant," the format as being "personal" and the performers not being "high priests." I'm still sitting here the next day confused.

   Has Mr. Sandow never been to a new music concert outside of possibly the largest sanctioned halls? Has he never caught a concert by local NYC groups like Ensemble Signal, Talea, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, Talujon, The Curiosity Cabinet, or any of the hundred other groups? He most certainly never caught my short-lived group, dfe, in concert when we played at the Yippie Museum in fall of '08 with a program about as varied as we could conceive (pulling from all three of his groups, plus an amazing rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle" by me on violin as we prepped another piece). I guess he hasn't noticed that the performers wear a wide assortment of clothing, performances happen at all sorts of spaces, and that, generally, contemporary chamber concerts have been exactly what he has described wanting them to be for...well...

    I was more or less instructed on how to give these concerts when I started my Masters in '07. By that point, they were incredibly old news, with my professor, Doug Cohen, telling me he had done them in the '80s.

  Ok, so where's the relevance. What makes this somewhat traditional structure so relevant. And yes, I mean traditional because as far as I can easily tell, dates back in the US at least to the 1960s with Phillip Glass' ensemble and the various loft concerts put on by Cage and Co...of course ignoring salon traditions, burlesque, and minstrelsy shows which did all the same things. (the smokers cough is getting better, but it seems to pop up in conversations like this...). I'm starting to feel like I'm spinning my tires--we're dealing with preconceptions, we're definitely dealing with a few critics obvious biases, and we're ignoring all the underlying economic questions behind low attendance. If it was just the music, a company like Live Nation, that runs a huge amount of concert venues, should be doing quite well catering to audiences with popular music. But that's not the case.

  But back to relevance. What makes music relevant? What makes music, to follow a more Webster definition, "closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand?" In the discussion of what a relevant degree is, the "matter at hand" is purely economic. So, what is the matter at hand for music?

   For Sandow, and many others, it is also economic. The matter at hand is "how do we sell more tickets to a younger generation." Therefore, any music that they perceive to not sell tickets is irrelevant. Which means exactly what Sandow says the matter isn't is exactly what the matter is--by relevancy he means familiarity.

    What do I mean then? Sandow claims that it's not about familiarity, familiarity to a certain culture. By his estimation we should look at what the widest amount of people consume culturally, analyze the music, and program (or create) music using these ideas. I've already said in my post about experimentalism that this is backwords. By taking a stance of "this is what people like right now," we lose sight of what people may like the future. It's not to say we know what people like, but to write in a way that reflects only data received after the fact means we are perpetually writing behind. Think about that for a second...

    Let's say we do a survey of a possible target audience--for me, that might mean 21-30 year olds, both genders, all races, living in the Indianapolis area. I'd like the data parsed by gender, race, economic standing, specific neighborhood, etc. I'm specifically looking at what music people like, what they feel is connected to their culture. I send out two thousand questionnaires, wait around six weeks, get back the questionnaires, and set forth to put in all the data and analyze it. It takes me roughly six to eight weeks to get all the data into the database (and formatted correctly with all the pertinent info in the right places), and then another six to eight weeks to sieve through all the information. All of a sudden, I'm sitting on a minimum of eighteen weeks of work before I can start to figure out programming, which after going through all the info would mean finding the musical terms in that music.

    OR I can head over to the Billboard Experiment and use info from the top 100 as compiled from the 1960s through today and see the type of general data that so many critics drool over. If I use that, well...

    I better be in 4/4, C major, around 120 bpm, four to four and a half minutes in length, and it wouldn't help if people already knew who I was...

    Of course, this misses out on a ton of information. If I go back to my study, I'd quickly see how fragmented the mythical audience is. I would also start to see and hear similarities and differences between the music. The repetitive nature of a rap anthem versus the greater amount of variance in a large indie ensemble (like Polyphonic Spree). I'd see a wide variety of instruments, but also a regular uses of electronics, either to enhance the instruments or as purely electronic sounds.

    I would see the world encapsulated into a small study.

    And that's the problem, isn't it? If we take Marek's quip about relevancy to heart, there's truth. Relevancy is relational, it's always related as a "relevant to what." Sandow's arguments are mostly related to "relevant to selling tickets to a specific cross section of young adults that he has personal knowledge." Compare this to the wide variety of populations in the world, country, state, county, city, neighborhood where the arts are active.

    I end by posing a few questions:

• How can music, or anything, that is unfamiliar, be (ir)relevant?
• Is relevancy in an abstract form of art (such as music) tied only to its formal properties? Is it the rhythm, instrumentation, time signatures, use of melody, form, and structure all that is tied to relevancy?
• To who and how is it relevant? Relevant to what? To selling tickets? To reaching people through a musical experience? Are these the same thing? 
• Who are we really marketing these concerts to?
• Why are popular music live companies suffering difficulties, and what can we learn from those? Is just blanket emulation of traditional popular concert styles really going to save classical music?
• Is it actually a new and different idea? Groups like Classical Revolution and GroupMuse are great, but are they really ground-breaking? Do we have such a short memory to have forgotten that this was a major part of the 1960s art scene in NYC? Or that salon traditions existed in Europe for years, with a large amount of premieres happening in 2 piano versions done in people's houses? 
• And, most importantly: What are we actually talking about? 

   I'll be honest, there are many times I'm unsure anymore. It seems like we're just all spinning our tires. Sandow has been saying roughly the same things for twenty odd years. I've only spent the last year and change actively blogging in this sphere, and I realize that I'm repeating myself. Look at that first paragraph! It's all self-referential! That is a bad thing. 

    So why not take a step back, and instead of just continuously pushing a set position, why don't we start looking for questions again? Rather than pushing talking points, why not look at the questions above, and instead of answering with the same tired talking points, why not do some research and take me to task on my ignorance. I admit ignorance to a great many things. 

    What other questions do we need to answer before moving forward? What other words are we just tossing about without ever considering their definition or usage?

     How do we actual find answers rather than flash in the pan popular answers?

    

Concert attendance, rituals, and all the wrong questions

Something has been bugging me the past few months. People in the "Classical Music Crisis" camp often make a big deal out of the unique nature of what's happening in classical music. What comes out of these problems are answers that are also unique--unique in that they seek to change the artform itself, rather than to address problems in marketing, image, and pricing. In the past, there was much talk over ticket pricing, but that has since died down with a focus instead on kitsch, on creating some sort of buzz by putting in some new product, designed by the masses, for mass consumption, including the experience, rather than focusing on the product (and the evolution of that product naturally, which, btw, includes lots of influences) and finding ways to market more effectively, change the preconceived images, and bring more people into the fold.

There's a focus on the idea of barriers to entry. Particularly, there's a take by Pierre Bourdieu which has to do with the barriers caused by differences in customs, rituals, mannerisms, etc. by different groups of people. There was a blog post in January about the largest barrier this person felt wasn't the ritual aspect, but the specific knowledge of the music that was the problem. It's not knowledge of the ritual itself that is the issue, but the shared vocabulary to discuss the art afterwards. The author cites that talking about art is an important part of the experience, and that is a portion missing. I've blogged about the educational issue before.

If there is an issue with the preconceived idea that specialized knowledge is needed to enjoy a classical concert, then how do we alleviate this issue? We can bolster education through outreach programs, and we can actively work to change the image that specialized knowledge is needed. One of the things I try to work as a musician is how to explain music without needing technical terms. As a composer, every conversation I have with a new acquaintance has the question "What kind of music do you write?" How do I explain this?

During my comprehensive exam, I had to answer area questions submitted by faculty members on my panel. Three of the questions revolved around "elevator pitches," or discusses my music and what I do with different types of individuals. One was "You have five minutes to explain your music to a total stranger with little background in music." Another was "you have ten minutes to explain your music to another musician you've met an a conference." These are two wildly different approaches.

One can easily talk about music without getting into technical terms. I asked the question on Facebook about "what makes music relevant (or irrelevant)?" and in the long string, specialized knowledge was brought into the discussion. If you don't have the knowledge base required, the music becomes irrelevant.

But this leads to a few philosophical questions. First off, it starts down a path of there being a single meaning behind a musical piece. Second, it pushes a sort of agenda--depending on what information is given, different interpretations are achieved. Third, it discounts different styles of listening--formal vs. mimetic listening for one dichotomy.

I've seen the transformation first hand when this barrier is removed for students. In my teaching of music appreciation courses, I always seek to find ways for students to engage with the music, so I try different methods. Sometimes these are formal--I give students an understanding of the form and structure, point things out in a specific music example, then challenge them to listen for similarities in other pieces. This can work. Other times I've had students focus on historical or interpretive aspects. This works especially well with opera. Regularly, I start to see students come around not just to appreciating the music, but to start to understand all that ways that one can appreciate music.

If there's one piece of knowledge that can remove the barrier around needing specific knowledge, it's the knowledge that you don't need any one particular piece of knowledge, but can approach the music personally.

The next bit that confuses me regards marketing issues. I have lots of friends that play in bands of various sizes. Some go on tour with major groups, some flit from band to band, able to keep playing even as one band succumbs to the harsh reality that is the music business. They range in genre from brass players that have played with John Legend to heavy metal bands to jazz trios and any other group you can imagine.

When there's bad turn-out at a show, do you know what they blame first?

Advertising.

They didn't talk to enough people. They didn't get word out to enough of their friends, who didn't get word out to enough of their friends. The marketing group did a terrible job prepping the major tour and there were no adverts on the radio or TV. They only made a dozen posters and must have chosen bad places. Sometimes it gets into bits about a venue not being where people that like that music usually go (hey, surprise, venues cater to specific forms of music), or some other external force comes into light (shit, we booked against eighth blackbird... yeah, that happened. 15 people showed up).

What do we hear in classical music?

The music doesn't reach people. It's irrelevant. The culture of the concert hall is to blame. People feel uncomfortable getting dressed up. I've blogged before about how odd this idea is. I've made comparisons between new music concerts and death metal concerts. Talking to a friend tonight over some great Mexican street food (IN STOCKHOLM!), I came to the realization that, really, only classical musicians talk about music this way (and jazz musicians, which I think is just a symptom of being put into academia). If a death metal concert is not attended well, it's not because death metal is dead. When Kanye West only sold 4,500 tickets at the 18,500 seat Sprint Center in Kansas City, the local critic didn't say that West's music obviously lacked popular appeal and had no connection with the audience. Instead, he linked meager attendance to the various scandals surrounding West at the time. Maybe considering the album the tour featured, Yeezus, only made it up to #37 in the Billboard top 200 for the year, West's popularity could be falling.

But is it the music's popularity or West's?

Furthermore, attendance at all live events has been dropping. Live Nation has been facing financial issues because of declining ticket sales. There have been increases lately in ticket sales, though Live Nation is still having some financial issues. Overall concert attendance is down even though awareness is up. And, boy, if you want to start talking about a company that does a terrible job, and yet still exists, just look at Live Nation. But this isn't about Live Nation bashing, it's about continued decline in live music attendance.

If there's a problem in marketing with classical music, the problem lays with classical musicians. We're not doing our job well enough of reaching people. How many symphony musicians actively get their students to come to the symphony? When I studied with a principal player, he rarely mentioned the concerts. When I lived in Kansas City, I hardly heard a peep about what was happening with the KC Symphony, beyond the occasional "free tickets!" email sent to the conservatory. I didn't realize the KC Lyric was doing Nixon in China until it was sold out. It is, in part, my own fault. As a classical musician, perhaps I should be more "tuned in," and should be checking the arts calendars more often, and have the local symphonies webpages bookmarked and do the work myself. Perhaps I should sign up for the emailing lists...

But then again, that's a form of marketing that's very inactive, isn't it? It relies on the person you're trying to reach to go out of his/her way to find you. Then, once they've found you, you're in.

Take this against several of my friends in the jazz and pop world. Of course there's active use of Facebook, but it's important to remember the limited reach of Facebook--in the end, you're reaching your friends and followers. It's a bit more active, because you can initiate the contact, inviting people to like a page, or asking for a friend invite. I have to say the old system based on friending people with organizations was much better than inviting to pages. And, of course, they're posts only reach 16% of the people, on average. This means that while the bands my friends perform in do post their events, they also cross posted, repeatedly, with each member promoting as well. Some use twitter, and go out of their way to follow and gain followers. One friend in particularly still uses the old mass email.

I always know what my friends are doing. Even if I'm not paying attention, I can easily find out. They often reach out to me. I'm not saying social media and marketing is the way to go. Honestly, I don't think the reach is there for most businesses for it to be highly effective. But it's the active portion of it.

We also have to accept the reality of today's society. There's an ever growing portion of people that watch shows online instead of using TV. In fact, there's a growing number of people without TVs in their homes, with alternate devices taking over. About a third of the savior demographic utilizes the internet more for their viewing pleasure. On top of that, there's a large group that use ad blocking software. The privacy wars are raging, and it's causing a drop in ad space. While this can be good for symphonies and groups selling advertising (you can't block an ad in a live event), it can affect how a symphony markets itself. Paying for an ad on Facebook won't reach those tech savvy millenials you're after. Neither will playing on local TV.

I do not have an answer to the marketing issue...yet. But I'm working on some ideas that I think are perfectly in line with modern content and advertising ideas.

So, looking at this, what ideas really pop into your head? What ways are popular groups making a living these days? How are they advertising? Are they sacrificing their artistic ideas for the sake of more sales? The idea of the sell-out is of course omnipresent, as are the pop acts that are created by execs rather than by artistry. Should classical music change everything about itself to fit the idea of some mythical group?

Or should we find ways to reach people? Find ways so that people aren't angered by ticket prices. Address barriers to entry not from a "how do we change ourselves," thus leaving the barriers in place, just picking up and moving elsewhere (where there will be a new set of boundaries), or do we find ways to permanently remove barriers?

And if there are new modes to make money, how do we do them? I have quite a few ideas, and some have generated a fair bit of buzz in my secret meetings (look, I can do it too!). Look out in the future for any posts about upcoming projects, where some of these ideas come to fruition. 

Storytelling in various mediums

   For those not in the know, I'm a bit of a gamer. I grew up playing AD&D and other pencil and paper style RPGS. This list includes GURPS, Shadowrun, Rifts, Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, and others. I was quickly known as a rules snob, but I wasn't really--just if you were going to use the core rules, you had to use the rules. If the DM was running a story where the core rules did not apply, then I was all for whatever rules the DM. Heck, I was the guy that knew the 2nd edition grappling rules (the ultimate in nerddom right there).

   I didn't play the games for the rules. I didn't play them to drink and eat pizza--that came much later. I didn't even really play them for the social interaction. I didn't have a "gaming group" and then my friends. The groups were made up of my brothers, their friends, and later on my friends. I knew these people pretty darn well, went to movies, the pool, hell I lived with most of them at one point in college.

   I played these games because I love stories. Oh man, do I love stories. I've read constantly since as long as I could remember. My parents had books, one about gnomes, another about trolls, and all sorts of other stuff like that...I remember reading those with my brother...I remember him teaching me to read with Go Dog Go when I was 3 years old. Not shitting you--it was before I starter pre-school even. He was always like that, trying to teach me shit too early.

   But I was hooked on the stories. By 8, I was reading Tolkein. As I laid in the hospital for weeks on end, I'd read The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and then onto whatever fantasy books my brothers would bring me. Having cancer was a pain in my blood (Leukemia), but it gave me time to read. And I devoured fantasy novels whole.

   Around the same time, my parents got us a Sega Genesis. I played three types of games: sports, strategy, and RPGs. The Genesis, sadly, didn't have a huge body of RPGS, but I played a bunch of them: all three Phantasy Stars (just the 3 Genesis titles, not the original), Traysia, Shining in the Darkness, Beyond Oasis, Shadowrun, Sword of Vermillion, Exile, D&D Warriors of the Eternal Sun, Light Crusader...Most of the big names. My favourites were by far the Phantasy Star games, but they were all great. They all had interesting stories (Ok, Light Crusader didn't really, but, I'll let that slide). The depth of the Phantasy Star games was insane--a coherent story ranging across four separate titles that were complete unto themselves, but amazing when stuck together. I empathized with the characters, was drawn into the action, and loved every moment of it.

   They were like well written novels. They drew me in the same way many authors did, ranging from Tolkein to Eddings to R.A. Salvatore (him not so much anymore. DRIZZT IS PLAYED OUT ALREAD!) to Terry Pratchet. I was drawn in...

   Games I play now, I'm not drawn in. I've got a pile of games for 360 that I've started and just shrugged. I finally got around to beating Rage, and while the story was at times interesting, it was unfulfilling by the end. The only two series/games that have really drawn me in? Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls.

    Beyond those five games (and the poorly put together ending of ME 3...and to be honest, I played Oblivion on PC first) I haven't found a single game that actually drew me into the story. Sure, there have been fun games to play--going through Gears of War 1-3 in multiplayer was fun, and Dark Souls makes me hate and love my life--but those are mostly game play things. They're fun to play, shoot, strategize. I've still got a couple sports games (all 2-3 years old, of course), and I inherited X-COM before my roommate destroyed it...

    But this post isn't even really about video games...

    It's about story-telling. We all know books tell stories. Theatrical productions do as well--another things I've seen/participated in more this past year than I have in many years. Video games also tell stories, and I think we're seeing a swing toward how the stories are told being far more important than the stories themselves. This is not to say how the stories are told isn't important. No, it's a wonderful balance between the two that makes a truly outstanding game.

   But, what about music?

   There's a current trend toward using literary theory when dealing with music. Susan McClary is one that jumped onto the band-wage early. If you haven't read her book Feminine Endings or at least the most famous bit where she analyzes Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, you should totally do it. This link will get you close on Google Books. Click on "did you mean Tchaikovsky, which is exactly how I spelled it...silly Google...It's pg 69 onwards for a bit.

   Large areas of musicology came into popularity thanks to McClary being unafraid to go where others dared not tread, grabbing from literary theory and throwing it onto music. It was all highly post-structuralist...kinda. maybe...I mean, mostly. Researchers these days take a listener first approach...well, sorta...except for when the composer says something, then that's important, right?

   But I digress from the problem. Research in musicology and music theory is suspect quite often. I'm absolutely no different in my own writings. But, one thing many people against the movement say is "Music cannot tell a specific story. There's no such thing as straight or gay music, masculine or feminine, or even some the deeper ideas of the struggles. It's not possible because music is abstract--researchers are just picking a theory, and forcing a piece into it."

   And, to an extent, I actually agree with those naysayers.

   There are a lot of philosophers that have tackled the issue of music, meaning, and emotions. Peter Kivy, Stephen Davies, Jerrold Levinson, Nelson Goodman, and many more. Just hit up Stanford's philosophy site and check it out. The one interesting thing in all these guys who do not agree at all?

    Music is not a language in that it lacks semantics--music has no meaning on its own.

    AH, and that, my friends, is the crux of my problem.

    You see, when I listen to music, there is no "story." I can read the program notes for, say, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, and listen to the piece, and try and figure out what bits fit where. The name itself implies a meaning that may or may not be in the piece itself. This is a type of psychological priming. We are given a context before hearing the piece, and that context creates the pieces story. There's one problem with priming, in this case: does it prove that the music has a story, or does it lead the listener to a story?


 
 Then we have reference. Any easy composer to grab for reference is Charles Ives. When I listen to a piece of his, say, Piano Sonata No. 3: Concord: Mvt. III-The Alcotts, I hear the references: notably Beethoven's 4th Symphony and The Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. Those references mean something personal to me--Beethoven's 4th was the first piece I really analyzed compositionally, and the Bridal Chorus because of its association with weddings. Take into account the priming with the title, named after Amos Bronson and Louisa May, and split into 2 sections forming a large AB form (one for each), the piece definitely creates some sort of narrative. But what is that narrative? I've listened to this piece many times, and love it, not for it's loose narrative and association to the Alcotts, but because it is a beautiful written piece. But is it narrative? Can a researcher create a narrative from what is presented musically? Maybe, with enough research, tons of connections could be made between the quotations and the Alcotts. But the ones I've read so far haven't convinced me yet.



    There's a great book out by Lawrence Zbikowski called Conceptualizing Music. In it, Zbikowski breaks down a lot of how people understand sounds, mainly from a stand-point of cognitive schemata. Basically, humans like to group things based on different categories, all overlapping into giant networks of WTF. We're a jumbled mess. There's also a great article by Ian Cross and Elizabeth Tolbert called "Music and Meaning." Both of these show just how complex this problem really is.

    All this to get down to a single point: can a piece of music, without words, tell a story, without psychologically priming the listener? Can I play a piece of music, written to my ear depicting very specific things, and create a story that can be read by people, and understood without priming or ubiquitous use of reference (which would lose meaning over time anyway, as the social contexts of the music/sounds will change over time)?

    And does it even matter?

    Pierre Schaeffer wrote about "reduced listening" in electronic music. The idea being that while musique concrete used real worlds sounds, such as train sounds in his Etude aux chemin de fer, that the listeners were not supposed to listen and say "OH, TRAIN! We're going on a train ride!" but attend to the sounds themselves as musical.



    John Cage also wrote and spoke about how all the sounds around us could be musical. Does this mean listeners were meant to not think about the relationship of the sounds? This falls into another few philosophers/linguists mentioned in the earlier article by Cross and Tolbert: Frege and Peirce. I know Peirce's ideas on semiotics best, so I'll explain briefly.

    Peirce come up with this idea of there being a signifier and signified. So, in the case of Schaeffer, a listener would hear a train sound. This is the signifier. What is signified could be "train" or "travel" or "industry." There are lots more levels regarding different types of signifiers and signified words/sounds in Peirce's writing, but this is a glib bit.

    So, in non-electronic music, researchers can deal with semitotics. For instance, in Ives, a researcher could, as I mentioned earlier, look at all the different references made by Ives in the movement. Easy enough, there's a book called All Made of Tunes that lists them all. The researcher could then easily go through the history of the Alcotts, their collective writings, etc, and find semiotic bits. Basically, the idea I mentioned before, but fitting within a specific theoretical framework. Honestly, I'd be surprised if NO ONE has done this yet. If so, any of you reading can feel free to write the paper--just give me a shout-out somewhere.

    But, this still raises a question: without all that knowledge, what is the story? And can a piece without all the priming of say Ives, through quotation and writing, tell the story?

    Do we hear Susan McClary's interpretation of Tchaik's 4th without her bringing it up?

    Storytelling is a delicate thing. It takes a certain amount of world-building, careful planning, and good syntactical skills to put together. The medium itself alters how story's are told: books, plays, video games, AR (augmented reality, which I didn't even touch), paintings, movies, and music all behave differently and are understood by the receiver in very different ways. All these mediums have unique challenges.

    And I look for a great story and storytelling in a video game. It's why while the game play of Call of Duty can be fun, I just don't like those games. I'm not drawn in. But, in music without words, do I care about story-telling?

    No, not so much. I don't listen to a 40 minute symphony and try to imagine a story through the whole thing. I don't listen for the history of the composer, the influence of other composers, or all the possible quotations. Try listening for all the quotations in Ives' 4th Symphony. It makes the piece much less interesting, at least for me. I'm just...listening.

    Not everyone listens that way--I accept that wholeheartedly. And I don't think taking a post-structuralist literary theory approach to understanding music is wrong, in some absolute sense. I just think that, sometimes, it comes down too much as taking a theory, and forcing a piece into it, rather than the other way around. Post-structuralism is nice because it lets a researcher say "What I hear is more important than what the composer wants me to hear!"

    But then, as a composer, I know very few composers that really want you to hear anything specific. We use program notes not as a "You must hear this!" but as a way to help listeners experience something when hearing a piece they may only ever hear once.

    It's all troublesome--the lack of good stories in video games, the difficulty in transmitting ideas across mediums, shoehorning theories meant for one medium into another medium that doesn't behave the exact same way in our brains. And I haven't even gotten into the amount of cultural and social priming we go through thanks to movies (high strings playing fast passages = terror? Thanks Bernard Hermann for making Black Angels either more poignant or more trite, depending on who you ask).

    This is a long post, I know. And there will undoubtedly be more, as I work through this little conundrum. Heck, there may even be a GUEST post! First for everything, right? Or a drunken live blogging session. Who knows?

    But, sometimes, it's important to think about how we experience our surroundings, and what that means to us.

Is "reading" music fundamental?

   In the UK, a new 224 page national education curriculum is going up for a vote in August. Somewhere in the back of the document, for a few scant pages (three to be exact), outlines the most basic ideas of music education: the purpose, aim, and target "attainment" levels for key stages 1-3 (or through age 14). The three pages are barebones, giving only the passing nod to ideas such as "use(ing) technology appropriately..." which is an area I've heard a fair bit about during the last year.

   Instead, it moves onto the subheading of the original article that brought this to my attention. Over at ClassicFm an article briefly introduced the idea that the national curriculum was changing. It waxes poetic on the beautiful idea that "music is a universal language," which, while a beautiful idea, isn't exactly true. But, again, that's for another time...

   It's the focus on music notation that caught my eye. The subheading states "by 2021 every 14 year old will be able to read music if the new curriculum is approved in August." That's a claim!

   The inclusion of being able to read notation in national curriculum's isn't new. NAfME (National Association for Music Education) has reading and notation music as a part of its national standards as well. So, I'm not surprised by the inclusion--if anything I'm somewhat surprised it's news. I'm not as up on UK educational systems, but it'd be surprising if there wasn't some cursory mention of reading and notating music at some level.

   But all this made me ask a question: is reading and writing music fundamental to a liberal arts style education?

    Seems like an odd question for someone finishing a doctorate in music composition to ask. I'm questioning whether something that for an active musician is fundamental. Or is it at that?

    Let me take this back a couple steps. What is, according to the new national curriculum in the UK, the purpose of studying music?

   "Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high-quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon"

   Alright, poetic start. Inspiring pupils to develop love music, talent as musicians, self-confidence, creativity, achievement; all great ideas. Develop critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and listen with discrimination...also all good.

   My gut reaction is, of course "Man, I hope they get more than the once a week thing I grew up with in elementary school before I joined band. That's a lot to try and fit into those 32 hours a year you see a student."

   The aims get more specific and break down three main areas

• perform, listen to, review, and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles, and traditions, including works of the great composers and musicians
• learn to sing, create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn an instrument, use technology appropriately
• understand and explore how music is created, produced, and communicated through pitch, dynamics, tempo, timbre, structure, and appropriate musical notations.

   So it took until the last two words to sneak musical notation in, tacked onto the end of what musicians call "the fundamentals of music." But is notation really fundamental?

    What's interesting to me is everything stated above until you hit those last two words, I could teach entirely without notation. If music is a language, then one could say that performing music is like speaking, and notation is like the written word. Except, there's a fundamental difference: even great musicians can't look at a score and hear the entire symphony in their head, especially if it's a symphony they've never heard! Musicians call that skill "Audiation." I believe it was coined by Edwin Gordon, and it was probably made most famous in "The Music Man" when Harold Hill discusses the "Think System." And, yes, I know that Gordon's theories on audiation are not the same as Hill's Think System, and that, yes, "The Music Man" Came out about 13 years before Gordon coined the term. But the idea of thinking about music, hearing it in your head, then playing it dates back much further than that...

   Point being this idea that the notation isn't realized until performance. We can "hear" a great deal in our heads, especially if we train ourselves to. But it's also a more difficult skill than learning music through action. Ok, so, learning music through action. That's a big part of many music education philosophies: Kodaly is all about learning music through singing, Orff is a combination of performing on specially designed percussion instruments, singing, and dancing (originally folk dancing), and Dalcroze/Eurythmics focuses a great deal on motion, the body, and singing (from an understanding of the body). Learning music by doing is a great thing. But does it require notation?

   Some of my favourite memories of learning Orff was learning about teaching composition to young students. We had all sorts of tools: felt or magnetic bars for bar notation (in this case, not having a traditional staff or rhythms, just short and long bars with relative height), various other symbols such as fruit and worms, and stories...

    I loved the stories. I loved the creativity that came along with writing a piece by using a story. The first exercises were "I'm going to tell you a story, when we reach certain parts, we'll come up with special music for it. Otherwise, we'll use ostinatos in the background (ostinatos are a big core of Orff playing)." The group would start playing, and after a little while, the teacher would say "It was a dark and stormy night. What would be good music for a storm?" You'd get through the piece, a little bit at a time, till the whole thing was learned, and the students could perform it. No "appropriate" notation required. Eventually, you can turn it into more games, having students come up with the next part of the story and the music. 

    You can also use a nice step-wise progression of "long and short" heighted (where you can see a difference in pitch height, but no staff lines) to get into long and short on a staff that corresponds to their pentatonic scale (when they're young, you keep the kids on pentatonic. Easier that way, no "wrong notes). The students can move things around, write new pieces, while slowly learning all the notation. It's effective, and a lot of fun. 

   I remember coming up with a game for fourth graders based on a twelve tone matrix--but instead of a twelve tone idea, it was a game of rhythms and melodies, made up of only a 6x6 grid, and overlays that could change the rhythms. You could flip the board any which way, read melodies "upside-down and backwards" and all that. But it still wasn't "appropriate" music notation--but it got to a much more "difficult" bit of musical thinking; how composers developed ideas to create new but related ideas. Heady for fourth graders. But what they saw was a game that they could manipulate, where a student could choose a path (and oh, they started choosing crooked paths, and I found that fun as well!) and we'd sing through the ideas together, me at the piano plunking it out first, then everyone singing with the piano, then just singing. But, still...no notation...

   And the kids were singing, or they were playing. No reading involved. Of course, if any of those students wanted to go into band or orchestra, they'd definitely need to learn to read music. But not everyone wants to do that...

   I guess I'm awkwardly moving to a point. The goal is fantastic to have. But, how many hours do you really get these young students in a general music class room? It becomes a bit of "what is 'most' important in all these important things." What do we really want younger students to get out of a music education, that can make a lasting impression, and keep with them forever.

   My school was an "odd" duck, and I accept that. There weren't too many students who, at one time or another, were not in band or choir. Granted, most of the band kids left by middle school, but they had time to learn a bit of an instrument, basics of reading notation, participate in concerts, etc. With choir in middle school, many joined up that preferred singing to band, and in HS when band and choir started overlapping, there was attrition between the two--but a vast majority still participated in one or the other at some point. Did those that didn't participate dislike music?

   Oh hell no--many were even more into music, just not that kind of music. What then, thinking about education from K-12 in the US, is really the purpose of music, and where does notation fit into that? One of the things I've always found unfortunate is that after elementary school, music education falls away for many students--if you're not in a band or choir, there isn't a music class for you. The idea being "well, everyone can sing, so if they want to sing, they can do music." Well, yes, that's true, but, what about everything else in music?

    What about those bits about being discerning, knowing the history, knowing the great composers? Did we all get that really well in band? I mean, Beethoven didn't write a HS band piece, and while there may be some odd arrangement of his third symphony for HS band, it's not really the same as learning the piece, is it? What about the use of technology, recording, etc? And exploring how music is created, produced, and communicated? It's almost as if we're saying "Hey, by the time you're in middle school in America, it's time to get 'serious' about this STEM thing, keep up your English in as much as being able to communicate is important, and the arts and other humanities can start to fall away." 

   Let me be blunt: classical music in America is dying, slowly, of old age. The audiences aren't getting younger, and we're not drawing them in. The ones that are drawn to that music were the students that were in orchestra, band, and choir in HS, which I accept is, normally, not a large percentage of the school. And even then, most start to fall away from "classical" music quickly. And then how many from HS go onto some degree in music, and then they either stick with it or fall away after undergrad.

    But there's this other music that's around, ya know, everywhere. Popular music, dance music, indie bands with ukeleles and mandolins (or mandoguitars), dance music, heavy metal, rap, on and on and on. And, some of these musicians learned to read music, might have even been heavily classically trained, and use that to their advantage. They come up with entirely creative things...

   Then there are those that don't read any music, and only think "holy crap, this guitar chord sounds awesome, and so does this one! and I can move between them! Hey, where are those lyric sheets, I bet I can come up with a melody for this...oh man, this is baller." They can read some tab, maybe chord symbols, but not "traditional" notation. Or they sit in front of a computer, making music all day, and coming up with unique sounds...without any knowledge of the acousmatic genre, Denis Smalley, or Pierre Schaeffer. 

   And we listen. We all listen. Constantly. iPods and iPhones are everywhere, people in their own worlds with their own soundtracks. I'm the odd one, being a musician, sitting here with only the sound of my fans, and clicking of keys and being more than content in the lack of music. And yet we have this horde of listeners, of people consuming music in a way that was unfathomable even 25 years ago. And definitely not 90 some years ago when Orff and his colleagues were coming up with Orff Schulwerk, or by Orff's death in 1982. 

   I sit here wondering, without answers, if, maybe, music education needs to shift with the times. By middle school, music education is mostly about performance. By high school it definitely is. Is that a dated mentality--no longer is music only consumed by it's playing, by attending a concert and getting a single chance to hear a song. Records, magnetic tape, and radio started changing how most people interact with music. The walkman gave mobility to the masses, and freedom from the radio. And now, instead of having a bulky collection of tapes or CDs, thousands of songs are stored a device that travels with us everywhere, earbuds in, tuning out the world. Has classical music missed the boat, holding on desperately to outdated models?

   I don't think the music itself is old--I think my music has something to say to this time, not 100 years ago, and maybe only slightly to 100 years in the future. But I do think how we approach music in education may be holding on far too much to old practices.

    What is the answer? No idea. I would love for everyone to be able to read music, enjoy playing an instrument (any instrument!), and interact with music through performance at home. It's romantic, this idea of salon music, music happening communally instead of individually, and with a more personal attachment to the music making. But do we fight for that idea, actively, or do we just hold to traditions for the sake of holding to traditions? And would more people be engaged by classical music if it was approached another way?

   I don't know...But it's something I think about a lot...About my role, as a living composer of "contemporary concert music," as a musician on an "antiquated" instrument like a trombone, and as an audio engineer that sees kids consuming and using technology without understanding what's happening. I don't know if there are any answers, but I often ask "what can I do?"

 

   I have some ideas on that...one is I'm not sure if teaching all students to read formal "appropriate" notation is the answer to "what can I do?" Especially since not everything I write uses "appropriate" notation by the standards of classical music.

the perfect recording

I went to the orchestral readings at UMKC yesterday. great pieces by everyone, and great playing. something occurred to me though, watching the whole process...

From how they were playing and rehearsing it, i could tell, there won't be a "perfect run." There isn't going to be that perfect live performance recorded. it's more like a recording session...


which made me think about recording sessions. I sat through one classical session as a trombone player, at DPU doing their Symphonic Band cd. The engineer was Bruce Leek. He's a real pro, looking back at how everything was done, the micing, the runs, everything. The final product was quite amazing. Mr. Leek did a great job capturing the pieces

and putting them together...

there is where i have a problem. it's been a growing problem for me; a large philosophical quandary going back to "what is music?"

i've arrived at an answer to "what is music?" with which i am comfortable. I believe music to be a construct of an intelligent being, temporally based, organized sound (and silence), with the intent of the creator to be taken into account. it's a pretty loose definition, but one that i think can, at least, separate it from most other forms of art. Painting, for example, is not temporally based. it's CREATION is temporally based but it's presentation is not; it's static. Dance, which is temporally based, constructed by intelligent beings, and organized, does not necessarily have to have sound. therefore, it is different, as music requires sound (or silence). Theater is the rub, really. Other than pantomime (which, does not necessarily include sound, though can include non-speech style sounds), Theater shares all the above characteristics, with only that last statement giving it any difference. It's the Marcel Duchamp thinking "This is art because i say it is art! It is in an art gallery!" "but, it's a toilet!" "NO! it has a title, 'The Fountain.' Please refer to it as such."

Theater is theater because we say it is. Music is music because we say it is. Opera (and musical theater) is theater and music, because we say it is. But, is a Greek Tragedy, done in the original style with the chorus, considered music? Even though the chorus, does, on occasion, sing? What about theater that includes music, say, a serious drama that has a waltz between the two characters in it (like, say, The Glass Menagerie). Is this theatrical piece now music because it contains music?

And then there is the rub of television and film...which is the same rub i have with completely fixed media pieces (with no live performer) and with "definitive recordings of concerts." all of these share the above characteristics, except...

they are not experience temporally. Or rather, they are experienced in a FIXED temporality. As a painting is meant to be experienced the same way for generations*, music and theater is experienced differently with each production. But what of film? While it unfolds over time, it is FIXED. It does not change over time**. When you watch Pulp Fiction, it is meant to be Pulp Fiction every time. Samuel L. will say "MMM, That's One Tasty Burger!" It won't change to "MMM, that's One Tasty Chicken!" in 50 years. John Travolta will still do the twist, not the mash potato. Just as Morton Subotnick's "Silver Apples of the Moon" or Beatles "Revolution (or 1 or 9)" or Miles Davis classic recording of "So What" are not meant to change over time***. what's the difference between the 3 (or 5) pieces?

"Silver Apples" was composed 100% for the medium. The same could be said for Revolution and Revolution 9****. But what of, most specifically, "So What?" this piece was played live in concert many times in clubs by Miles. He didn't always play the exact same solo either. in fact, i'd bet be probably didn't, as that would really ruin a part of what jazz is.***** So, it becomes a "definitive recording." But is that recording the piece? is it a snapshot of the piece? What about creating a perfect recording from many different takes? The piece wasn't played through all the way, after all. It was, instead, pieced together, section by section, sometimes note for note.

so how do we define a recording then? We know, for instance, that the commercial recording style means getting one or two instruments together (say, drum set and bass) and laying down the track. then the guitars will layer on top. then, finally, the vocal track will be laid down in a totally different booth. they're recorded dry, reverb is added later to give the recording a more "live" sound. Effects are sometimes added later, such as delay and echo to a vocal track, or to the kick drum to give it a little more life. In concert, some of these things can be done. Often times the drums are gated and compressed in a similar fashion to the recording, but not always delayed and overdubbed/doubled/tripled to fatten the sound.****** Is this anything like a concert?

This brings us a bit to intent. with "Silver Apples" it was intended for the medium. so, we have the one issue of it being in a fixed temporality. I'm willing to stretch my definition******* to include "Silver Apples" even with it's fixed temporality because of the intent. Revolution is a fuzzy zone i'm going to pass over. the recording to "So What" i believe deserves to end up in a different category that the composition "So What." One is a snap shot, if you will, of one particular instance of the piece. It is frozen in time, as a reference to the composition, but, it is not itself, the piece of music. So, a recording is a reference to a piece of music, just as, say, a photograph of a painting is a reference to the painting#.

This leads me to recordings...they are references to a work. However one might do it, in a studio with commercial techniques, in a cathedral live style, doesn't matter so much. You can change it, tweak it, put it "in tune" using Melodyne or Autotune, but, in the end, it is not the actual music. It is a reference to music. It is a reference to a particular performance (or multiple performances) of a piece of music.

So "what is music?" The performance? The piece of paper with it written down? I say that music happens in the performance, not on the piece of paper. Something happens there, something i haven't been able to define to put it in my definition. There's that "human element," that bit of interpretation, the act of listening, everything around effecting what is happening. Music, in a sense, is experienced, not read, therefore, the score is not music. I haven't figured out how to word this right, how to put a handle on this part...the organic participation of people, the existence within society as a form of cultural process...it's all at once more and less than those words.

But, i can say, that music is not the recording^. The recordings of, say, Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven's Sonatas are not, in fact, his Sonatas. They are references of his Sonata. There should be no "definitive" recording at any point, as music is left up to the interpretation of the performer.#^ It's one reason i hate recording my works. They aren't my music. the listener is missing the experience of the piece.

Ya know, a lot of what i've spent the last, uh, amount of time going over is kinda "D'UH!" when you think about it. most people would agree that what you get live is so different. And yet, recordings are treated in such a special way. Brendel's recordings of the Beethoven Sonatas are "special" to a lot of people. live performances get compared to them. and yet, their creation, was not the same as a live performance (though very close, from what i've read). But, yeah...what was i saying? OH, yeah, the "putting it together" part, the overdubbing...

That part, to me, as engineer, is a different form of art all together. it's actually like creating music yourself. You're given the tools (the different recordings, your programs, your knowhow) and then you're set to create some sort of reference work of a piece. It's like doing restoration, in a way. While you're not the painter, doing restoration is an art form of its own, a sort of "sub-art" to painting. The same can be true with audio engineering, piano tuning, possibly even instrument making. While these things are not music, they have a direct impact on what becomes of music. What if the engineer decided to put the sections of a piece together in different orders? Or what about if s/he felt like transposing all the tracks, each to a different tuning!?! what about a piano tuner that decides, before a concert, to tune everything to perfect 4ths instead of current intonation practices? wow...that'd be fun!

They influence music, and their practice, their craft, if you will, is an art unto itself. the final outcome is a reference work to a piece. The creation of the reference work is artistic in nature. it is, in fact, a quasi-art, perhaps. There is discerning which recording of the section is best. how much of the ambient mics should be mixed in? how about adding reverb on a particularly dry recording done in a studio? all artistic choices that change the reference copy. does it change the piece of music? Well, it can, at which point it is no longer a reference to the music, but, instead is its own piece, more than likely intended for the specific medium, with some sort of specific "performance" instruction#^#.

So, in conclusion, a recording is NOT music, in its purest sense. it is, instead, a REFERENCE to a single occurrence of the MUSIC on the recording. There are quasi-artistic acts in the creation of a recording, however, these acts are not to create a new piece of art, but, instead, are to restore a reference to a piece of art. G'ah, philosophy SUX!!!!! #^^#**

*often times, though the definition is changing)

**unless it goes through some other processing. which, then, muddies the picture greatly

***though, with different medias, they invariable will, from scratches on the LP, to tape stretch

****though an argument can be made for Revolution either way. However, the specific guitar overdrive distortion could only be done in the studio at the exact time it was recorded...the "classic overdrive distortion pedal" didn't exist yet...since they, after all, popularized it in recording. i won't say invented, as i don't think they did.

*****After all, one of the big stylistic ideas with jazz is improvisation. the piece is meant to be different, they specifically make it that way.

******though, there is a quite a bit of mixing and matching mics now. often times the kick drum, in live contexts, will have 2 or possibly 3 mics, one inside, close to the kick head, another placed in/near the whole in the outer head, and the last being placed a foot or so away from the drum. all three mics are them mixed to create one kick drum sound. this is similar in idea to how recording is done on a kick drum.

*******it doesn't completely break my definition. It still happens in time, over time. it's just that the specific time is fixed, and the piece will be exactly the same every single time. I never say that music cannot be exactly the same every time. and, since it's intent includes it being for this fixed medium, the stretch isn't terrible. while it makes my definition a bit uncomfortable, if enjoyed as intended, at home, on a hi-fi system, then all is well...

#sorry, had to switch styles. after seven "*" i couldnt take it. Anyway, there is something i consider a huge faux-paux in comparison between art forms. People often say a recording is like a painting. However, i disagree. If it was like a painting, then, in fact, it was meant to be a recording, and not performed live. Therefore, "Silver Apples" is like a painting, however, "So What" is not. "So What" references another work, the actual composition and its live performances, and therefore is like a photo of a painting. The photo (or any other reproduction) references an original, but it is NOT the original. Just take a look at the blown up images of Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memories." It's much smaller in person...

^unless, of course, it is meant to be the recording...but we have covered this already right? no reason to rehash old news. Philosophy SUX!!!

#^another part of my definition i am still working on. I said i am comfortable with what i have now. never said it was my ideal definition. it's still lacking parts, and probably always will.

#^#that sticky subject again. If you were to play "Silver Apples" on a concert, in a concert hall, where people paid, i dunno, $10 a head to hear it, i have an issue with it. kinda like when people get uppity when i play Bach Cello Suites. It's not for trombone, after all. I agree, and i explain i do it as an exercise, not as a part of a performance. i wouldn't, personally, ever program a Cello Suite. I have seen it done, but it makes me sad. It is, in fact, against the intended medium. It changes the piece. And, on top of that, it's BORING. :)

#^^#** it bears repeating...PHILOSOPHY SUX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a bit late at night...will continue this tomorrow, maybe

Ok...it's been an interesting night

I've really taken up some steam in "6 Pieces after Basho." it's a piece i'm writing for HS band with the following instrumentation

Flute

Clarinet

Alto Sax

Tenor Sx

Horn in F

2 Trumpets

Baritone

Trombone

Tuba

Percussion (around 3 players for now, though i'm writing a total of 5 parts...though, really, i think it can be covered with 3)

The idea is to take 6 haiku by Basho and put together 6 one minute pieces, each piece a complete idea. It's a fun exercise in limitation; limited the time, limit the content (i'm working really from 1 melody, 1 countermelody, and a short motive)

The first movement "Lighting Gleams/Into Darkness Travels/A Night Heron's Scream" i finished months ago. For the most part, i think i've succeeded with that movement. The second movement "The Old Pond/A Frog/Plop!" has been much slower going. I think after the success of the first movement, the second suffered from "not being good enough," comparatively.

A couple days ago, as i was sketching away, i realized that the movement wanted to be a passacaglia. So, i've gone with it. Yesterday was...not so good. i scribbled a lot. today was the breakthrough, the "AH HA!" moment when i figured out the orchestration of the bassline, how to move it around, and the "melody." I went to an old stand-by; take the main melody (in this case, a 4 bar passage from mvt 1), write it out in different transpositions (this time, putting it into the key of the song. Yes, it's "tonal" sue me. it changes the numbers a bit, doing that, but it's ok. it's tonality! it makes everything fit!), and then playing with it. I always start with the inversion, cause after that you have 4 ways of doing the melody quickly.

Then, i start playing around with it. So...it's about a frog. what if i leap from melody to inversion, skipping x amount of notes each time?

and, blammo, there's my melody, all jumping around, playful, kinda tonal, almost. lol.

Also, i have been having a great conversation with Speaks Coffee tonight about craft, what's important with writing, etc. it's always fun, comparing her experience as a writer with mine as a composer and seeing the differences between music and language.

Anyone who says music is a language obviously hasn't talked craft with a writer before. I see the differences immediately. like, when discussing divorcing ones style from analysis. I said it seemed like it was easier for a musician, possibly because we have such an insane amount of analysis. then, Speaks Coffee with a great question "but, do you think in music? I know you think in English, most of the time."

but its a great point. With music, our style is individually developed; on paper, in a computer program, in our heads...but, no matter how much we try, is it as engrained as English? I think ABOUT music a lot. I hear passages in my head, i sing to myself (talk to myself too), get rhythms going as i tap away. but i don't think IN music. when someone asks me a question i don't think "0 5 5 7 8 0 11 0 11 2 2 1 0" i think "well, that's a stupid question." Even when i think about music, its in english.

So...it's a good pedagogical thought. It's harder to divorce oneself from analyzing writing in a 1st person perspective- "this is how I would do it/this is how I would word this/your style is so [whatever] compared to mine." you're intimate with how you speak. You're intimate with you're vernacular. Just look at my writing. It's pretty damn near how i speak. Lots of rambling, short sentences, ideas tossed around all willy-nilly. lol.

and i usually an laughing when i toss in an lol.

It's something to ponder more...but when i've had some sleep. maybe some coffee. Right now, i better get a little sleep before tomorrow. I have composition workshop, and not nearly as much as i would have liked to show for the week.

But, the steamed pork dumplings were DELICIOUS!

and, there will be talk of esotericism vs. commercialism at some point...i'm for a happy medium, and let's leave it at that for now.