Category: music

Creating something every day for 365 days: the music

Today in crapping out music

Posted on by Dale

Yes, I know it’s Thanksgiving, but I woke up from dreaming about a) men getting tattoos, and b) the symphony.

Leaving aside the tattooed men for the moment—oh, GROW UP YOU PEOPLE—I decided to slip upstairs while I could and crap out some notes.  I had gotten the fourth movement nicely started, and then it nicely ground to a silence, which was my intent.  The problem with grinding to a silence is that then one must start back up.  That’s where the dilemma is, and that’s what I woke up dreaming.  If I had actually dreamed a solution, that would have been fantastic, but I didn’t.  I just awoke to the need to do something about it.

For the moment, I’ve been falling back on my “abortive attempts” strategy: putting in a double bar (to mark my place) and just plopping out new sounds to see if I can trigger something that works.  I’ve also been going back into the file of the original fourth movement and stealing stuff I liked from there to see if it will fit in with the new stuff.  Which it should, because as I said previously I’m not starting from scratch, just rewriting what I’ve already done.  So far, it’s a good stopgap measure: the old work is not bad stuff, and it may get me started when I’m actually able to sit down and work all day on it.

You will have noticed that I have not shared any of this.

So, tattooed men.

Let’s see if I can find a nice, pretty, safe-for-work image of what was running through my head last night…

That’s kind of it, although I recall the tattoos as being more geometric than tribal, just big blocks of black.  We were at some kind of social gathering, and all the men had these tattoos on their arms.  (Click on the image to see the whole page of some very nice tattoos.  And then click on this link to see some absolutely beautiful tattoos!)

Other than my long-term fascination with tattoos, I don’t have any explanation for the dream.  The whole concept of marking oneself appeals to me, and it would be disingenuous of me not to recognize that part of the appeal lies in what I take to be an inherent masculinity in the concept.  (Certainly the young men on the tribal page are healthy exemplars of manly manliness.)

However, I’ve always shied away from the idea of large tattoos on my own personal body.  The two I have are small and discreet.  If you didn’t know I had them, you’d never know.  I think it’s because I have no confidence in my ability to carry it off, masculinity-speaking-wise.  I don’t have the broad chest or shapely biceps that the specimens you see on the internet have, and I never did.  One doesn’t want to look ludicrous, after all.

I’ve been forbidden to get more tattoos because some of us don’t find them appealing so it’s kind of a moot point to think about the topic, but there are at least three that I would get if I could.

The first is my lovely first wife’s signature.  You’d think that one would be appealing, but no.  I’ve informed her that if she dies, I’m showing up at the funeral with her name tattooed on me and everyone will think it’s sweet.  Probably I’d want that one on the inside of my wrist.  (FYI, I have a sheet with her signature already filed away.)

The second is a lizard.  I hesitate to use the term “spirit animal” out in public, but it’s an animal that has recurred in my meditations and in my art collecting, and one day I realized that I have half a dozen of the critters sitting around my study and the labyrinth.  It must mean something.  I don’t have a design picked out, and I’m not sure where I’d put it.  Maybe as I continue to evolve into an Old Man, I’ll get a rather large one on my chest.  Break down that particular barrier. (For a very interesting explication of what tattoos can mean, I highly recommend Seven Tattoos by Peter Trachtenberg.)

The third one is the Lichtenbergian motto, Cras melior est, which translates as “Tomorrow is better.”  This is my friend Kevin’s idea for his tattoo, and I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me previously.  Upper arm, perhaps, or my shoulder blade?  As I said, it’s a moot point, so I don’t spend a lot of time pondering the issue.

There may be others.  I seem to recall wanting four, but nothing is bubbling to the surface at the moment.  The important thing for me is that none of them are decoration.  The tattoos on the two pages to which I’ve linked are beautiful, but many of them seem to be sheerly decorative, “tribal” in the sense of “trendy/in-crowd.”  That’s not what I’m after.

I think that the best word to describe what I hope for in getting a tattoo is incorporation.  (I will now pause to let Marc shiver with a frisson of sinthome or whatever it is he shivers with.)  The marks I want on my body—permanently—are markers: some thing, some idea, some force that I want embodied on my body and in my living.  I crave the commitment.

Hm.  I did not plan to write about tattoos this morning.   Wonder what that’s about?

Problems

Posted on by Dale

Do you know what is FUN?

Finally getting your brain in gear to compose again after at least a month of not being able to, and TECHNICAL ISSUES TAKE UP ALL MORNING.  That’s what is not fun.

Short version: I have keyboard controller, i.e., it doesn’t make sound on its own, which plugs into the computer via a USB cable.  I use it to a) input notes into Finale (itself a charming bundle of issues); and b) noodle around on a small software synth.

So when it stopped working recently, I was nonplussed.  It would play for four or five seconds, then stop sending MIDI data to the synth/Finale altogether.  Restarting it or rescanning the MIDI would fix it, but only for another four or five seconds.

I’m trying to get better about composing with the keyboard rather than just plopping notes on the screen, and this issue was not helping my efforts.

I have replaced the USB cable, reset the MIDI setup, etc. etc. etc.  It took me an hour and a half via Google just now to try and discard three different solutions, and then finally stumbled across someone in an Apple Support forum who figured out that his USB cable (essentially a power cable) was too long.  The computer wasn’t sending enough power to the keyboard to keep it running.

A shorter cable would fix it, but my set-up doesn’t allow for a shorter cable.  (I mean, I could clean off my desk, I suppose, but that would take a day and a half…)

A powered USB hub—one that plugs in and delivers power on its own— was a suggested solution, and of course I have one from days gone by.  Dug it out, and that may have fixed the problem.  I’ll report back.  Later.  After I’ve composed more than the two measures I squeezed out this morning before being sucked into the Intertubes.

So…

Posted on by Dale

I did an odd thing today.  I pulled out the fourth movement of the Symphony No. 1 in G and started over on it.

Started over.

My original plan this morning was to open the old file and do some Things to it to fix it, the first of which was to expand the note values of the lento section to be more legible: 32nd note triplets in an extremely slow tempo (as in, 12 notes to a single beat) were simply too hard to read. The plan was to use a built-in utility to make each 32nd note into a 16th note and redistribute All The Notes into new measures.

However, since none of the empty measures up and down the orchestra were real rests, those measures didn’t get doubled and redistributed.  Therefore, on playback, nothing was aligned—woodwinds were wandering in and out when they should have been in sync with the strings—and though it might have been “interesting” it was not good.

So I used a utility to make all the empty measures real rests and tried again.  (There was also an issue with the pickup measure not doubling.)

Now everything lined up, but none of the dynamics moved with their notes, i.e., ffs and pps and pizzicatos were way off.

Finally, after giving it a good listen, I decided that everything I’ve done since April 2008—and here I am referring to my entire life, not just my composition—has made it necessary for me to scrap the old stuff and start over.

I’m not starting from scratch. The opening mood and main theme will remain the same, but I’m rewriting it from the ground up.  Literally: the swirling triplets that were in the violins are now in the celli and basses and are actually completely different notes.  There’s a new countertheme that probably will grow in importance, and harmonies are a little different—and likely to become even more different—than before.  It’s an adventure.

What prompted this?

Yesterday my lovely first wife and I went to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to hear a concert that featured a kinda-premiere of a symphony by Richard Prior, a professor at Emory.  It was competent but not thrilling, and while I don’t think I’m at the same technical level as Dr. Prior, the experience made me think that I should take another look at my own symphony in the belief that it might actually be more interesting.

So there we go.  The suspense is terrible; I hope it will last.

Where does music come from?

Posted on by Dale

All songs are born to man out in the great wastes. Sometimes they come to us like weeping, deep from the pangs of the heart, sometimes like a playful laughter which springs from the joy that life and the wonderful expanses of the world around us provide. We do not know how songs arrive with our breath—in the form of words and music, and not as ordinary speech.

—Kilimê, East Greenland Eskimo, recorded by Knud Rasmussen; Pharmako/Dynamis, p. 239

Where does music come from?

The question is not Why do humans make music?, but more like How do humans make music? and more specifically How do humans make new music? Where does it come from?

I get asked this question all the time about my music. How do I come up with it all? Where does those melodies come from? How do I decide what goes where? And how does someone without a lick of academic musical training create things like William Blake’s Inn and the Cello Sonata and Six Preludes (no fugues) and Seven Dreams of Falling and my super secret new project?

Hell if I know, is the short answer.

I just spent three days in the mountains on retreat with my fellow Lichtenbergians, and all I produced was about a dozen ways not to sing the phrase “Rip me from this darkness.” If I knew where music comes from, I’d have a lot more to show for my effort.

Here’s what I know about where my music comes from. The Minotaur opens Dream Three of Seven Dreams with a four line lament on his unhappiness. (At least he does in the original script; I’ve requested that the dialogue be retained for the libretto.) At the end of the scene, as he and Theseus are making love, those four lines return (amplified) with a completely different emotional impulse, so to speak.

I’m therefore working backwards: I know the end of the scene is an ecstatic duet, and so I start working on making that happen. Later, I’ll take the melodies associated with those four lines and scale them back into a lament, changing the key and orchestration, perhaps even the rhythms, so that the notes that ring in our ears as ecstatic love start out as unhappy loneliness.

I also know that one effective way for music to depict ecstasy is to have the orchestra whaling away in chromatic arpeggiation while the singer soars above it with a strong, simple melodic line. (See: “Liebestod,” Tristan und Isolde, Wagner.) So far, I’ve approached it by trying to come up with the strong, simple melodic line and seeing where that takes me, but alas—that strategy has failed me.

I could keep working away trying to come up with that line, but I think what I’m going to try for a while is the other approach: work on the orchestral whaling and then construct the melody to soar above it. If the accompaniment gives me what I need, then no one will ever know that the melody was an afterthought. Well, you will, but you’ll keep your mouth shut in interviews, won’t you?

So the answer to the question “Where does your music come from?” appears to be “from a cold, calculating brain, not from a deep well of inspiration what are you crazy?”

I’ll keep you posted on the results.

I’m back—now with extra whinging!

Posted on by Dale

I’m in the mountains, on our annual Lichtenbergian Retreat, wherein we are each to bring some creative work on which we’ve been slacking.  Since my recent work on Seven Dreams is the very definition of “slacking,” i.e., “no work at all,” I’ve brought it with me to jumpstart the process again.

(To be fair: 1) I ran out of text; 2) I was getting ready for and attending Alchemy; 3) my son got married.  Still, I bet Wagner didn’t let things like that slow down his ego work.)

At any rate, I’m in the Blue Ridge in a great cabin with four other Lichtenbergians—none of whom, I’ve noticed, seem to have brought any work at all, but let that pass.  I’ve brought the snippets of text which I have demanded respectfully requested begin and end Dream Three.  Hey, they’re Scott’s actual text from the original play, so I figure it’s not a problem.

Even if it is a problem, even if he ends up sending me a completely different text, I figure I can play around with scene setting and thematic/harmonic bits that I can then use with the new text.  As I said last night, measures full of sixteenth notes can be very flexible.  Bring on the words!

Here’s the part you’ve been reading for: whining.

In Dream  Three, Theseus and the Minotaur have had enough chitchat about their respective ritual fates and are getting it on.  The four lines of the Minotaur’s opening aria return, this time with a partner.  So, ecstatic duet, right?

Since I haven’t written any real music since August, I’m just aiming to produce crap the entire weekend, just getting my crapping muscles back in shape.  I don’t expect to use anything that comes out of my head in the next 48 hours—though one never knows.

My problem is that many of the halfway decent bits I’ve scribbled down are more Broadway than La Scala.  Don’t ask me what the difference is, there is one and I know it when I hear it.  So do audiences, and so do critics.  So I keep scribbling, breaking up some of the Broadway tunes with odd harmonies or melodic intervals, and it sounds more La Scala, but then it’s not very soaring or ecstatic.

Yes, I am modifying my music to please unknown critics.  On a personal level I have no desire be known as the opera world’s Frank Wildhorn or Andrew Lloyd Webber: singable tunes, loved by unsophisticated audiences but scorned by all right-thinking persons.  As Noel Coward said, “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”

On an artistic level, opera voices are not show voices, and the same melodies that fit comfortably on Neil Patrick Harris’s voice or Patti LuPone’s sound weak under Erwin Schrott’s or Anna Netrebko’s.  You want to please the audience and please the singers, and so you have to move them through the notes differently, if that makes sense, and  there’s more than a little element of athletic showing-off in the opera world.  If you make it too easy, they’ll disdain it.

I’ll get it done.  I just have to get back in the groove of pushing it all out—instead of blogging about it—because if I can produce a big enough pile of crap, there should be a pony in there somewhere, right?

In other news…

Posted on by Dale

I recently renewed my membership in the American Composers Forum and immediately began looking over the Opportunities available to members.

So far today, I have submitted the following:

  • Fresh Squeezed Opera Company: They were looking for new arias, etc., so I submitted “My mother, bored and pampered,” promising to orchestrate it for their small ensemble if they select it.
  • Denison University Tutti Festival: I submitted two works, the Pieces for Bassoon and String Quartet, and “Blakes Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”

I’m also considering inquiring about the Sacramento State University’s odd little posting about premiering works and students studying the history of such premieres.  I mean, why not?  Who says I can’t whack out a new piece for chorus and small ensemble by “early November”?

I’ll keep you posted about further submissions as I continue to explore the Opportunities.

I’m bored.

Posted on by Dale

Having finished orchestrating Dream One and practically finished laying in the flagstone around the fire pit, I have written all the letters I can stand to write at the moment, so I am casting about for something to occupy myself.

I suppose I could tackle Five Easier Pieces, but I’m not that bored.  I think what I shall do instead is tinker with Dream Three, the libretto of which I don’t technically have but the tone of which I think I can work on without too many issues down the road.  Specifically, I’m going to take the Minotaur’s first speech from Scott’s script and pretend that’s my text.  Even if that’s not what we end up with, I will have the opening to the scene regardless; words are easy to adapt if you use a crowbar.

Dream One, “And what of us?”

Posted on by Dale

I think this worked out quite well.

Dream One, 4c. “And what of us/Let us joyfully gaze” | piano score [pdf] | orchestral mp3

While working on this bit, I dug into Finale and figured out lots of keyboard shortcuts for the things I do the most.  It’s incredible how well hidden some of them are.  I learned two or three versions ago to buy the Trailblazer Guide to accompany the software.  It’s not very in-depth, but it does have a lot of helpful hints on how to approach your workflow.  I got a lot more efficient with this piece—which is good, since I have six more Dreams to go!

And in case you hadn’t noticed, Dream One is now completely orchestrated.

Dream One, “My mother, bored and pampered”

Posted on by Dale

In the best tradition of artists everywhere, I am declaring Ariadne’s aria abandoned completed, at least until I have to fix it for good.  It kind of works, and right now that will have to serve.

Besides thinning out some of the accompaniment in her big moment, I also finally got Finale to pay attention when I asked it to slow down the tempo.  Something got borked in the tempo marking itself; I deleted it and created a new one.  Who knows?  Finale’s technical support (staffed ENTIRELY BY UNICORNS YOU GUYS) certainly doesn’t.

Dream One, 4b. “My mother, bored and pampered | piano score (pdf) | orchestral mp3

I am hoping that the last section, “And what of us,” is going to be clear sailing, since it’s all motifs from earlier—Daedalus’s fly/fall motif and the machine music—and then the end is straight up copy/pasting from the opening number.

A new understanding of “Fly and fall”

Posted on by Dale

I’m going to brag on my music, which I don’t normally do.  Bear with me.

Last night, in the labyrinth, I put on my headphones and gave a listen to “Fly and fall” (mp3) because I wanted to hear what it sounded like under the full moon, which was doing this incredible Dance of the Seven Veils with clouds and fog after the storm earlier in the evening.

Here’s what I heard:  it sounds like—I suppose because it is—a commercial for a new luxury car.  Daedalus is very proud of his achievement in sending his son skyward every year, and it shows.  Icarus is sleek, gleaming, fast, and sexy.   The monitors onstage would show this neatly packaged vision of the Event.

For example:

Cool, huh?  Yes, I spent time on that image (Icarus image credit here) instead of hammering out orchestration issues in “My mother, bored and pampered.”  Or napping.

Only at the end, in the unexpected key lurch, do we hear Daedalus’s actual excitement and pride—and with “just as surely fall,” his fear—for his son.

I do hope that I get hired to direct this thing.

In other news, Scott, make a note: I just noticed that in this annual Event, Daedalus is no longer making the flight himself.  That’s probably a point for Icarus to make in the great debate in Dream Four.