Article Review

I am going to comment on the article "The untold stories of so-called world music" by Nick Storring in the spring 2008 issue of Musicworks.

The biggest thing that I took away from this article was that in general the western worlds idea of world music is clouded due to a number of reasons. One reason is because over here in the western world when we want to go buy a world music cd from Ghana or Thailand (for example) the record store generally just carries compilation cds. Storring says that because of compilation cds the listener spends more time listening to ethnicity and cultural differences when really the listener should spend more time listening to the aesthetic content. I partially agree with this comment but I also disagree with this comment. I am interested in world music and have spent a small amount of time listening to music from different cultures. For me and my ears right now I think it makes more sense to listen to a compilation cd. When first listening to music from different cultures I think it is important to grasp the structural characteristics and foundations of that style of music. When first listening to music from Zimbabwe I want to introduce myself to it, I don't think it would be fair to me or the music to try to concentrate on the beautiful, complex patterns of the mbira, I need to absorb everything and then eventually wrap my brain around the complex stuff.
I do agree with Storring on one level though, once a person has become familiar with the music of there choice there really isn't many solo records to buy, most of them are compilations. Hearing the compilations are great but it is also important to hear a solo cd to hear one artist and there arrangement of their cultural style.
If I could suggest one thing for record stores (and their world music sections) it would be to carry more solo records but also have the option of buying compilations records, for those of us who are still new at listening to world music.

Review of Article

I want to comment on the article written by Julian Cowley about Philp Jeck in the Musicworks magazine, the summer 2009 issue.
I have never really taken any time to introduce myself, listen or learn about being a DJ and what it takes to work with turntables and vinyls. I thought that this article may just be able to introduce me into that genre of music, and it did. Even though I may not have been up to the level as some others readers reading this article I feel as though I have learnt a lot from the read. I always thought DJs were used for backing up rappers and hip hop groups but after reading the article, there is much more to it then just "scratching". I find the abilities he has working with turntables and sound manipulation is phenomenal because he has so much at his fingertips, so many options, so many different ways to manipulate and splice together music. I also find very interesting that Jeck can switch up records when and how he wants. It makes me realize that what he is doing something very creative and fresh because it never has to be the same thing every show. He says when he is feeling stuck using the same records he will take out a record that he has never heard and use it in a show to try something new; to get "unstuck". I think what he does in something special and unique and one thing that I found extremely cool was that because he has so many records he can play folk records from the country he is playing in. In the article Julian gives that example that one night he will play a show in Istanbul and will improvise using Turkish records and then the next night he will be in Athens and he will be improvising on Greek records. It definitely takes a lot of training and a lot of experimenting to do this. There has to be so much to know about sound manipulation and just overall it seems that you need to have a huge library of music. Another thing that I enjoyed about this article was that I was able to see the musicianship of Jeck. He is quoted in the article for saying "It's in the listening where the music is made". It agree with this quote because it seems as if listening to his music listening could come up with all sorts of emotions, images and ideas; it is through these things that make the sound special for the listener and therefore I think thats what makes it music.

I have never really thought about composing for or even adding in turntables in a classical sense. In the past few months I have heard of chamber compositions that involve a live DJ, unfortunately I have never had the inspiration to look any of them up. After reading this article I do feel inspired, it is definitely something that I will look into with more detail and maybe one day it may end up in some of my own work.

Last post

In conclusion to the course I just want to comment on how much I have learnt in the past few months. The cool thing about this course was that I learnt from work shopping my ideas; trying things out for my class mates to see what they thought, to hear there criticisms. My technique as a new composer has started to grow, knowing how to think like a composer, learning how to accurately put down my ideas. I have not just learnt how to develop ideas and know when not to play with ideas but I have also learnt how to write for other people. Up until now whenever I wrote something it was always for me, so I automatically understood what I had down. However when you get people to play for you, you start to see what makes sense to you, doesn't always cut it for everybody else. This course has opened up my eyes to all aspects of composing: compositional techniques, developing and playing with ideas, writing things that make sense for other players and preparation of my score.

I am looking forward to taking the advanced composition course next term, I get to keep working on ideas while learning to become a good composer.

Good copy of score

I have been very surprised this semester over the amount of work it takes to make a good final copy of a score. It seems like every time I look over my score, no matter how many times I do, I will always find something that I want to fix. More so for my second score I find myself becoming very picky about positioning and how things are positioned. I do believe in first impressions and if a score looks appealing and professional then more people will spend time with the score. Even though all of the nit picky things are hard to get through it seems in the end it is worth it.
Even though my last score probably was not presented the best way I remember getting it back from Staples and thinking that it looked really professional... laser paper makes things look great.

I also find program notes hard to write. I tend to wonder if I should leave certain information out so the player can discover it on there own or if I should enlighten them so that they know exactly what I had in mind. I also have trouble in terms of, should this go under program notes or should I make a performance instructions section.

All in all I have concluded that the more detail you add the better.

The day before the concert

So I just had one of the last rehearsals for my new piece "Fire and Ice" based on the poem "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. I am very happy with how it went and even the unexpected guest (Dr. Liebel) thought it was great. She made the comment that the two characters were different and that the piece took you on a coherent musical journey; which is what I was definitly going for. It took a while to get to this point but it seems as if everything is finally worked out, a lot of the chamber music spots are fixed and things transition pretty smoothly. I have great players for my piece so that really helps a lot, they make it sound great and flow great.

Last week in class was the first time I was able to present and I was happy with the comments, and lack of criticism. Everybody thought it was great and no body had any big criticisms which meant that I didn't need to make any big changes.

After the concert is over I definitly have a bit of work to do in fixing the score. From the players suggestions I will make things easier to read, make tranisitions smoother and also I will make the ensemble aspects of it much easier.

I cannot wait to perform this tomorrow, I think it will be awsome.

Even though I do need to go through my piece, tweak and change some things I have finally set the whole poem to music. The task of setting text to music was harder then I had first expected because I really didn't know and wasn't sure of what I wanted to write for the ice charavter. I had lots of ideas down but it was only until recently that I felt okay with what I had written. I have changed my idea a little bit. In stead of using just one whole tone scale the half way through I changed to another whole tone scale. Unfortunately where there is less then a week left before the preformance I can't make to many changes because I would only make things a lot more challenging for my players; it is bad enough they are only going to get their part either tonight or tomorrow.

I think that my two conrasting ideas are quite different and am, for the most part happy with how it turnded out. Later on this evening I have to make some final adjustments and add the final touches and hopefully things will be all set.

Composing my new piece for voice has been an exciting challenge. I have seperated the piece into two seperate characters, "Fire" and "Ice" and each character is supported musically by different scales. The Ice character is based on a whole tone scale (starting on C) giving a very airy, glassy feeling, there are no semi-tones, meaning no leading tone. The Fire character is based on an octatonic scale starting on a. This scale helps me produce a bruding effect and helps create a darker, contrsasting character compared to the ice. Since the octatonic scale is based on two diminished chords I plan to use this idea and develop it (ex. using both diminished chords to create a polychord/ or using all the notes of the chord). The challenge right now is to figure out how to switch back and fourth between characters without making things boaring and predictable.

setting text to rhythm

When setting the text of my poem to rhythm I wanted to set it naturally, but with expression and with some elements of coherence and surprise. I created coherence by using the same rhythmic figure (a triplet) on the words that rhymed, and I created some surprises by proloning some words and delivering words later then expected.

After showing the text to my class I recieved some good comments, they said that it seemed to be set naturally, but they also mentioned some things that could be changed. It was brought up that singers like long notes so they can show off their sound, so it was recommended that I put longer note values when I write my piece. I also learned how to set the text under the notes in terms of dashes bewteen broken words and lines between words.

My next step is to dig in and start composing.

New Project

After a lot of searching and reading I have finally found a text that I like to set to music, I finally decided on a poem by the poet Robert Frost. I found it difficult to find a text that I liked to set to music, I searched many different resources and I had a lot of texts that I liked, but I found that music would not enhance them. I searched through a lot of Edgar Allen Poe, I looked on the internet and through a bunch of different compliation books consisting of poems. I eventaully went to greek theatre as a resource and I found some really cool text from Oedipus Rex and after finding this I had made up my mind that this was the text I wanted. After spending a few days with this text I started to lose interest in it and I quickly put it aside and turned my attention back to a Robert Frost book. After reading the poem "Fire and Ice" I knew that this poem would be great to set to music, I thought I could do a lot with the two contrasting characters, fire and ice. My next step now is too set the text to a natural rhythm that I will use in my new piece.

Finally done

The first concert is done and I feel relieved that there is no more learning parts or stress of getting my score ready for my piano player to give him enough time to learn the part. I have defnitly enjoyed this expierence up until now, but as much as I would like to think that this is it for these pieces, I think there will always be something that I want to do more with them. I guess thats what being a musician and/or composer is about, always trying to make things better and clearly yours. I found for this project that coming up with ideas was not the hard part, I found the hard part to be the revisions. For examle the ending of my second piece refers back to the beginning and in class it was mentioned that it never fit, but finally I was able to tweak it and revise things so that it the ending made sense and was coherent. Again creating ideas was the easy part, but its taking these ideas, developing them and manipulating them is the hard part. Overall I was pleased with my three pieces I believe that I had three contrasting works, which is what I was going for and I believe that it showed off different characters of the vibraphone. I am interested in seeing what our next topic is so I can get started and create some more music.

A. Rideout

Character Piece #3

It took me a lot longer to write my third character piece, lots of ideas that were used and thrown away but at the end of the day, I was for the most part pleased with what I had. The time we spent discussing my piece was short due to the amount of time left in the class but there were enough comments to help me improve what I had already done. The big thing that had come up was a transition section that I had written. The peice from the beginning was building and growing until this section where it seemed to die to almost nothing but one note. The suggestions that were made to fix this were, after the build up, release the tension before the transition material. Also it was suggested that when I go back and fix the transition section that I don't leave it so light. Dr. Ross said he had some ideas for this section so I will go talk to him soon about changing this transition section.

My next step now is to start revising the material I have already written. It will be good to get back to looking at original material after taking a bit of a break from it, come at with hopefully fresh new ideas to improve what I already have.

Character Piece #2

After hearing the comments on my second character piece in class on Monday, I am left with lots of good comments and lots of ways to improve my piece. One important comment that came up from Dr. Ross is too expand on the b section that I have written; where I start to have 16th notes. I agree with this comment and my plan is too expand and add some variations to this section. Another comment brought was, what would it sound like if I references the beginning material at the end. I have thought about this and I think I am going to try doing this, hopefully give this piece a coherent ending. There was also conversation about the speed of the fan on the vibraphone. I definitly want to use the fan in my piece but I need to decide on a fan and how I should approach the performance aspect of the instrument and the fan. I have lots of things to think about and change and I am excited to make all my changes and try to make my composition better.

Blog for week 1 and 2!

This is going to be my blog entry for weeks 1 and 2, and then from now until the end of the semester there will be a blog posted weekly.

The idea of writting in an atonal frame is a new idea and a new concept to me, before, I had only put my time into tonal music. Because of this I found writting my chord progression difficult to write. After spending a large amount of time working out chords I had finally made my 15 chord progression which I thought was great. There were lots of great comments made in class about my progression, comments that were going to help the progression to become even better. I had to change one chord because it was enharmonically spelt as a very normal, tonal chord. I also changed a few other chords because a comment was made in class that a few chords sounded the same and had very similiar tension levels. I wanted the rise of tension to be steady and coherent but I didn't want the chords to sound similar. These comments were great and helped my progression grow into something better.

I finally presented my first piece in class today. I was pleased with the work I had done and I was happy with what I was going to present. After playing down through it, I had some very useful comments that will influence my piece. One of the comments that was made was that there was one part where the vibraphone and the piano finally played in unison and created a very cool spot in the disjunct piece. The comment was that it would be nice to have more of that, but at the same time another classmate wondered if I were to do that again would it ruin that one special moment. Another comment Dr. Ross gave was to play around with registers and to see what kind of cool things could come from changing registers. I was very happy with my piece and I know that the comments that were made will help my piece. My plan now is to put these comments into my action and try them out.

A. Rideout