The Fredösphere

I'm working on something jazzy right now and my compositional approach has changed.  I spend more time at the piano because I can't really hear the chords I want to write.  I have to try them out.  Here's the thing:  I have the most success finding the sound I want not by thinking about the chords, but rather by positioning my fingers into configurations that experience has shown me are likely to be successful, and then throwing them at the keyboard.  I, the least kinesthetic person on earth, am feeling my way through this piece.  Banging my way, really.

Routinely I find the pitches simply don't matter.  Certain intervalic relationships must be present, but there's a lot of leeway--major vs. minor, perfect vs. diminished or augmented.  There's a tired old joke that classical musicians ignorantly believe that, in jazz, it doesn't matter what notes you play, that it's all about keeping things plausible through boldness and fluency.  Maybe I'm revealing my ignorance here, but hey, I gotta speak the truth as I see it:  individual notes don't matter.

Maybe what I'm writing isn't really jazz.  Ah, that's the problem:  we haven't carefully defined our terms!  Let the pointless semantic head-butting begin!

Labels: Composition, Creativity

Neal Stephenson's Anathem sits at the intersection of science fiction and choral music, so naturally I'm going to blog it repeatedly.  However, there's more going on with this book (I'm about 70% of the way through its 900 pages, btw) that needs to be talked about.

Good or bad, lovable or hateful, this book is very unusual.  (If it were just an ordinary novel, not SF, I'd have to call it extremely unusual.)  Anathem has the chance to become a movement book.  Like Stranger in a Strange Land and a very few other novels I could mention if I took a while to remember them, Anathem presents a way of life that is very seductive and somewhat achievable.  (Much more achievable than SIASL, where you need to learn how to communicate with the dead and manipulate matter with your thoughts if you really want to get with the program.)

It will take a lot of stars getting into alignment for any significant Anathem monastic communities to get organized.  I'm not saying I think it will happen; only that Anathem is that rare book where such a movement could be even possible.  Plus, it's not like SIASL made much of a mark on our culture, although it did at least introduce one word into common use (common among geeks, that is).  And that's nothing to sneeze at.

Stephenson's goal (if it was a conscious goal) to write a movement book will be helped along a bit because it was inspired by the work of an organization already in place:  the Long Now Foundation.  Stephenson is on video reading from the book and answering questions at a Long Now event.  Cantors in funky robes are thrown in for fun.  The music they sing is inspired by mathematics.  Some of it doesn't really work for me on a musical level, frankly, but it's worth something as a curiosity and a kind of proof-of-concept.  Give them time.  I may even try my hand at it too.  After I finish the 3 or 4 other projects clogging my queue.

Labels: Choral, Culture, Fiction, sci-fi

A very enjoyable meeting last night led to some tentative plans for next year that, if they pan out, will require me to write music for an orchestra.  Now, let me be clear:  we're talking here about a chamber orchestra.  Nevertheless, it's a band with a full string choir, a half-dozen woodwinds, a few brass, and percussion.  This would be--easily--the most diverse instrumental ensemble I've ever composed for.  I am, weirdly, less happy than I should be.  (Must ... manufacture ... happy ... thoughts.)

This experience has forced me to consider head-on an odd quirk of my composerly personality.  Why have I so little ambition to hear my music played by the big bands?  Why are the vast combinatorial possibilities not stimulating and challenging me?  And they are truly vast:  the number of possible sub-ensembles in an orchestra of n parts, and not counting tutti or the Cageian empty set, is 2ⁿ - 2.  If an orchestra score has 15 parts, that would be 32,766 sub-ensembles.

It's not that I'm one of those needy wimps who rely on limits to stimulate creativity.  It's just that I do not find orchestras all that exciting.  It's difficult for an ensemble of that size to avoid a sound that congeals into some kind of bland glop.  Now, add a piano or organ and make it a concerto, and suddenly I'm all ears.  The very clear contrast (not to mention, the drama) introduced by the soloist makes all the difference.  (And let it be a soloist which a huge range of dynamics, pitches, and tone colors; violin or even trombone concertos don't quite generate the sparks I want.)

Or, there's always my first love:  human voices in combination.  Not a soloist, please; what I really want is a choir of angels.  In fact, for the orchestral project I mentioned above, I'll have the freedom to insist on putting a vocal quartet front and center.  Now if only I can find a stealthy way to pour pancake syrup into the bells of the winds and the f-holes of the strings on the night of the performance (oopsies!!!), I'll be all set.  Only the singers will remain.  We'll return to that ancient dream, the primordial ocean of our ancestors, and listen for God's own perfect ensemble:  till human voices wake us, and we drown.

(Ending this with an allusion to T. S. Elliot?  I wasn't expecting that.  Weird.)

Labels: Composition

"Try googling Britney Spears intellectual rigor and see how many hits you get."  Our conversation ended with this sentence, but it began--last night, in our living room--with me telling the Wifeösphere about Hexachordal, a rising internet meme and renaissance Brit.  Youtube pointed me to Tom Milsom (his real name) a few months ago; yesterday, aworks reminded me of his existence, and informed me of his remarkable awareness of 20th classical music history, via this video:



Notice Milsom's suggested starting points into the avant garde maze:  Cage, Berio, Stockhausen, Berg, Schoenberg.  Not the advice I'd give to neophytes, for personal or pragmatic reasons, but hey, you've got to be glad a kid like this is paying that much attention.  Besides his youth, his astonishing skill at writing and performing pop tunes seems an improbable trait to combine with geeking out on 12 tone and musique concréte techniques.  Here's him singing Indigo:



Very good, don't you think?  I confess to multi-multiple listenings yesterday afternoon.  I haven't overdosed on a song like that since I discovered Polyphonic Spree.  I would like to see Milsom rework the 2-voice counterpoint during the 7th inning stretch, but otherwise, it's got a great beat and you can read your thesaurus to it.  (Yes, it's mostly a list.  You see Milsom use that approach in other songs to less effect, but with Indigo he seems to have struck goldenrod. And anyway, Walt Whitman wrote a lot of lists and nobody complains.)

Pop tune talent; appealing looks and non-threatening affect; and some intellectual chops in the music theory department:  a triple threat.  Jupiter is aligned with Mars.  A rare, magical combination.  Hoo boy, do I hate him.

Labels: Composer, VideoClip

My never-ending research on the topics of science fiction, choral music, and the effects of Hee Haw on modern font development led me to these gentle distractions from today's Big Event.  First, a one-man quartet synopsizes Star Wars:



Then, I give you a very nicely-prepared summary--and one more example of the kind of kooky obsessiveness that the internet enables--of font jokes from Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Does anyone do obscure reference humor more boldly than these guys?  Finally, here's the official Hee Haw site.  Man, that was a bad show.  Bad, bad, bad.

Labels: fun, sci-fi, VideoClip