pride

It isn't often that i'm proud of a piece of art that i produce. It really isn't. I hold myself to very high standards, and there have only been a few times the product matched my vision well enough to consider it a success. "It Was Raining" goes does as a definite success. "Cake" is up there too.

today, i matched those guys with a technological marvel...

well, for me anyway.

I created a piece of hyperart. We all know hyperfiction, right? that wonderful thing my friend Jacob does that I am so jealous of. Hyperart is the use of the web specifically for artistic means.

That's not normally something i do. I use the internets to transmit info (such as this blog, or my website). I use it to watch videos, and keep in touch with friends. even to listen to music. Not to create pieces of art that can really only exist in a forum such as this...

It all stems from interactivity. I'm all about interactivity in art. In music, composers use tools like Max/MSP and Pd to write complicated pieces of electronics that interact with performers. Some composers even create patches (as the programs are called in Max and Pd) that are meant to be interacted with by anyone, not just a performer. But, it cannot reach the masses.

There are plenty of flash games bent around music. But, it's about the game, mostly. I think of something like Auditorium, which is really awesome (check it out here) but, yeah, it's about the game...not about the music. the player doesnt CREATE the music, just enables it to play. I like something more interactive, where, given some basic sounds, you can create your own piece.

I do not know flash. I find it quite useless. it's pretty, and good for games, but for webdesign, it's a nightmare. it's incredibly hard to update. html and java is bad enough (CMS is the way to go. basically, all these blogs are based on CMS...i digress). so, i went about building an interactive using only my know-how...which in web-design, isn't much. at all. but i did it...it works...

It's something anyone can play. multiple people can play at once, everyone can get a hold of and just click away. I'm proud of that. is it the most perfect design? no. but the concept is good, and the execution (considering the time-table) is decent. I'm happy with it.

You can write me and ask for the link. I haven't made it public yet. may never. But it made me happy, made me proud. I created something that anyone with internet access can interact with and create some (quite esoteric) music in a game like setting. Yeah, it's not as cool as what i saw some people working on in NYC, but it makes me happy.

and i made it look like a 5 y/o did it, which really makes me happy :)

Relevancy

when i hear Brahms, i sometimes wonder why we still listen to his music. Same with any number of composers. is it actually "timeless" or just kept alive by caretakers. Is music meant to be permanent or transient?

I've believed for the last few times in the impermanence of art, most specifically temporal arts such as music, theater, cinema, and dance. These arts happen through time (the argument for, say, literature, is that exists somewhat out of time. however, the following argument still pertains, in my opinion.) All art exists only in its performance/observance. That is to a say, music is not the score, but the performance, theater is not the book, but the performance. for those of more lasting quality without change; cinema, literature, poetry, visual art (though there is a sense of performance to poetry, it can exist without it, unlike music); it is in the moment of observance. In other words, the artwork may exist all the time, but it is not a work of art until viewed. It seems like an archaic view, something not existing till you see it, but there's a lot of philosophers going in this direction now. The world only exists through observation and since we make our own realities from this observation, then something cannot truly exist until we experience it. A bit of a funky theory, but i like.

this is always a good discussion point, the "what is art?" question and all the little bits that go into defining it. But what of the main question? Why do we still listen to Brahms, as, specifically, more than just a "historical" listening?

This all seems to lead back to another burning question: is my degree nothing more than a specialized history degree? is anything i do, including writing "new" music, nothing more than keeping past traditions alive? Am i the same as someone doing a civil war reenactment?

I'd like to think that we listen to Brahms because of some deep emotional attachment. But then, this leads into a whole new can of worms: the issue of emotion and music. I'm not going to touch that one with a ten foot laser pole. Still, is there a lasting quality that makes Brahms still somewhat "popular" with a segment of our society, even outside the music clique?

Is it the sweeping melodies? is it the sense of invention? i doubt it's his orchestration. his chamber works are much stronger to me. wait, hold on, coffee time...

mmm, there is something sublime about drinking coffee out of a mug you threw yourself...anyway

I've done this music thing for a while. historically i understand Brahms relevancy. At this point i would like to point out that you could insert ANY composer/musician/art form that is currently active for Brahms.

What is it about past traditions that we must keep alive? I'd like to think of it not as just "tradition." I'm a bit of a...well...the word escapes me, but i don't buy into tradition. My traditions are made in my own time (like composition and coffee at Muddy's) and are thrown out as i adapt (such as homework and cigarettes at China Buffet in Greencastle). I eat turkey at Thanksgiving, not so much out of tradition, but because i LOVE TURKEY and i can usually get a free one during that time due to spending enough money on groceries. And i'll have the time off to actually prepare it. Trust me, if i could roast an entire turkey (at least a breast) even faster (say, 30 minutes to an hour) and they were available year round (fresh ones. the frozen guys just don't do it for me.) i would eat turkey more often. I LOVE TURKEY

anyway, enough about my turkey gripes. Perhaps the answer to this is simple: Some people do feel some sort of attachment to this music. It doesn't take many. Some people actually enjoy listening to his symphonies. Do we need a deeper reason? well, if you MUST have more of a reason, then toss in the historical significance, a bit of "educating the masses to the Western heritage," maybe some "it improves cognitive function," or some other pseudo-science reason.

All this logic and philosophy leads to the first, simple answer. I'm not even sure i'm going to post this now, since i ran a circle, ended up with the easy answer, and am calling it a day.

Someone, multiple someones, like Brahms. Like him enough to buy a CD, go to the symphony, and clap and yell "Bravo!" that's enough to make it timeless, right? we may only truly experience art in the moment, but the memory is also strong. We can remember, reproduce in our minds, that big climax to Variations on a theme by Haydn, hear the massive doublings and hear the strings cascading, then rising again to end the piece.

There is no deep reason to me. I dont like Brahms symphonies, so i question the relevancy. But Brahms doesn't exist just for me. The music exists for everyone. at least Brahms wrote music people continue to like 110 years after his death.

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.