dogma

Great successes come from many failures

I bid on some gear today. i did not get the pair of Event TR8s. i don't particularly like those monitors, but it was such a good deal that i bid anyway. for $200+shipping i would buy them. more than that, hell no. but that's just my preference

And at the suggestion of my brother, i bid on a CAD E300. i've never used the mic, but he suggested it, especially at the price. It's one of the older Equitek CADs, which is actually why my brother was able to convince me. I really dislike the new CADs, though i've never used the equitek gear. I knew the smaller ones were electrets, not true condensers, and that was about all i knew. My bro said the E300 is worth it, especially if i can get it for under $200. From the looks of it, when the E300 came out, it went for £699. at least that's what a review from '97 says for the list.

I've also put a bid on an Oktava 219Mod. i wasn't planning on bidding on it, but since it's running cheaper than the standard 219 and 319, why not? i probably won't get it. anyway, i haven't even met the reserve yet. lol.

and now...i'm done on here. I've been drinking coffee so i'm not tired...but...i dunno what i'll do...eh, whatever. no worries

hfiihefaoh

Helped with KcEMA's concert tonight. It was a good experience. there was some really cool stuff there. I like Paul Rudy's piece the best. yeah, a bit biased, but it was the most well done piece, in my estimation.

One of the things i've noticed is people get stuck on certain things...like "this video all about going through these 6 filters and using still images taken from video..." ok, cool...not for an hour plus. that's boring. I get it. 20 minutes, that's fine. 40 minutes, starting to hurt, an HOUR, that's a no go. the guys in KcEMA are smart though, did excerpts of it and split it up with another video. very good planning on that one

In other news, i might have thrown out the entire third movement. maybe. It's just not jiving. I'm reaching an impasse, i think...a moment of "this is what i want to do with it...but it sounds like shit." So, i shall spend the weekend really focusing and working hard, getting it sorted out. I want 2 movements done by wednesday. I think it's doable. there is time

and i need to go buy an antenna for my tv, so maybe i can watch this superbowl thing. maybe. or i'll just have a friend text me results. lol. i am NOT going a bar, that's for damn sure. maybe someone is throwing a superbowl party in town. though, the guys i'm hanging with don't seem to be sports fans. lol. it hasn't come up in conversation much though. i could be entirely wrong and there's a giant party i could go to. lol

tired

So...i was going to go to bed early tonight. guess that failed.

Gonna go to the KcEMA concert tomorrow night. pretty excited. maybe i will head up toward downtown to check out first friday festivities as well.

Oh, yeah, this is a music blog...Um...I like music?

Pedagogy of Composition continues to rock my face off. soon, i shall have a "mentee" a younger college student in need of guidance...or something. lol. that will be good.

I'm too tired to discuss all the wonders of Ped of Comp tonight. we played a game called "Methodologies Survivor's Island." It was fun. i didn't win, which made me sad, because i thought i had the best 2. lol.

i have things on my mind...that aren't about music at the moment. This job i'm creating for myself in town...i dunno...it could be cool, or it could kill me. And possibly working out some sort of teaching gig? maybe...i dunno...

I really like it here so far. KC kinda rocks...but...i dunno...an uneasiness has fallen over me tonight. i think i just want too much out of life...or maybe i'm terrified of money. quite likely. yep....

it's time to sleep. shit, it's 1am here...i have class in the morning. bad idea...

g'night

importance of what we do

First off, let me say i love workshop. i really do.

Still...it has been brought up that i'm spending too much time on this grade 2.5-3 HS band piece and that i should get it out of the way so i could write what i want. It seems that they do not believe me when i say i WANT to write the piece and that i find it incredibly important.

I do think some great things were said. My piece has a certain transparency in its orchestration. Almost all of my pieces have had that. I don't like "and everyone together now!" especially in band.

especially especially in band.

why?

because too much of band is like that, especially at the lower level. Yeah, in college, a proficient wind ensemble could do some amazing things. But in HS, it seems, composers are happy to create 4 or 5 lines, maybe 6, and call it a day, and double the hell out of it. I find that ANNOYING. i've got (in this piece) at least 10 non-percussion lines. and, yes, i do a fair amount of doubling. But, i find it disgraceful to think that just because a piece is grade 2.5 and therefore "medium easy" i can't have transparent orchestration. I still have tutti moments. I still have "all together now!". the last bit of this movement is going to be a chorale, and while i had originally planned on holding back somewhat in my forces and doing it as a WW feature with a LB pedal chord, i've decided to put everyone into the chorale. Still...still...

It's this kind of thinking that creates boring, lame, run of the mill, weak, unpedagogical pieces. now, there is nothing wrong with writing an entertaining piece, if that is its purpose. and there are many things to learn from well written entertaining pieces. But is, essentially, a 4 part homophonic sound really entertaining? i don't think so...i never did.

I think of some of the really cool, not so hard to play pieces. Percy Grainger did some great pieces, done in what he called "Elastic Scoring." here's a link to a page with a quote from Grainger explaining it.

http://www.percygrainger.org/progno11.htm

He did several piece this way. Yes, the one i played was Grade 4, but the overall language of the piece was a bit more challenging than mine, with a lot more counterpoint. a lot more counterpoint. and no, i'm not talking about Lincolnshire Posey. Can't remember which piece. oh well.

Anyway, teaching students to stand up and play out is important. forcing sections to play something a bit harder, even if its just 3 or 4 bars, is good. "hey, baritones. check out those 4 bars in Mvt. 2. practice those 4 bars. the rest is pretty easy, ya?" "ya" "perfect, learn those 4 bars!" that's a lot more doable then "Hey, baritones. i know you usually play half notes, but this guy just wrote a TON of 16th notes for ya. have fun!"

I also find it interesting that i meet a lot of resistance when i write moderately complex rhythmic passages and say "yeah, that's easy for a band." seriously...i've played in band...as long as it's spelled out well and not really crazy (not like i'm doing 5s or 7s or something, just entering on 2 in a slow 6/8) a band can handle it. I mean...if a band can handle playing in more difficult meters, then a syncopated rhythm won't kill them. I remember learning syncopated rhythms in band starting my first year...maybe within the first couple months.

Anyway, the main thing is, I find this work important. very important. Kids don't have enough "good works" to play. Am i writing some magical work that will get picked up and played all over the country? i doubt it...but am i writing something that can at least be incredibly meaningful to a group of 30 kids? most definitely. and if walking into a class and telling 30 kids who normally get to play whatever Hal Leonard has on sale that year, that they have a piece written especially for them, and i tried to make it was awesome as i could...well....

those 30 kids may remember it their whole life. and maybe they'll learn something about music too...

and isn't that worth taking the time to make it amazing?

GARGH!

helping out at the MS was great today. It's hard describing development ideas with a handout or a white board or anything. The best way? Force the kids to do silly things. Yep, i took a few kids made them line up, and moved them around. heck, even joked that one should do a handstand. the kid was ready to do it, but i stopped him. Yay inversion. lol.

Composing today...well...screw that! lol. actually, i've probably spent at least 4 or 5 hours working on it...i have a few pages...with lots of Xs, fragments, writing, notes, scribbles...

And i have it all figured out and it should be freaking EASY. seriously, i have it all there, but, i keep making stupid mistakes. like writing half of one melody then putting a completely different part with it.

or writing it on the wrong line.

or all of sudden writing a bunch of stuff out of range, marking it 8vb, then getting so irritated that i just mark it out.

Yeah, it was one of those days. I've probably written...4 measures of new music. seriously. freaking lame.

Well, i'm trying to hand-write what i actually HAVE in a legible fashion, and sketch the rest of it, since, really, it's done in my head. as long as i get everything in the correct place, i can be done. otherwise, well, there's thursday morning. lol

distraction

Last night, i got a bit distracted. the habit i've been trying to get going is using this blog at the end of a night to gather my thoughts before bed. Well, didn't happen last night.

they turned my water off for the morning, so, at midnight, i was like "oh, i should take a quick shower cause i won't get one in the morning and i don't want to stink for teaching." i also saved some water in a bottle so i could brush my teeth/drink water. I got a bit sad, cause when i woke up, my first thought was "I bought coffee!!!" followed by "Crap, no water..."

anyway, last night, i was working on "6 Pieces" Mvt. III. i've finally got the idea mostly in hand, i think, though i am probably going to tweak it like crazy today. the movement is titled "A Little Girl Under a Peach Tree/Whose Blossoms fall Into The Entrails/Of The Earth"

the basic idea is that there is a melody and a countermelody. this melody then loses notes, taken, first, by the wind-chime, then the Woodwinds, and finally the low brass. ya know, like the wind blows, and grabs a blossoms, and it falls to the earth? the original idea was to just leave the notes out as empty spaces, but the line got too jagged and empty...it works great for the allusion, but not so well musically. It's cool, like the tree is becoming bare. however, musically, it just...doesn't work too well. first off, it ends up with INSANE counting. seriously. the whole thing in in 6/8 and a lot of notes start popping up on 2 5 and 6 with rests all around them. do 7 measures of that kind of counting and even i don't want to play it. lol.

so, instead, i decided to take the notes out and rework the melody, shorting the melody half a bar each time. eventually, it should work out to almost being a chorale, since the note values of the remaining notes keeps elongating

Anyway, that's the idea. I've been distracted though. mind is just floating around the cosmos. at least i got the idea now. that's better than this weekend. still, mind, wherever you are, if you could make your way to my brain, that'd be awesome. thanks

and so the spaces continue

Read some more of Cohn's article. haven't finished it. reading that much on a screen hurts my eyes, so i printed it, and one by Ian Quinn "General Equal Tempered Harmony- Intro and Pt.1." I got these articles from a good friend who took a class, "Musical Spaces," with Joseph Straus. I chickened out and didn't take it. should have. woulda been awesome. then i could have had more guidance than one friend 1300 miles away.

Still, it's fun reading these articles, learning about how people have been dealing with this issue of space in music. It's interesting. Really goes back to relationships. How is such and such a note related from this particular set of notes, be it tonal or atonal. the neo-Riemannian theory article by Cohn talks about how the first systems were created to discuss tonal music, or at least music that started from a chord normally thought of as tonal- such as a C minor chord. I won't go through it, as Cohn already has.

the complete name of the article, again, is "Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A Survey And A Historical Perspective."

it is a nice intro. and the idea of the Tonnetz is quite simple. I built a full one (hitting till i repeated on all ends) in about 25 minutes or so for [ 0 3 5 ]. i even practiced my Inkscape skills by drawing the center of the doughnut. yep, a Tonnetz ends up a doughnut. At first i didn't recognize the top/bottom relationship. then my friend typed it and i did . lol

Anyway, i'm not really using the Tonnetz in my piece. I chose [ 0 3 5 ] because that is the pitch collection for a central motive i'm using in the piece - 6 Pieces After Basho - but it doesn't particularly help me much. All it shows is all the transpositions, and gives me an idea of how far away each transposition is from the original. it's a fun tool, and i like building new relationships with it - like overlaying another picture and connecting the dots - which is a method i MAY use for a later movement.

i thought about it briefly with the current movement, overlaying a cherry tree...and having the leaves dropping being the changes in pitches through a chaotic fall through the numbers, however, i went with a simpler method. Basically, i'm taking the melody and having notes drop off. these dropped notes are held and passed along by the other instruments, at first in the same relative range (floating on the breeze) and then lower (on the ground). talk about text painting.

Anyway, that's been my day. I was going to keep working on the piece, wanted to have the sketch done by midnight, but my brain is still too scattered. I blame watching part of the Harry Potter Musical. seriously. my bff told me to tune to that youtube playlist, so i did...and i felt dumber for it. and it was spectacular. and awesome. i shall finish it later though. lol. totally distracted my mind

ever have that happen? be working on a task, like writing music, then do a task this is very similar, but different enough that it screws everything up? it's one reason i don't listen to a ton of music while i'm actually thinking about music. It screws with my head...can't hear my own notes anymore. Anyway, yeah, maybe that's just me.

G'night