Lipstick Traces—Mass Culture's Pop Heart Is Late To The Party...Again

Greil Marcus
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989)

[My notes say:]

pp. 70-73—on the explicit drawing of parallels between Punk and the Frankfurt School
p. 70—"The inane radio jingle you heard too many times a day fed into a totality: to get that jingle off the air, you somehow understood, the radio had to be changed, which meant that society had to be changed."

This "you somehow understood"...how isn't terribly important, unless it is. For me individually this was a (rare) textbook case of maturity interacting with experience; for a larger group of people not understandable as a monolith in either respect (or were they?) it's hard for me to imagine exactly what must/might have been In The Air the moment this totalism was realized as mass consciousness. Which is to say, I wonder if the totalistic thinking actually came first, arising from general (and legitimate) discontent but also being truly ignited by genuinely puerile and anti-social tendencies which are in no way either unique or interesting. Certainly these tendencies will tend towards the Total, and that is not a strength but a weakness, i.e. because this becomes, let's say, a very clumsy (if not bedridden) vehicle of both theory and praxis. It has no nuance or flexibility. And of course everything IS connected, but the connections themselves can be quite varied.

[from a post-it, 2017]

[A second such note:]

p. 70—"...now the premises of the old critique were exploding out of a spot no one in the Frankfurt School...had ever recognized: mass culture's pop cult heart."

Great news as far as it goes. But as for "positing punk music as a transhistorical phenomenon" (paraphrasing a passage from GM's Wikipedia page), the question remains of where/how/why this Critique does and does not bubble up; why it is, say, not always, and not never, but rather Transhistorical, ebbing and flowing. Hence as the punks were getting woke, others were dozing; and now that yet further groups of woke people are coming and going, Punk has passed into History, and a real live Punk is a sight to be pitied at least as much as respected. Hence the Transhistorical encompasses much that is in fact merely ephemeral; much that never Gets Over The Hump; much which cannot manifest and pass gloriously into history because no one person or demographic or occupational group can be counted upon once they're Woke to stay that way. So, uh...were the Frankfurt School ahead of their time, or the Punks behind theirs?

Mumford -- Art and Technics (xi)

"Each art has its technical side...what would often be, were it not for the ultimate end of the process, sheer monotony and drudgery. But in the period when handicraft dominated, the artist and the technician arrived, as it were, at a happy compromise... That extra effort, that extra display of love and esthetic skill, tends to act as a preservative of any structure; for, until the symbols themselves become meaningless, men tend to value, and if possible to save from decay and destruction, works of art that bear the human imprint." (49)

Re: "preservatives," here is a useful, matter-of-fact statement of observations that have been made in increasingly strident terms since Mumford's time. Concretization of Art in discrete material artifacts has some of the same implications as does consciousness of and self-identification with cultures, traditions, races, etc. Perhaps there is even an evolutionary incentive for "the human imprint" to "act as a preservative" of our inanimate artistic creations much as it does regarding our living offspring; but there are, to be sure, mechanisms of devolution here as well. Concretization channels the weight of a whole array of human needs and impulses onto material objects, visual symbols, etc. The cultural-utilitarian halflife of such objects and symbols is usually quite a bit shorter than that which their "preservatives" ultimately enable them to enjoy; and so these works stick around long past their expiration date, long after they have ceased to be "relevant," as the most impatient cultural commentators would have it; this for better or for worse, and indeed often both at once. Artworks start to smell funny long before there is sufficient collective social momentum to toss them, and by the time that momentum coalesces, the discourse has become, as an apt figure of speech would have it, toxic. It turns out that this "happy compromise" plays better in times of scarcity than times of abundance; in the latter condition, more is preserved for longer than anyone can find the wherewithal to make sense of. Hence our world is overpopulated with images and ideas as well as with people.

Of course so-called relevance is very much in the eye (and the Philosophy/Theory) of the beholder. Often enough the full cultural relevance ledger looks completely irrational and counterproductive to everybody all at once. But the preservative acts upon the artifact regardless, blindly keeping in circulation the unjustly neglected and the justly ridiculed alike. If artists collectively gave as much thought to this general dynamic as they do to warring over the turf it encompasses, there would suddenly be a lot more vacant turf and a lot less fighing over it.

Hidden Tracks (ii)

As long-time MFEDI readers know, I've been fixated for some time on the question of the inherent value of art considered apart from it's content. This comes as a direct consequence of the frequency with which I encounter people, institutions, theories, philosophies and public policies alike that take art to be an inherently positive thing simply by virtue of its being art. The most obvious flaw in this idea is that we, collectively, cannot seem to agree on what is and is not art in the first place, and hence, a rational debate is impossible because we cannot agree on a definition of our terms. But what if we could define our terms, proceeded to have the debate, and reached the conclusion that all art is, in fact, wholesome, constructive, and valuable (i.e. the way many seem to have concluded anyway, but which I personally disagree with)? Where would that leave us?

More recently, what fascinates me about this idea is the matter of supply and demand. How much of a good thing can we have before that good thing becomes a mediocre thing, or even a bad thing? Is there anything about art that would lead us to expect it to be immune to this mechanism (other than the fact that because we can't define what it is, we can't really know the answer)?

Supply and demand is an economic principle, but there are parallels to this idea in every conceivable facet of life. There's the physical aspect of it, seen in the principle of diffusion; the geographical/migratory aspect of it, seen in people going where the jobs are, where the resources are, or simply trying to get farther and farther from each other (i.e. suburban sprawl); the biological aspect of it, where practically any element in its purest form is toxic to living things, where we know it is possible to die from drinking too much of the substance most essential to survival (water), and where overpopulation ultimately leads to near extinction.

I lack the formal Philosophical grounding to know if there's an established global term for this idea outside the realm of economics, but one can clearly see that it is everywhere, both in nature and in society. It is not only possible to have too much of a good thing, it is virtually always the case that having too much of a good thing is 100 times worse than having just barely enough, and only marginally better than having none at all. Hence, even if we cannot define art, it would be silly to believe that its case would any different. And so I worry about it. A lot.

Art is everywhere. There's more music available for free online than a person could listen to in a thousand lifetimes. It would be a chore to find a vacant storefront in a bad neighborhood to fix up and turn into an art space because most all of them have already been bought up and turned into art spaces. And then there's the relatively recent idea of finding beauty in everyday objects or sounds (i.e. from Cage, et al), something which I embrace wholeheartedly, sometimes against the complaints of acquaintances and colleagues, but which also scares the living crap out of me as an artist because it would seem to render my work irrelevant, even to myself.

Digging even further, there's the "music is for everybody" issue. There's scarcely a saying I feel more conflicted about than that, since, while I (and everyone else) would just love to believe it solely for it's power to validate what we do, we all know it's not true. Speaking in absolutes is a death wish in rational debate, and this saying manages to do it not once but twice, first with "music" (i.e. ALL music? Music generally? What?) and, more obviously, with "everybody." More relevant to the present discussion, though, is that us musicians are literally putting ourselves out of business with this phrase. This is a brutal irony considering that it is most often trotted out as a marketing tool aimed at getting more kids involved in music, and hence yielding more income both for the music teachers who teach them and for the performers whose concerts it is assumed they will then attend for the rest of their lives. I've bellyached before about the soulless cynicism inherent in that thinking, so I'll leave that issue alone for now. The point is that in aiming to create more and more of a good thing, we inevitably create too much of it, and that it's equally inevitable that this will leave us worse off in the long run than we were before.

Some would (and do) argue that we're not creating the same good thing here, since the vast majority of these students don't become professional musicians, and hence don't offer a competing product (i.e. "professional level" performances). In a world with any justice whatsoever, that would indeed be the case, but we do not live in such a world, for in practice, audiences don't choose "professional level" performances over less-than competent performances; they're more interested in their friends' bands than anyone else's band simply because it's their friends, and they largely can't tell the difference in musicianship anyway where there is one. The retort to that is that more music education creates more astute listeners who can tell the difference. Perhaps, but it also creates more friends who continue to perform at a less-than-professional level as adults, creating a product that friendless professional musicians simply can't compete with, no matter how good they are. Further, it is demonstrable that more and more of these students are pursuing professional careers insofar as that entails majoring in music in college. That's the crown jewel of the "music is for everybody" battlecry, and one which is responsible above all else for its exceptional power to induce the opposite of its intended outcome.

Why the extreme cynicism? Because if there's one thing I wasn't prepared for when i left school, it was what audiences everywhere do and don't notice about musical performances. We've all had the experience of playing a less-than-stellar show and subsequently receiving a warm compliment from an oblivious audience member who couldn't tell the difference. That's not really what I'm talking about, though. I'm thinking more of identity: age, gender, dress, manner, politics and social group all seem to have more to do with success than musicianship does. I won't even tack on the seemingly obligatory "...these days" to that last statement, since "these days" are the only ones I know. Who can say if it's ever been any different? I do have a theory, though, which is that the age of musical plenty we live in has made this even worse than it could possibly have been before. Indeed, it would mark a rather momentous break with countless observable phenomena in nature and human society alike if this were not the case.

It's fun (and very blogospheric of me, I must admit) to list off economic, geographic and biological principles as if I know something about them, whereas in truth, I have only a cursory understanding of each phenomenon I listed. Nonetheless, allow me to attempt to spin this cursory understanding into a halfway compelling recommendation for the way forward. As I understand it, the word "sustainability" is on the tips of a lot of people's tongues these days. This is because we're slowly realizing that economic growth is not mediated solely by our desire to make it happen, but by factors beyond our direct control, like the non-renewability of certain natural resources, or the impossibility of technology replacing more workers than there are left to replace. Hence, instead of continued economic growth benefitting everyone, we are finding that the costs of maintaining a certain rate of growth are so severe as to defeat its utilitarian purpose.

It's more than a stretch to lump modern-day arts advocacy in with fascistic global capitalism, but I don't think it's debatable to say that growth-for-growth's-sake describes the philosophy of one as well as the other, or that there's a tipping point right around the corner in both cases. As we know, too much of something portends that thing's imminent starvation or diffusion or migration or explosion. So-called sustainability isn't so much about surviving that endgame as it is about achieving a kind of equilibrium that prevents the situation from ever getting quite so dire in the first place. So what does sustainability mean in the economics of art? A good start would be to abandon citing extrinsic benefits as the primary method of establishing art's value in the public arena. Nothing could be less sustainable than that smoke and mirrors act. A related action would be to embrace the idea of exposure over that of proselytizing, or in other words, to present music one believes strongly in to new audiences without a hint of superiority or moralization. This ensures a sustainable (if small) influx of new listeners who haven't merely been fooled or seduced into showing up. And last, of course, is to abandon the conceit of music being for everyone.

How could I write such a thing? Besides knowing it not to be true, the idea terrifies me, and not because I'm some elitist snob who'd rather be poor and unknown if it means getting the better of my aesthetic enemies. Sign me up for fame and fortune yesterday, but I'm afraid that what's keeping me from getting there isn't a lack of a musical awareness in the world at large, but rather a heaping, volatile, unsustainable pile of it that just keeps on growing, rendering my contribution to it more meaningless by the hour.

Hidden Tracks (i)

I often think about how the relative fortunes and career trajectories of musicians of different generations are affected by technology, and when I say this, I'm thinking purely in terms of their paths to "success," whether defined by themselves or someone else. Obviously, technology affects what we create, not just our success or failure in being recognized for it, and that's certainly a fertile area for discussion, but it's also worth pondering whether or not a musician is in the right place at the right time relative to technology, and how that affects, for lack of a better term, their business decisions.

I was born in 1982, started playing music around 1993, and consider myself to have gotten "serious" sometime in 1999. It's often difficult for me to distinguish what has actually changed since then from what I was simply ignorant of, but to my recollection, while record labels still meant something, everybody and their brother was already recording, producing and distributing their own discs back then, and it was obvious that sooner or later, having a CD out would cease to mean anything at all. When exactly that threshold was reached is probably impossible to determine; it probably happened at different times in different places, and may, in truth, have already happened most places by the time I even became aware of it. Suffice it to say, then, that I've always felt just a bit screwed over.

Whether or not that's justified is another story, for I've benefitted in innumerable ways (most importantly as a listener, I think) from the increased accessibility (lower case "a") of recorded music. It's no coincidence that my getting "serious" about music happened exactly when I started spending substantial portions of my time listening to music, but the cruelty of that scenario is that I was allowed to become enraptured with a world that was already dead and gone. Even though I've tried many times to accept that fact and move on, part of me will never forget the feeling of staring at the paltry stack of discs that comprised my collection circa 1999 and looking forward to the day when I could offer the world such a document of my own. Every one of those discs mattered to me, so the idea of making one myself seemed significant. Little did I know it was already too late.

So, my relationship to technology is a bit like the milk commercial where the guy arrives in what appears to be heaven (for those who haven't seen it: besides angels, there are brownies and chocolate chip cookies everywhere, but when he opens the fridge, the milk carton is empty, and he's left wondering where he actually is). Such is life as a musician who came of age during digital distribution's pre-natal stage, seduced by music when physical media still mattered, but unable to move others beyond casual resignation using the same format.

Truthfully, I could have jumped on the train just in the nick of time had I so chosen. There certainly were people my age and younger in 1999 who had discs of their own, and although it may already have meant next to nothing in the "real world," it certainly seemed pretty cool to other young people who didn't know any better. The problem with me was that I did know better. I largely resented these kids, first of all because their rich uncle had obviously bankrolled the project, and second because, though I had quite a ways to go myself, I could hear that their playing (and writing, in some cases) was not worthy of releasing a document.

I didn't want to be like that, and so it was something of a point of pride for me for a long time that I didn't have a disc. I wanted one, but I wanted it to be good, and seeing so many kids my age coming out with junk that they'd obviously be embarrassed about within the decade made me think twice. I'm glad I did, because anything I could have mustered back then would most certainly have had to be pulled of the shelves (err...servers?) in short order. I was quite self-righteous about this choice for a long time; it was the only way to console myself for being left completely in the dust, especially after it became obvious that people were tiling their bathrooms with these things, and that I'd passed on my only fleeting chance to make one that mattered to anyone at all.

The vestiges of that self-righteousness now have me thinking that this is just one of the many cases where I've been punished for doing the right thing. But was it the right thing? I saved myself some cash, and spared the few people who would have heard it the consternation that I felt for so many of their kids' recorded efforts. But in a sense, I was also fiddling while Rome burned. If I had the benefit of hindsight, I might have gone whole hog just to do my best to catch the twilight of the pre-digital age. It's a chance no one will ever have again.

I'm making it sound like I have an enduring fondness for physical media when that's not entirely the case. I've been dragging my feet a bit, but recently opened an iTunes account, and have purchased a few things that way. One thing holding me back is that I acquired more physical media over the last several years than I've been able to listen to, and so there's really no reason for me to start buying MP3's by the dozen (speaking of which, while the pricing is eminently reasonable, it is waaay too easy to spend a shitload of money on iTunes, so that has me being cautious also). The blossoming of digital distribution is just one part of the story: it's also cheaper and easier to record, edit, design and promote a record, and predictably, everyone is doing all of those things in copious amounts, hence saturating the market and people's attention spans along with it. So, I don't mean to get sentimental over the discs themselves; it's the particular conditions of the era they shaped (or perhaps my mistaken notions about it) that are more worth mourning.

A Tuba in the Jazz Band?

One of my tuba students recently came to me for advice on how to convince his high school band director to let him play in the jazz band. Among other things, I offered to write a letter for him, which I've now turned into an "open letter" to all K-12 band directors who favor strict adherence to the "standard" big band instrumentation of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm. My naively optimistic hope is that this document could be used by any student who wants to play a "non-standard" instrument in their school's jazz band, but whose band teacher won't allow it. I've posted the letter on my website as a PDF file:

A Tuba in the Jazz Band?

I'll refrain from rehashing the whole letter point by point in hopes that you, the reader, will click on the link and read it in its entirety. There are, however, a couple of additional thoughts I've had since I finished it.

First, I mention in the letter that this situation never arises at schools with small/weak music programs. That's because in those cases, there aren't enough (or good enough) students available to cover the parts in the first place, and hence, regardless of their feelings about jazz band instrumentation, the teacher is typically in no position to turn down interested students on any instrument. I suspect this accounts for the fact that the majority of my K-12 tuba students were already playing in jazz band when they came to me for lessons (a point which I was sure to emphasize in the letter). This makes it all the more frustrating that one who attends a school with a larger program would be the one to find himself potentially trespassed from jazz band because of his instrument, yet if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since there apparently are more trumpet, trombone and saxophone players at his school than there are spots available, making the admission of other instrumentalists quite the slippery slope for his band teacher.

In hindsight, I realize now that as someone who came up through bare bones jazz programs rather than sprawling, competitive ones, I benefitted greatly from this very dynamic, even if it didn't seem like it much of the time. My high school band teacher, who was overworked generally (aren't they all?) and particularly inexperienced in the jazz realm, went looking for help and stumbled on Jim Torok and Kerry Ashmore, two traditional jazz musicians who had been working with school jazz bands on a volunteer basis for many years. She turned the reins over to them, and suddenly not only were we afforded the opportunity to work with two highly experienced professional musicians, but two highly experienced professional musicians who, I was soon to learn, often hire their best students. They ultimately gave me my first paying gigs while I was still in high school, not to mention instilling a love and understanding of early jazz that I may not have otherwise developed. To this day, I still play with both of them several times a year.

I lucked out again in college at the University of Minnesota, where Jazz Studies Director Dean Sorenson spearheaded a collaboration with the dance department that entailed commissioning many new works from local composers. When he offered to include tuba in the instrumentation, I jumped at the opportunity to be a full-time member of a big band for the first time, as well as write a piece of my own for the project. While at The U, I was also lucky enough to have drummer Phil Hey as a jazz combo instructor. Phil, who is ubiquitous on the local scene and is the first call drummer for many big names passing through from out of town, has been a valuable teacher, mentor, and friend over the years, but, oddly enough, one of a type which I may not have had if I had gone to a big name jazz school where TA's run all of the combos, as was the case at the University of Northern Colorado, where I spent a year as an exchange student. This is not to diminish the generosity of Dana Landry, the Director of Jazz Studies at UNC, who graciously agreed to do 1-on-1 lessons with me during my second semester, and also had me play a couple of tunes with the Lab Band I. (Did you get that last part, high school band directors?) Nonetheless, since all of the combos and most of the big bands were directed by TA's, this was my only direct contact with jazz faculty members while I was there.

Certainly, there were ups and downs to all of my academic jazz experiences, and I definitely did not feel lucky to be part of small programs at the time. Nonetheless, it has been difficult watching a student of my own be offered less (nothing, actually) by a program that has more to give, and it has also made me more grateful for what I did get to be a part of as a student.

Secondly, I mention in the letter that, in hindsight, the academic world in general seemed less receptive to me as a tuba player playing jazz than the "real world" of living, breathing musicians has been since I left school. I'll refrain from naming names here, although it should be obvious that the one's I've mentioned in a positive light above certainly aren't who I'm talking about. With this idea still fresh in my mind from writing the letter, I just happened to stumble on a recent New York Times article about the guitarist Mary Halvorson, from which this excerpt particularly jumped out at me:

In high school she enrolled in summer programs at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, learning to shrug off chauvinistic appraisals of her talent.“Nobody would take me seriously,” she said. “They would take one look at me and say, ‘O.K., folk singer.’ That was really hard for me, and I was angry a lot of the time. I did all these summer programs, and I never encountered another female playing jazz guitar. Ever.” The experience taught her to be comfortable as the only woman on a bandstand, she said, adding that the issue rarely comes up anymore.

Let me preface my reaction to that very last passage by saying that I have no illusions that anything I've experienced as a tuba player in a saxophone player's world compares to the pervasiveness or hurtfulness of sexism or racism. Nonetheless, both of our stories point toward an indictment of musical academia as unduly resistant to diversity, the road less travelled, "the world as it might be" as opposed to "the world as it is," or whatever else you want to call it. Maybe we knew that already, but if nothing else, this is more fuel for the fire.

-----

I'll close this post the way I began my "open letter," which is to say that the very notion of "standard" and "non-standard" instruments is more representative of where the music publishing industry has thrown in their lot than it is of the whole of jazz history and the attitudes of its practitioners. It's never been about what you play, but how you play. Though I am a tuba player, this is about much more than just the tuba. It's too bad that so many schools have hitched their wagons to a jazz band instrumentation that automatically excludes more than half of the wind band, virtually all of the string orchestra, and everyone in the choir. In the face of this, creative band directors have always found the flexibility necessary to involve all of their interested students in jazz, regardless of the instruments they play. As much as we appreciate these extra efforts, they really ought to be par for the course, and we ought not accept anything less.

More Squiggles

As yet another follow-up to the post on composing with notation programs, here are three more pages from my oeuvre that required some extracurricular fiddling with Sibelius. All three are from my "Reflections on a Theme of Eric Dolphy" for two pianos (extra credit to anyone who can identify the source of the theme from these excerpts).





I'm well aware that, all in all, the examples I've given are not exactly overwhelming proof of extensive subversion of the "normal" operation of the software, nor even unqualified successes in attempting something less. There seem to be two major categories of tasks that I turn to quite a bit: free meter (Sibelius calls this "irrgeular bars") and feathered beams. Since I use them both a lot, and since, really, they're not all that difficult to obtain in Sibelius, neither seems to set me back much in the course of working on a piece, even if I am in fact composing the music as I enter it into the computer.

The most annoying thing about inserting a bar of a irregular length is that you have to know exactly how long it needs to be beforehand, then insert a bar of this length, and then enter the notes. Hence, it is usually not possible to compose directly into such a bar as you will inevitably revise the lick a few times before settling on something, hence changing the length; instead, I often compose what I want, then count the durations of the notes, then create the irregular bar, then copy and paste the lick into the irregular bar. It sounds very awkward trying to explain it verbally, but after several years and dozens of pieces, it's like riding a bike.

While irregular bars obviously cannot be longer than the width of the page and margins will allow, there is an easy way to make any barline invisible; hence, by hiding the barline at the end of the system, you can give the impression of two adjacent systems comprising a single, very long irregular bar. This is what I did in "You've Been Promoted To Kriho," a piece from my first set of examples two posts ago (of course, you have to do the same calculations of the lengths of the bars, deciding ahead of time where you want to break the system; again, sounds complicated, but it's really not, and as you can see from the fact that I can't shut up about it, I actually find this kind of thing fun to do and to talk about).

Quite possibly the greatest feature of Concertware (one that Finale and Sibelius would both do well to make available as an option if they haven't already) was to enter what it called "Free Time" as the time signature, at which point you could write to your hearts content without any bar lines whatsoever. Concertware used a cursor the way a word processor does; in combination with the "Free Time" feature, this offered a glimmer of the sort of uninhibited functionality that some notation software detractors would no doubt like to see. (And come on, who didn't love "Free Time" in elementary school? The mere phrase itself lent this feature a certain attractiveness in its ability to spark childlike curiosity in the user.)

I find it very interesting that notation software finds itself under attack simultaneously as both too easy and too difficult, too forward looking and not forward looking enough. There are those who want to move forward with the full gamut of 20th century notational innovations in tow, and for whom current software is simply inadequate for this task; and then there are those for whom the compositional process itself is inextricably bound up with pencil and paper, without which the act has become something with which they are not familiar. Nonetheless, I suspect that it will not be until we have had the opportunity to observe a couple of generations who have never known any other way that we will be able to say for sure what the effects have been, and with necessity (last I checked) still being the mother of invention, I have a strong suspicion that these generations will turn whatever tools it is they have available to their distinct advantage, the habits and predilections of their forebears be damned.

Composing With Notation Software

There was an interesting and lively discussion on Sequenza 21 recently around the topic of composing with notation software. I would be remiss if I did not cover this topic on this blog at some point (actually, I'm somewhat shocked that I haven't yet in 2-plus years of blogging), for not only have I composed mostly with notation software for my entire musical life, but such software is largely responsible for my getting involved in writing music at all. Since the S21 discussion seemed to me to be dominated mostly by people who were already experienced composers before notation programs were widely available, I thought it might be worth hearing the perspective of someone who has never known any other way.

My Story
When I was in 7th grade (ca. 1994), my dad bought an early notation program called Concertware* for our then-state-of-the-art (it ran System 7) Macintosh Power PC. The program was buggy but highly intuitive and very effective. I had just started playing euphonium in the school band the year before, and my interest in music was burgeoning. Regrettably (but predictably), so was my interest in video games. At first, playing around with Concertware was pretty much just another game alongside NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat III (if that doesn't date me, I don't know what could), but years after my Super Nintendo had started collecting dust, I was still writing music with Concertware.

By the time I reached high school, I had expanded my default template to 8 parts, roughly approximating the school wind bands I had been playing in, with many parts doubled among instruments of similar tessitura. By the end of high school, I had composed over 100 pieces of highly variable but steadily improving quality for this instrumentation, including a 15-minute long, five movement "Symphony No. 1." Eventually, I ventured into chamber music and jazz as well, and during my senior year, I received my first "official" recognition as a composer by winning a composition contest put on by a local new music ensemble. That the piece sounded better played by them than by the computer served to bolster my confidence in the rather odd way that my compositional approach had developed.

While I still miss certain features of Concertware, its limitations became more obvious as I entered college as a music major. After experimenting with both Finale and Sibelius in the computer labs, I purchased my own copy of Sibelius 1 and never looked back. I upgraded to Sibelius 2 when it came out, but have not kept up with subsequent revisions. My college years saw the creation of many new pieces for all sorts of instrumentations. While I began to sketch at the piano more frequently, all of that work went straight into Sibelius the first chance I got, and would often serve merely as a jumping off point for composing directly into the computer, with much of the material becoming unrecognizable in the process. Perhaps my most productive and effective period as a composer came when I decided to move the home computer as close to the piano as I could get it. Despite destroying the legs on the piano bench and at least one chair by constantly shuttling back and forth from piano to desktop, this allowed me to use each tool for the tasks I found it most effective in accomplishing, and in hindsight, it seems to me that this made a difference in the quality of my work.

Composing With Notation Software: Pro vs. Con
First and foremost, let's address what I see as a double standard. If I were a concert pianist who composed primarily at the piano, it is unlikely that I would be criticized by a composition teacher for using my piano technique as a crutch; yet that is exactly what many would say about my use of notation programs. In fact, the two serve exactly the same purpose. In all honesty, I would indeed prefer to be able to work at the piano more of the time, and if I had exceptional piano technique, I certainly would take full advantage of it. Unfortunately, I am one of many musicians who merely play "arranger's piano" (even that's being generous in my case), and hence, the process of sitting down at the piano to compose is always quite frustrating. Even when the results are relatively good, I feel that they are severely limited by my poor technique, which is undoubtedly a more significant obstacle than any of the most commonly cited pitfalls of composing directly into a notation program.

Suffice it to say that I use notation program playback to hear ideas in real time that I am not capable of playing on the piano. In particular, that means thickly scored contrapuntal passages in pieces for large ensembles, but includes quite a bit more also. I use the computer exactly the same way a composer uses any other instrument for the same purpose. To date, I have not encountered anyone who discourages students from working their ideas out on an instrument, and if this technique can indeed be endorsed, then a software-as-instrument framework follows easily. Indeed, many experienced users of both Finale and Sibelius report developing a fluency akin to playing an instrument or typing text. My Sibelius skills certainly blow my piano skills away, so needless to say, I use Sibelius more often. Rather than limiting my composing, this opens up areas that would either go unexplored or yield poor results were I forced to rely exclusively on my very limited keyboard technique. And let's face it, you can't compose much with a tuba in your hands, though on rare occasions, I have written solo music this way.

Then, of course, there is the question of orchestration. I have been witness to many instances both on and offline where a commentator has lashed out at the idea of composing directly into a notation program solely on the basis that the playback does not give a realistic impression of balance among the instruments, in part because the synthesized sounds are not realistic, and in part because the program enables the user to artificially balance the parts to get the playback results they want. Perhaps because I was exposed to this viewpoint so early and often, it became something I thought about a lot, and subsequently, something that I was determined not to fall into.

Let me be clear that my primary reason for relying heavily on playback is temporal and not orchestrational. I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours of my life rehearsing and performing with large wind bands, orchestras, jazz bands, and collective improvising ensembles. It's true, one can most definitely not learn to orchestrate from a notation program, nor can one learn from a composition teacher or the books they've published. As a member of a large ensemble under a skilled conductor preparing the Hindemith Symphony in B-flat or Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (to name two pieces in particular that taught me more than a phone-book-sized orchestration book ever could), one is not only partially responsible for creating the balance oneself, but also has a front row seat for all of the spot checking of particular subsets of the group in particular passages of music, as well as the conductor's advisements to these players based on his/her prior experience with the piece. I don't think I could overstate the value of this information to me as a composer, and yet, I almost certainly would not have learned it had I majored in Composition, Theory, or Musicology. In fact, when I was in school, many such classes met in the afternoon during ensemble rehearsals, hence preventing almost anyone from being meaningfully involved in both.

Despite being told repeatedly that composing directly into a notation program dooms one to orchestrational failure, I feel very strongly that one who brings a performer's pedigree to their work as a composer is destined to succeed as an orchestrator**, whether they compose at the computer, the piano, or off in the woods somewhere. Furthermore, after working with a notation program for a substantial length of time, as well as hearing some of their music performed, the composer begins to catalog the specific strengths and weakness of the playback in terms of its resemblance to real life players. Armed with this knowledge, the program becomes an even more effective and powerful tool for the composer to exploit.

Consider it granted that a lack of firsthand experience with the instruments one is writing for is a significant handicap, and that a lack of hands-on experience with the notation program one is using to write for those instruments is also a significant handicap. I don't think anyone would dispute those points. Conversely, as someone who started composing directly into a notation program, who has constantly refined this technique over the course of the last 13 years, who has concurrently performed others' music as well as his own with a myriad of large and small ensembles, who has undertaken countless hours of individual instrumental practice, and who has listened to quite a bit of live and recorded music, I have the utmost confidence in my compositional process and its suitability to my aspirations. If this is a crutch, then I'm happily crippled.

Chicken or Egg?
Here's something that was written in the S21 discussion cited above by Dennis Barthory-Kitsz, a self-described "doom and gloom guy" when it comes to notation software influencing composers:

Like any highly limited tools (including musical instruments), notation software eases the creation of music for which it was originally designed, but stands in the way of other music — save under very creative or persistent hands...

...The consequence of conservative tools is conservative composition — so much so that some composers brought up with these tools are only dimly aware of the possibilities outside them.

In fact, one could simply replace "conservative" with "innovative" in the excerpt above and have a statement that was no less valid, yet also misses the point. Speaking from my personal experience only, my composition reflects first and foremost what is in my CD collection; after that, the music I've performed; and a distant third, the very few scores that I have studied in any kind of depth. If there is anything responsible for the fact that none of my pieces to date necessitate a graphic score, it's that hardly a single thing I listen to was notated as a graphic score, that I've only rarely performed from a graphic score, and that I neither own nor have ever checked out from any library a graphic score of any kind, with the possible exception of examples contained in books on people like Anthony Braxton and John Cage. Is this an extreme condition brought on by an early predilection for composing directly into the computer, or am I perhaps entitled to claim that to this point, graphic scores just aren't my thing, even if Braxton and Cage are (sometimes)?

For a composer to be "only dimly aware" of 20th century notational innovations seems to me to have nothing to do with the computer and everything to do with the bookshelf and the CD rack. In my case, I've also learned quite a few notational tricks and extended techniques the same way I learned to orchestrate: by sitting in rehearsal while the conductor worked with another section. Although us big instrument folks in the back row often complained amongst ourselves that our time was being wasted, in hindsight, I can't honestly say that this was the case for me. Other than being the mythical genius that creates them out of thin air, the only way to become aware of new musical possibilities is to encounter them.

The qualification that "very creative or persistent hands" may overcome the shackles of notation software is apt; I would also question what exactly anyone who is not particularly creative or persistent is doing writing music in the first place. As for trudging off into the woods to compose without the aid of anything more than my mind's ear, I've attempted it many times, but it has rarely yielded anything more than a fleeting idea that happens to work as a jumping off point for computer- or piano-based composition. Sad as it is to say, I am not Mozart. Or Beethoven. I do not work entire pieces out in my head and then write them down just as they came to me. I'm more of an improviser who appreciates the opportunity to revise on occasion. Perhaps this is consistent with what critics of computer-based composition are fearful of; conversely, I feel like the explanation can be found in the musical artifacts and experiences I've surrounded myself with.

Here are 3 pages of music which required a little bit of creativity and an awful lot of persistence. As best I can recall, the first two were composed directly into the computer while the third was composed "in the woods" and edited slightly upon entry into Sibelius using the playback as a tool.








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*Here is the underwhelming Wikipedia page for Concertware. If anyone knows any more of the story, I'd love to hear it.

**I also feel that my performing experiences led me away from a conception of composition and orchestration as separate pursuits that are negotiable in isolation from each other and towards a vision of orchestration as an inevitable consequence of one's compositional voice, and one that is not negotiable without also altering said voice...but that's quite a tangent, and hence a topic for another post.

Like a Scab

Remember going to the beach as a kid, building a totally awesome sand castle, then irreparably maiming it by nitpicking about the finer details? It was probably good enough, but you had to make the left side of it perfect; then you accidentally took too much off and have fix the right side to make it symmetrical; pretty soon, after playing this game for about half an hour, you finally manage to take out a particularly important component of the support apparatus, and half of it crumbles to the ground, leaving behind a sort of "sand ruins" monstrosity.

When is revision necessary? When is it destructive? Where are our first intuitive impulses inherently correct, the result of inspiration that comes around only so often and cannot be meaningfully recaptured for any subsequent process of revision? Where are they inherently flawed, the result of judgment clouded by the emotional high of said inspiration, which artificially inflated our opinion of what we had just done?

The social networking site Facebook is an excellent example of a quality product being maimed at the hands of its own creators. Embarrassed as I am to admit that I've had a Facebook page since before it was even open to everyone, I'm not ashamed to admit (since I've heard the same thing from virtually everyone I've talked to about it) that I think it was better back then, and that opening it to everyone was the first step in a downward spiral: news feeds, bad layouts, and basically trying to make it just like all of the other social networking sites that already exist. Did they make these decisions in a vacuum? Did they think they had to compete with MySpace? Or did they simply get bored with their sand castle and have to change it again and again until part of it fell over? I can't help but wonder.

In another recent example ripped from the headlines, I went to my local office superstore to pick up an ink cartridge a couple of weeks ago, and found (not surprisingly) that the ink cartridges had been moved. I visit said office superstore relatively infrequently, and the cartridges have not been in the same place on any two visits. Exasperated and tired of going on scavenger hunts in place of shopping trips, I broke down and asked an employee where they were (it turns out they had been moved to the extreme opposite side of the store, away from the printers and the cartridge refill station, which struck me as an odd choice, and not the best way to sell more ink).

I've witnessed this phenomenon in stores of various sizes and specializations for most of my life, starting with the local corner store in the neighborhood I grew up in, and continuing with the supermarkets I shopped at in college. I have always wondered if the constant reorganization of the products isn't the result of a natural human tendency to become bored with things that never change. It simply doesn't make sense that their inventories would be changing over at such a rate to justify all the shuffling, for while I may have trouble finding what I'm looking for, it's most always the same thing I was looking for last time, and in the end, they most always still carry it, but have inexplicably moved it to a different part of the store.

I've never worked in anything quite like a store, but at the jobs I have had, I often sense an impatience with the fixed nature of the given physical space that I and my coworkers inhabit on a far more regular basis than even the most frequent visitors. In such cases, becoming intimately familiar with something is only the penultimate step in becoming bored with it, a result which naturally drives us to desire change for its own sake. This, I think, is decidedly unhealthy in music, if not elsewhere as well. I think it not only betrays an childish impatience, but also a lack of confidence in one's work (of course, an aversion to revision could represent an overconfidence as well). Change, to the extent that it is inevitable and cannot be delayed forever, cannot be hastened either. As a composer, I've always been inclined to view cases where wholesale revision is in order as outright failures, choosing to simply move on rather than dilly dally in trying to make an average sand castle into a great one.