Another Pet Peeve About Music Blogs...

...is when they don't deal with music. I'll grant an exemption to politics given the dire events of the last several years, but that's it. I'll pass on literature, film, sports, literature, food, literature, literature, and most of all, the freaking LITERATURE!!!

For pretty much my entire life, I have had what could fairly be described as a pathological aversion to literature, or at least to fiction. I can only guess at the underlying reasons, but one might be that I do not desire nor have I ever particularly desired to escape reality. That's not to say that I'm content with the state of things, just to say that I generally struggle with the willful suspension of disbelief. Actually, I hated music from an early age also. It was a sheer accident that I ended up playing music in the first place. I've been hooked from the start, yet I've since had more extensive exposure to literature and theater without ever shedding my aversion to either. Not surprisingly, abstract visual art is the only other medium I feel a natural affinity for. There something about twisted piles of scrap metal and arbitrary smears of color that appeals to me much the same way that music does.

Maybe it's not so important to know why, but I do wish I could offer an explanation if for no other reason than that it is hard to defend a narrowly focused interest in abstract art. It has always irked me that whenever the "value of the arts" is under discussion, the last thing out of people's mouths is anything about enriching our lives aesthetically. No, instead it's always about making kids smart, keeping kids off drugs, keeping kids off the streets...come to think of it, it's almost always about kids period, always portraying "the arts" as the means to an end rather than an end unto themselves.

What is missing from the picture is any discussion of the mechanism by which the kids are to be engaged by the art. Is it too much to assume that this is accomplished through aesthetic means? And if it is accomplished some other way, what is the value of art, then? Nothing! Any old diversion can occupy (detain?) little Johnny and Susie, including knitting, bridge, and forced manual labor. If the results are any different with art, then there must be a reason.

The function of art as a means of keeping kids out of trouble or of clarifying or commenting on some social issue is indeed valuable, but it tends to overshadow the fact that any of these secondary functions of art are dependent on the art itself appealing to and engaging some audience. Would we be debating Wagner's anti-semitism today if his music had been average? We wouldn't even know who he was if that had been the case. (How many mediocre composers can you name who were active in the 1860's?) Whether or not it is acknowledged as such, the aesthetic experience is the source of all interest in art. Trace your way back from the co-optation du jour and you will arrive there every time as if tracing Earth's energy resources back to the sun.

Speaking of co-optation, the value of art may be an entirely separate discussion from the value of the arts at this point, the latter phrase being not only too broad to have any real legitimacy, but also having come to stand for something shallow and dishonest. If we really are willing to embrace the whole unwieldy collection of "the arts" as a unit, it follows that there is something for everyone hiding somewhere in that massive pile crap. That is where their eminent value lies. The trivial whiling away of the hours can be accomplished equally well by means of any old diversion, but where there is the potential for the unique form of engagement known as aesthetic experience, the arts have contributed something unique and important to the world. Artists themselves should be the last people to take that for granted.

We all know that the reason this value is never emphasized in any public arena is that granting agencies and elected officials are unimpressed by it. Hence, as a mere survival skill, artists have learned or been groomed to fall back on all of the secondary functions of their art, especially the ones involving kids. (What can we say? Everyone loves the little buggers.) My questions are: how much longer can we go on living on a little white lie? And with so many people in the art community actually believing this themselves, what is the value of "the arts" to the people who actually shape them?

Sadly, the kids don't dig my atonal orchestral pieces or my free jazz excursions. If I'm going to keep them away from drugs (and I might be the only musician I know who's actually capable of doing that), it's going to have to be some other way. Not only is it better for them that way, but it also gives me the freedom to continue wallowing in the realm of the abstract. There is no intuitive certainty strong enough to guarantee that our artistic output is valuable enough on its own to excuse us from any other efforts towards leaving the world in better condition than we found it in, and in fact, most of the time its probably more tenuous than we'd like to admit to assume that any old person in need would even like what we do. It is all too convenient to think that we can simply tie other obligations in with what we "really" want to be doing by giving our latest masterpiece a provocative title. Unfortunately, that only works if the work is world class, or if it has mass media hype behind it.

Who gets to go?

There was a time when I refused to show any inclination whatsoever towards moving to New York City. Every midwestern jazz player practically drools over the thought whether they've ever been there or not, which meant that my need to be different just for the sake of being different was in full effect. Sadly, I've still never been there, but now that I know a little bit more and have had some frustating experiences here in middle America, I have finally started thinking seriously about taking the plunge. What else is there to do?

The level of playing has never really intimidated me. That's not to say I expect to fit right in, but no matter where I live, I expect that I'll have to confront it anyway at some point in my career. If I don't, that will mean that I either got complacent or failed entirely. Competition is healthy and inspirational; why not embrace it?

What bothers me much more is the money question. A 2006 Worldwide Cost of Living survey conducted by Mercer Consulting named New York as the most expensive U.S. city and the 10th internationally. Rent.com says:

The overall cost of living here is 364% compared to the national average, making it just slightly less than California's Silicon Valley, the most expensive area in the nation. Average apartment rentals go for $1,600 per month, with utilities costing an average of $189 per month.

So, has money become the greatest determining factor in who among us naive young musicians is able to actually get up and strategically place ourselves in the center of the action? It's hard to believe that it hasn't. That's a dire situation in my opinion, not nearly as dire as the larger question of access to music education generally, but it is a result of the same deplorable phenomenon, namely of middle and lower income people being priced out of music on some level. One way that the internet will never really be able to bring us closer together is by facilitating in-person collaborative musical performance. Geographic isolation is a tremendous barrier to musical collaboration, so it's not so far-fetched to think that there really ought to be a "musical capital" of the world or country where we can all be available to each other. An astronomical cost of living, however, kills the whole thing.

It's not that wealth and artistic vision necessrily preclude each other, but in order to continue being a Mecca for artists of any kind, a scene must select for the latter and not the former. What's the consequence of the opposite case? A fetishized rat race dominated by brats with more money than talent. That's what college music programs are. That's what I want to get away from. That's what kills music. The thought of encountering a "real world" manifestation of that is nauseating. I'm crossing my fingers now.

I'm somewhat on the fortunate end of things. If I decide to go, I will find a way to make it work financially. However, none of the possible scenarios look easy. Maybe that means that the people who do manage to survive there are exceptional in many different ways. Maybe that means that there's a grain of truth to all of the idealization and mythology surrounding the place. On the other hand, that's part of the problem: mythology » co-optation » commodification » fetish, and then it's entirely too late to really get in on the action because there is no more action.

Having never actually been to the place, I probably don't know what I'm talking about, nor am I saying that music has to be made by poor people to be any good, nor am I slamming native New Yorkers. (although before posting this, I did check with a friend of mine who grew up there, and she made many of the same observations). It's something that makes me wonder, and the more I think about it, the more apparent it gets that as long as the cost of living remains so disproportionately high in our musical capital, and as long as the country as a whole continues to hemorrage decent-paying jobs to the third world, wealth will continue to eclipse talent as the primary determining factor not only in who gets to go to NYC, but in who gets to play and even listen to music in the first place. This is the major issue facing American music right now and it is seldom if ever discussed. The topic that does get discussed semi-regularly is the cost of going to jazz clubs. Maybe that will eventually lead to a more comprehensive discussion.

Pattern Recognition

The ability to recognize patterns varies in individuals and is not universal. It is a skill that can be honed, but it does not come to everyone with equal ease. The people who design standardized tests seem to think it's quite important. I remember that in elementary school, there was always that question where you would be given a sequence of numbers and asked to say what the next number in the sequence was. For some reason, I had a knack for these things from an early age. A knack that is, not an interest. Fast forward about 15 years to my first encounter with Schoenberg's statement that sequences in music are worthless and serve no particularly important function other than to take up space. There was a time when I might have disagreed, but by the time I read this, it served not as a challenge to but as an affirmation of my own feelings towards sequence in music. Sequence grates on me like few other devices. Particularly with regard to jazz musicians, it truly has become nothing more than a fallback, a way to take up space and avoid embarrassment when the player doesn't know what else to do.

It's no mystery how this happened: jazz musicians are taught theory largely through sequence. Instead of taking the most direct route towards studying the way past musicians "used"scales, students today are constantly nudged towards constructing patterns in order to internalize the sound and feel of scales and keys. I myself worked out of Coker's Patterns for Jazz and Nelson'sPatterns for Improvisation quite extensively in my late high school and early college years. As well asaccomplishing the afore mentioned objectives, it helped build my chops tremendously.

We must, however, be very careful in defining the word "use." Does anyone really "use" scales or scale patterns? It depends on what that means. A phrase that happens to only use C's, D's and E's could be said to "use" the C major scale, but did the player really arrive at it this way? If this observation is not supefluous, it should be. Obviously, some players do actually think of themselves as "using" scales and some don't. I should not necessarily be predisposed to prefer one group over the other, but in fact, given the situation, the "use" of scales equates directly to the "use" of sequence in a way that I consistently find distasteful.

To put it another way, very few musicians who play sequences truly "use" them, as this term implies some certain intent on the part of a sentient being. Instead, they have spent so much time practicing scale patterns that when nothing else comes to mind, they habitually lapse into regurgitating a literal statement of what they have been praticing, even if it was never intended to be "used" this way in performance.

My point? Sometimes an etude is just an etude. In classical music, there are etudes that are performed (like Chopin's) and etudes that no one would dare allow to be heard outside the practice room (like much of the Arban book). Jazz could learn something from this practice. Patterns build chops and help the player conceive of keys, but they make poor materials with which to construct a solo, or any piece of music for that matter. (And I have to add that I have about the same feelings toward "materials" and "construct" in this context as I do toward "use.") In my mind, technical exercises that were constructed solely for their value as technical exercises and not as "real"music should not be available to be "used" (or abused) at all. They are of a fundamentally different nature than any "lick" a musician might pick up from others, which originated as a spontaneous and effective musical statement and retains at least a small amount of this potential over time. That's my opinion, at least. I am appalled that some musicians apparently do think that their practice of scale patterns serves to literally prepare "material" for"use" that they can pull out at any time while "constructing" something. I have no problem with such perparation, only with the chosen material. As an early teacher of mine wisely told me, use patterns with "extreme caution and restraint."

But what of the ability to recognizepatterns? If it was more universal, musicians would not get away with these shenanigans as often because more people would understand what they are doing and hear right through it. I hypothesize that my loathing of sequence is at least partially a consequence of it being so easy to recognize, and perhaps also that the ability to view something as sequential even if it was not intended that way has ruined my ability to enjoy a good deal of music. But the ability to recognize sequence is not the only variable: the other is how the listener responds to success or failure in this activity. Hence, I further hypothesize that some people must be gratified simply by recognizing sequence in music (i.e. by "getting it") and some people (like me) are indifferent or putoff by it. Given two two-way variables, that makes for four groups of listeners who will each approach the issue differently

Backbeat

Why are so many "serious" musicians so mystified as to how to garner mass appeal? It's the backbeat, silly.

You can play whatever you damn well please over a strong backbeat. The masses want to hear the thunderous footsteps of mythical beasts on beats 1 and 3 along with massive quantities of ear-splitting high-frequency brittleness on beats 2 and 4. If you give them those two things together, they will go ape shit for your musical presentation, no matter what melodic or harmonic atrocities you commit over the top of Western man's most primal rhythm.

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a song on myspace with 48,629 listens?? And when was the last time that so many of the harmonic and melodic ideas were so unabashedly "outside"?

Personally, I can only appreciate the backbeat thing when there's this kind of playing going on along with it, but I'll bet that many many people who think a tri-tone sub is a sandwich could be engaged by this kind of music also, if not for entirely different reasons.

It's not that us modernists have no heart, soul, or rhythm. We just need a little side of pitch to go with a heaping plate of rhythm.

In Between, But Not On Top Of

The imitation of another musician's personal style is often considered to be an act of reverence. If the imitation is too close, it may cross over into the realm of plagiarism. But more often than either of these, it is an act of vanity.

When John Q. Composer writes a new work that is significantly indebted to a previous one yet is of lesser quality, the most important thing about the new work is that he is the one who created it. It fills no particular void or need, for the work he has imitated does so already, and in fact does so more effectively.

Even within the confines of an antiquated musical style, there is always room for expansion in between extant masterpieces. However, there is no room for stacking new works on top of them.

Use, Don't Abuse

I recall that rather amusing moment in the early days of TubeNet when the first person dared to verbalize what we'd all been observing for quite some time: that the board was all but idle on evenings and weekends. This person dared to view this as evidence that most TubeNet contributors were simply using it as a way to slack off at work. Mere conjecture? Maybe not...

Allow me to tell a story from several weeks ago. For some reason, I was up well before noon on a weekday and tried to post a blog entry around 11am. No luck. The server was obviously overwhelmed by demand and hadn't the capacity to even load the page where you enter the text. I've had this blog for six months and that had never happened before...because I almost always post in the late afternoon before I leave to teach lessons.

Of course, being a musician, I myself am rarely at work (or even awake) before noon, so who am I to conclude that the high e-traffic during the late morning hours is entirely the fault of the chronically procrastinating cubicle monkeys that are today's excuse for an American middle class? It does make me wonder, though, because it has to be attributable to some larger trend. It also reminds me that by devoting any amount of non-leisure time to our blogging enterprises, us musico-bloggers are dancing on a fine line between journalism/criticism and slackerism.

When around friends, I'm downright embarrassed to refer to either reading or writing a blog, and given what most blogs actually are, maybe I should be. The web has a lot to offer to both the work-a-holics and the straglers, but it is a slippery slope to say the least. I promise never to blog while teaching or performing if the rest of you would please just GET BACK TO WORK!


Deal?

Getting Fickler All The Time

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Slowly but surely, I'm learning not to buy CD's that get reviewed favorably (or at all) by major publications, as well as to stay as far away as possible from the most widely publicized events. If people are talking or writing about it, I'm probably not going to like it.

It is notably rare for me to be truly invigorated by a performance that costs more than $5 to attend. If it costs more than that, it's because whoever organized it knows that they can get more than that...which in Minneapolis means that it is statistically impossible that everyone who shows up will be there to listen rather than to see and be seen. So count me out from now on.

Call me a grandstander, curmudgeon, or whatever else you want, but I'm starting to get serious about this. As a teacher/mentor of mine once said to me: "Funny. If its got the word 'jazz' in front of it, I'm usually not interested." So, uh, anyone up for a trip to a "jazz club"? How about reading a "classical music" blog? I didn't think so. The more exciting stuff is taking place elsewhere, under names that have not been around long enough to be co-opted for marketing purposes, and yes, occasionally under no name at all. I don't necessarily need or want to be "beyond category" myself. I don't take offense when someone calls me a "bebop tuba player" or a "classical" musician. As a listener, however, I'm finding myself in a "once bitten twice shy" type of situation (actually, I've been bitten many more times than that; it just took me an embarrasingly long time to figure these things out)

That a concert may be accompanied by lots of publicity and high ticket prices is more indicative of the visibility of the performer(s) than it is of their relevance to a "classical" or "jazz" audience.

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Enough Already

Reading the comments on this by a certain "Mark" has set me off. Thank you Mark for taking it upon yourself to set the jazz world straight by pointing out that "many jazz musicians have abandoned their audience." I suppose this means that we deserve to be floundering around in a world where we pay to play in clubs? (that would be the implication of the comment given the context in which it was made)

Pardon the outburst, but I've had it with this garbage. It is everywhere, and it is totally ass backwards thinking. I suppose you could also say that Stravinsky abandoned his audience in 1912, as did Beethoven in the early 1800's and Charlie Parker himself in the late 1940's. There would be no Rite of Spring, no Grosse Fuge, and no jazz at all for that matter if people like Mark had their way in those earlier eras. Mass appeal cannot be allowed to dictate the course of art in ethical terms. I doubt that Mark would enjoy living in such a world, but that is exactly what he seems to be advocating.

Each individual has the best idea of what they think music should be. Do it yourself by playing, and/or support others who do it by purchasing their recordings and going to their shows, but please don't make these kinds of inflammatory blanket generalizations about everything new. You could regret it as soon as next month.

Dial "P" for Piggy-Back

I hate to get involved in these things, but here goes nothin'...

A challenge was issued here earlier this week. You can peruse the responses in the comments to that post.

Ostensibly, the point of this game is to uncover unexpected results. But is anyone surprised to see that all of these "classical music" bloggers have so much non-classical music loaded on their iPods? I'm not, so speaking of Musicology, I hereby dial "M" and issue a follow-up challenge for everyone who responded (or even those that didn't). Consider the following scenario:

You are a Musicology professor in a respectable public university music department. You are teaching the final course in the undergraduate music history sequence, which deals with music from the late 19th century through the present day while placing particular emphasis on the American 20th Century. Topics for the final paper are to be chosen by each student individually, but must be approved by you, the professor. A student approaches you to ask if he/she may write their final paper on Thelonious Monk.

Do you approve or reject this request? Why or why not?

Post your responses here or on your own blogs. If at least five people respond, I'll post my own answer here (as well as a list, which will have to be drawn from my iTunes playlist or CD shelf since I don't have an iPod).

Fusion

Yeah, yeah, yeah, labels/genres are stupid and we all hate them. "...but is it jazz?" and "...but is it music?" are easily the two dumbest questions asked during the last century. But can I make a confession about my take on the 1970's "fusion" of jazz and rock? It does not at all sound to me like equal parts jazz and rock.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, who cares? I'm not saying it's bad or that I hate it. I like a lot of it. But I at least sympathize with the jazz purists of the time on this one: insisting to the death on calling it "jazz" is indeed an odd choice. It seems like most "real" rockers today have utter contempt for "real" jazz, making it hard for someone my age (i.e. not even alive in the 70's) to understand why the fusion people would covet the "jazz" label so much. It can't be for marketing purposes; calling something "jazz" is an excellent way to shoot yourself in the foot. Could it be that bebop virtuosity makes them insecure about their own shortcomings, so they try to appropriate the label and its supposed status without doing any of the actual shedding? Don't answer that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'm elitist/young/stupid/misguided/whatever. It just intrigues me when someone pulls a doublethink on us and no one says anything. Debussy abhorred the term "impressionism" (and to his credit, did say something about it), but we freely apply that term to his music without a second thought. It was nearly a decade after I learned the word "fusion" that I first heard the term "prog rock." To me, this is the missing link in the label game, yet Mahavishnu Orchestra and Lifetime are still "fusion" while Gentle Giant and ELP are "prog." To the contrary, it would seem to me that some of Dave Holland's or Joshua Redman's recent work, for example, are much more even-steven hybrids of jazz and rock, and hence more deserving of the label "fusion" (which is to say deserving of it in the literal sense, but not the one it has since acquired; their music is outstanding while "fusion" has become yet another "useful term of abuse" akin to the worst ism money can buy).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this post was a waste of everyone's time because it deals with categorization. Never mind then.

Willingly Excluded and Loving It

It seems to me that examining the similarities and differences between classical music concerts and professional sports events could teach us something, or at least raise some interesting questions. Specifically, I'm wondering why we read so much about audiences feeling "excluded" at orchestra concerts when the audience for sporting events is really no more involved. The vast majority of sports fans never set foot on the field (they'd be arrested if they did), have never met their favorite player in person, probably could not relate to this player as a person terribly well in any case, and have a negligible (if any) effect on the outcome of the game. If sports fans readily accept such "exclusion", why do we end up with ridiculous stories like this article from Andante (old news in the musico-blogosphere, I suspect), which reports a case of patrons complaining about the facial expressions of the musicians during concerts?

I can see the musicological platitudes coming down Broadway (think Minneapolis, not New York City; that means that this particular group of platitudes rolls in a beat up Cadillac, not a stretch limo). Nonetheless, I'm not convinced that the two (concerts and sports) are quite as different as one might want to think. More accurately, I guess what I'm saying is that they are not that different to me. Say what you want, but the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing that I'm attracted to music and sports for almost exactly the same reasons, and that I'm upset about trends in both that have a striking amount in common. As with music, my attraction to sports is aesthetic: I find the spectacle of a diving catch or a three-point shot to be aesthetically pleasing. I'm one of those morons who can watch or even just listen on the radio to practically any baseball, basketball or football game, regardless of who is playing, and be entertained. What ruins the experience for me is when the commentators try to explain minutia of strategy or the players' lives during the broadcast in an effort to create a "story line". The game is the story line, dumbasses!

What are the parallels? Sometime ago, classical music organizations decided that it was a good idea to attempt to explain the form of an unfamiliar piece before playing it for an audience. I've never thought this was particularly productive, and now I'm more convinced than ever that I'm right. Of course, I know most of those things already when it comes to music, so I'm not particularly well-qualified to evaluate their efficacy on an audience of dilettantes. In the case of sports, however, I occupy something closer to the place of the now proverbial "non-musician listener", the one who knows nothing technical about music but enjoys listening to it (or thinks they do). The highest level of sports I ever played at was high school, yet as a sports fan, I really don't care which player has a great sense of humor, which coach is a genius, or how the pitcher grips his change-up. I just want to watch the damn game, and I don't need anyone trying to make it seem more interesting or important than it actually is (or perhaps in some cases, painting it as something that it is not).

On the other hand, I'm about as into NASCAR as the average orchestra patron is into Milton Babbitt. There's not a whole hell of a lot anyone could do to get me to watch NASCAR. I don't care about the supposed skill involved or who's using which kind of engine; a bunch of cars driving around in a circle is not engaging to me, and no depth of understanding about the peripheral issues can change that. If we accept this approach to music, we reach the conclusion that there's nothing we can do when someone threatens to boycott the orchestra if the players don't smile more (or if they insist on playing Babbitt). As unpopular an opinion as it is, I say we let them walk away rather than pandering to the dilettante sensibility. We don't need them (or it) any more than NASCAR needs me. The music and the sport speak for themselves.

I've seen it written that the difference is that sports fans are "emotionally" involved, and that they have the freedom to move around, chit chat, and basically do whatever the hell they want while they're in the stadium. However, there are still rules: no running on the field, no throwing object at players, assigned seats, etc. etc. If I had a choice in the matter,of course, I would be on the field competing, or at least sitting in the front row, but the fact that I'm not doesn't really make me feel excluded, nor does the fact that the players don't really acknowledge my presence any more than a musical performer acknowledges their audience at the end of a piece.

What keeps me coming back to sporting events is that I enjoy them on a very basic level, so basic in fact that it is much easier to screw it up than it is be make improvements. What room for improvement there is lies almost entirely in simplifying the experience by eliminating the extracurricular distractions. Whether in sports or music, piling on layers of story lines, technical information, program notes, personal information about the participants, advertising, and so on represents a move in the opposite direction.

Your Comments Always Welcome (read: is anyone out there...???)

In enabling comment moderation, I inadvertently also limited posting privileges to "team members." I think I've got it straightened out now. I intend for this blog to invite comment rather than discourage it, so feel free to chime in at any time. (even if you play for another team)

Greater and Lesser Divides

As the subtitle "death by eclectic chair" is meant to imply (thankfully for you it's a pun, not a typo), this blog is showing signs of going in phases in terms of subject matter, the current manifestation of which would appear to be an abnormal preoccupation with issues relating to the orchestra in various ways. Rather than resisting this, I'm going to embrace it and have yet another post on the topic (remarkable for someone who once alienated a college orchestra conductor by accidentally blurting out that "orchestral brass players are just a bunch of jocks" within his earshot). I've been reading this, obtained by way of Henry Fogel's blog, and of course, I have an opinion and will subject you to it presently.

I originally got into blogging (reading them, that is, more than writing them) by way of the whole "saving classical music" thing that the Arts Journal people in particular are always on about. There are, of course, still good reasons to be having such a discussion; nevertheless, I am growing weary of articles like this. It once seemed very much appropriate, very hip and avant garde in a pedestrian sort of way to be taking the long view on these issues out of concern for the future of the music. Now I just bristle. Why? For one thing, it is no longer avant garde at all: this article is more detailed and informative than most, but is really just making the same recommendations and is based on the same premises as most everything one reads on this subject. The other part of the problem is that some of these premises are tenuous.

Before I get into more specific/substantive critiques, let me first say that between the things I read in these kinds of articles and the things I've observed in peers of mine who aspire to orchestral jobs, I can only laugh when they say things to me like, "Freelancing??!! That's a terrible way to make a living!" To each his own, my friends. I will not pass judgement on you if you agree not to do the same to me. Most pros I've talked to personally absolutely love their jobs, whether they are orchestral players or total freelancers. (according to this and other articles, that's most likely because none of them have been orchestral string players, who, true to what is said behind their back in music school, really do seem to be a bunch of emotional malcontents) Even aside from what happens to them after they win the job, it seems to me that there certainly is a personality gap between orchestral pros and the rest of music (not surprising considering the necessary preparation; maybe that will be fodder for another post).

Now, here's what I think is more objectively wrong with this article. In attempting to "bridge" one gap (namely, that between what student musicians think their job description will be in a pro orchestra and what it actually is), the recommendations made here would just create a new gap between how academia trains them to fulfill these obligations and how they actually have to be dealt with in practice. The article advocates for conservatories to implement required classes on fundraising and outreach activities, complaining that most aspiring orchestral musicians win their first audition with no knowledge whatsoever of these things and must learn "on the job." I'm certainly willing to take their word for it, BUT...considering all the aspects of musical training where one is already struggling with theory-versus-practice issues, this just appears to me to be one more. It could do a little bit of good, but say someone from Minneapolis gets really good at schmoozing with donors here and subsequently wins an orchestral job in the deep south. Can you say culture shock? There are elements to social interaction that are not taught in school because they cannot be taught in school. To put it mildly, I think that these are idealistic recommendations. It all sounds peachy in theory, but I'm not holding my breath for a breakthrough. I suppose we'll find out in due time if the program at Eastman, for example, bears any fruit.

There was a larger theme (I was laughing, actually) running throughout the article whereby it is repeatedly implied that orchestral musicians lack social skills (the word curmudgeon was used at one point). I am again willing to take their word for lack of sufficient personal experience. However, by the time they get to college, is it not a little bit late to start working on this? While college was overall a productive and enjoyable experience for me, it felt way too much like high school already. Many professors took attendance and factored it into grading; students repeatedly whined and coerced instructors into granting opportunities for extra credit or throwing out certain test questions; and as a music major, 89 out of the 120 credits I needed to graduate had to be in my major, which meant that I had almost no real decisions to make when it came time to register for classes. If you had also required me to take a class on outreach and another one on grantsmanship and another one on wine and cheese party etiquette, I might have quit. Actually, there is very little in the classes that I did have to take that I could not have learned elsewhere (common critique of majoring in music which I should have heeded before jumping in). How about we reserve valuable credit hours for those things instead of micromanaging every last detail of everything else? I'm not aware of other fields where the training aspires to be not only intellectual and practical but also social. People simply are panicked in music to the point of irrationality because money is drying up faster than you can spell "anacrusis".

Now for the most galling line of the entire thing:
"Rather than simply introducing a piece of music by offering factual background...[actor/arts educator Eric Booth] teaches musicians how to connect emotionally to introduce a piece."
Touché. Did I mention that Ligeti's piano etudes make me happy, or that Dolphy's "Out to Lunch" makes me feel invigorated? Anyone can play this game. It doesn't take a workshop with some "arts educator" to develop, and it's not going to make Ligeti or Dolphy fans out of an audience of conservative midwestern suburbanites. In case anyone was wondering, that's why it has not traditionally been used in pre-concert talks. With all due respect toMr. Booth, I can't help but bristle at the apparent total absence from his resume of any relevant experience as a musician. Leave it to an actor to tell you that your shoe is untied while you're wearing sandals.

Is it criminal that some of us just want to play our damn instruments, that this is the reason we pursue careers in music, and that we don't need or even always want to know anything about the composer or the performers in order to enjoy listening to the music? I suspect that we have always been here and that we're not going away any time soon. I also know that we are not all "curmudgeons" as the article implies, but that somehow our passion is not readily communicated by our intuitive actions as functional musicians. The message here seems to be that perhaps the place for us is no longer as professional orchestral players. Good thing I got the message in time without anyone having to tell me.

Too Much Information

It was not without trepidation that I recently filled out some parts of my blogger profile that I had previously left blank (specifically, the "about me" and "favorite music" sections). Gratuitous and trivial? Mostly. At best, it could help to contextualize some of my more audacious comments. At worst, it marks me as someone who got the flu and had nothing better to do in between hacks and sniffles. The fact that I had to cut down the list of music to fit within the maximum allowable number of characters is particularly telling of how sick I was. In any case, enjoy.

I've also updated and augmented the links section, including some more of my music (if you haven't visited my website lately, I've tweaked it a bit as well).

Finally, astute readers may notice some suspicious dates and times on my posts. Yes, I admit it: I often write posts ahead of time, leave them alone for a few days, then edit them accordingly. Hopefully this isn't in violation of any written or unwritten blogging etiquette. I think it's worth it to aim to present more complete thoughts, or at least as complete as I can manage.

Another Contest Conundrum

I've entered a few composition contests in my time, but until this spawned this and this, I never stopped to think about entry fee-to-prize ratio or any of the other criticisms that were leveled. What I find galling above all else about contests is when the application form asks the entrant to list the schools they've attended and the teachers they've studied with (as with this one, which I've occasionally considered entering). From reading the entry form, it seems at least somewhat ambiguous as to whether this information is absolutely required (could I write "N/A"?), and gives no hint whatsoever as to why they are requesting it. I know I've seen this in other places as well, but I can't seem to recall what they were. Having had no individual instruction in composition, I usually shy away when a contest requests school and teacher information, figuring that they are basically rigged in favor of "university composers" or whatever we are calling them now.

Wait, what's that I hear? Ah yes, it's the footsteps of the NewMusicBox graduate student types walking over to their computers in order to attempt to rationalize with me. "It's not like the judges actually take that into consideration." Well then maybe they should ask for everyone's favorite color as well. I sure hope they don't actually take your education into consideration in the judging process, but why request the information in the first place? Do they judge you more harshly if you had a really good teacher and more favorably if you had a really shitty one? If it really didn't matter to them either way, you'd think that they would want to avoid learning these kinds of things about the entrants so as to remain as unbiased as possible. And yes, I know that one does not remain "unbiased" when judging artworks against each other, but the "bias" in that case is an aesthetic (musical) bias, not a personal (extramusical) bias. Or could it be that the absence of formal compositional training is such an accurate predictor of aesthetic bias that this information is actually useful to them in the judging? In other words, is it so that they can separate the "serious" (schooled) entries from the junk (unschooled) entries?

Some people may disagree with me, but I find that attitude to be more than a little bit misguided. (seriously Colin, an analogy between training composers and racehorses??!! I couldn't have fabricated a more timely critique out of thin air and bottle of hard liquor.) Of course, it's their contest. They can do whatever they want, and I should have better things to worry about anyway, like writing more unschooled music and not fixing my embouchure. I'll never be happier about being wrong than if someone can tell me conclusively that there is a valid reason for requesting this information with a submission to a composition contest.

We Travel The Blogways

As I continue to avoid practicing orchestal excerpts, a cursory glance at recent online developments yields a newfound awareness of several intriguing diversions. With bloggers everywhere still emerging one by one from holiday-induced hibernation, my neighbors might actually get some sleep this week.

Was it not just last week that in the midst of a flu-induced haze I wrote that I had never seen Var�se's name mentioned on a blog? Suburban Scene breaks the streak, if it ever really existed at all, by stating that he finds the master of organized sound to be boring. Fair enough.

You say you want comedy? Tears of a Clownsilly delivers. Reminds me of my friend from college who took a jazz course offered by the Afro-American Studies department. By the end of the semester, he could have written this (but props to pws for doing the honors anyway).

Finally, Drew McManus links to an interesting article of his on orchestras and recording. The stats on free versus paid downloads induced a kind of composite laugh/gag on my part, although I guess it is anything but surprising. Of course, before you go running off for your free Beethoven, don't forget that you can download a whopping 20 minutes of my too-tonal-but-not-tonal-enough/kinda-inside-but-kinda-outside junk for free right here. I live to serve.

And the title of the post? Well, you'll just have to imagine the music of Sun Ra whilst traveling. (who could forget it?) Now get lost. I need to practice.

Doomed To Repeat

Everyone should read this post by Kyle Gann. My jaw was on the floor a couple of times. I want to say I agree with him, but that would not be putting it correctly. The correct thing to say is that I always wanted to say what he said but that I never knew enough to do so with confidence. If I had tried to express those ideas in writing, it would count as pure conjecture; coming from him however, it means something.

This wasn't even the first time this week that I felt simultaneously validated and beaten to the punch. For Christmas, I received a copy of Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation and Other Essays." I've just begun to scratch the surface, but I am already both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised with the contents of this book; pleasantly because I agree with so much of it, but unpleasantly because some of her ideas bear a striking (and in one notable case, even literal) resemblance to what I though were my own original insights. If you were to read some of my more extended writings on music with an awareness of Sontag, you'd probably see me as anything from an leech to a plagiarist, particularly the part about descriptive versus prescriptive approaches.

The adage about those who don't know history is somewhat appropriate here, but for the moment, I'm not nearly as concerned about my own ignorance in reproducing these ideas as about the fact that I was led in this direction simply by observing and reacting to the world around me. If someone else leveled these same criticisms 40 years ago, and if this work is now hailed as "a modern classic" (according to the back cover), why have things remained so much the same that someone living now could independently observe the same phenomena and take issue with them for the same reasons? Kyle quoted a 150 year-old document in his post that was so relevant to modern day composition training, it could have been written last week. Are we to conclude that composers haven�t learned a thing in 150 years?

Before anyone beats me to it, here's my next big conjecture: rational thought and civilized dialogue have taken us quite a long way, so far in fact that I think we're starting to identify some wholly irreconcilable differences among musicians that will persist until the end of time. It's hard not to see the musical landscape as a collection of us-versus-them propositions: academic composers versus intuitive composers, scale-mongering jazz musicians versus purely melodic players, Greg Sandow and his cultural contexts versus me and my abstract musical structures. I even think that the conflict over absolute and program music has remained and will remain unresolved in some important ways.

Once such a conflict has spanned several generations and enveloped participants who are wholly ignorant of its long history, I�d say we have reached an impasse. Besides actually caring about these things, I enjoy the debate for its own sake, yet I often wonder if the latter isn't the only thing keeping the debate going at all at this point. If people the likes of Sontag and Gann say these things and nothing changes, perhaps there isn't much of anything left for the rest us to do about it than to put our ideas into practice and let the results speak for themselves. Greg Sandow jokes in his �book� that since he�s a composer, maybe he should write a piece to show where he thinks classical music needs to go. After some of the things I�ve read on his blog, I�d say this is nothing less than an obligation!

Instead of debating the justification (or lack thereof) for requiring undergraduate music students to interpret pure instrumental pieces programmatically as part of their course of study, how about we let the musicologists go on beating their meat and instead debate the merits of B-flat tubas versus C tubas? Finale software versus Sibelius software? Coke versus Pepsi? That ought to get us somewhere.

Idle Thoughts After a Long Day

#1- Low humidity coupled with low temperatures is one of mother nature's many ways of saying "I hate you" to brass players. #2- Who on earth is bored enough to harmonize and orchestrate Charlie Parker's entire solo on "Confirmation" for a big band sax section? I'm sure it was cool at one time, and even I would have thought it was cool at one point in my life, but today I'm just not feeling it (possibly as a result of #1).

The Room Gets Smarter...(or not)

I finally got the bug that is going around, so I've been holed up the last few days trying to recover. Out of sheer frustraton, I actually turned on classical public radio, which normally bores me to tears. Alas, they were playing opera. My distaste for opera is so intense that I used to literally leave the opera sections of my music history exams blank and take a B- because I could not bear to study it; BUT, without any frame of reference or even being able to determine the language, I made an educated guess within a couple of minutes that the composer was Puccini. And I was right.

I've done this before. I'd like to brag about it, but I'm really more embarrassed that it has come to this. I am a hardcore music junkie, yet it seems like there is so much out there that it is still difficult to have a conversation with anyone else without being embarrassed at my own lack of knowledge. Depending on who you're talking to, "20th century Classical" might include Puccini, or it might not; "contemporary jazz" might mean Cecil Taylor or it might mean Kenny G. I feel like such an idiot savant most of the time, but that's because you don't hear the music that I do know on the radio at all (or really anywhere, come to think of it). Even among like-minded and thoroughgoing friends and collarborators, our breadth of knowledge does not always overlap.

It's frustrating, but it's reality. Despite the occasional embarrassing moment, I will continue to eschew impressive knowledge in favor of what I deem to beuseful knowledge. In a way, I'm envious of the musicologist types who can talk intelligently about damn near anything, but I think its always more important to consider knowledge as a means to an end rather than an end unto itself (not necessarily saying they are guilty of this). My ignorance of Puccini isn't particularly handicapping to my performing or compositional endeavors; on the other hand, it would be practical that my near total ignorance of Cecil Taylor be addressed sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, and decisions like this must be made all the time if one is to accomplish anything meaningful in the allotted time.

Although I don't plan on putting forth any more effort than I already have towards mending my relationship wih either the local classical station or opera (other than finally obtaining a DVD of Wozzeck, which holds the most promise on the latter count), I guess there's still a glimmer of hope, for in my invalid half-sleep state, I almost enjoyed listening to Act III of Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West" (purely as abstract sound, of course). Now if they would just play more Ligeti...

The Dark Horse

What jumps out at me about much of the discourse on the internet concerning contemporary classical music is that there are an awful lot of factions and isms running around loose. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks the other day that there is a personal style that I seem to think I hear echoed constantly in the work of composers presently in their 20's and 30's that has no ism associated with it and is seldom (never) mentioned. It is not that of Webern, Babbitt, Reich or Feldman but that of Varèse.

I'm sure that at least some of this is coincidental, but I find it interesting anyway (if not just for the fact that if I'm wrong about this in any objectifiable way, then it says something rather interesting about me instead). I hesitate to use a phrase along the lines of "hangs over it like a dark cloud" in this situation because for the most part, I like the music of Varèse. Unfortunately, if I intend to make any sort of worthwhile point with this entry, I can't avoid inadvertently trashing him in some respects because by and large, I am usually unhappy when I perceive his influence lurking behind a new work.

Reasons for this? Number one would be that harmony is my favorite element of music, even though I'll readily accept the most liberal definition of what it might be. Varèse pushes me to my limits in this respect, yet one always senses that he knows what he's doing. In appropriating only parts of his style, it would not be difficult to come up with something which could drive me permanently batty. That brings us to number two , which would be that try as we might, we are not all as clever as Varèse, who himself wrote an absolute masterpiece (in my opinion) that is replete with near direct quotes from an even more famous work (I'm referring to Ameriques and The Rite of Spring).

I'm not sure I can remember the last time I read the word "Varèse" on my computer screen, yet I cannot forget all of the pieces I've suffered through at student composition recitals and new music concerts which seem to take Varèse's approach to sound without any discernible (or at least skillfull) approach to pitch, whether his or someone else's. Coincidence, or dark horse?

More On (moron?) Orchestral Excerpts

Event #1: I had a conversation with another musician several months ago where he said that too many players and teachers use orchestral excerpts to learn to play the instruments rather than learning the instruments in order to play the excerpts. Event #2: I had a student of mine order the newfangled Bordogni for Tuba thing from Encore; in the preface, it said something to the effect of: these etudes should be used strictly for developing musicality and not at all for developing technique.

Can you say chicken and egg? Technique does not grow on trees (and even if it did, by now some multi-national corporation would have seen to the overthrow of a third-world government to get their hands on it and be selling it for megabucks, which most certainly do not grow on trees either...but I digress). The first of these two points is well-taken: no tubist is going to be able to approach the Ride or Fountains without some serious shedding of less difficult material. On the other hand (and I'm speaking from personal experience in making this next point), there's no shame in using the excerpts to shore up deficiencies in an advanced player. I've always been a high range specialist with a weak low range; loud low excerpts are my achilles heel, and there doesn't seem to be any way for me to address this concern without just jumping in to the actual music itself. On the third hand, my interlocutor makes an important point: this most certainly did NOT work when I as a much weaker player overall (four years ago or so) made my first serious pass at these things. Now that I'm older, wiser, and more proficient, things are coming together in a more promising fashion (relatively speaking, of course).

As for the Bordogni thing, I'm floored by that comment. What better tool to use for working on breath control, slurring, extreme registers, and even ear training? Where and by what means are students to hone these skills if not with Bordogni and similar works? This brings me to the issue that trumps all of these previous arguments, a realization which I was close to making independently but eventually heard made by several leading brass teachers both in person and in print. It is crucial to (a) use "real music" as much as possible in your practice, and (b) play everything musically and with artistic intent whether it is "real music" (excerpts, solos, improv, etc.) or not (scales, arpeggios, tonguing exercises, etc.). If you follow that advice, you'll be in good shape more often than not because, if nothing else, you will continue to enjoy playing longer and avoid burning out.

Living In a Box?

In composition, there is a fine line between "finding your voice" and painting by number; between giving each piece a personal touch and writing the same piece over and over. As a composer, I have never been particularly interested in larger guiding principles such as sonata form, serialism, metric modulation, etc. even though there are plenty of pieces I enjoy by other composers which use these devices. In fact, I usually enjoy listening to them right up until the point where I start to really hear the method, at which point the music always loses a little bit of its luster, at least to me.

Of course, some if not all of these devices were codified as such after the fact, but even so, later composers often pick them up and embrace them as part and parcel of their compositional technique. Not to say that this is wrong in any intrinsic sense, but I have never understood this, nor have I ever felt compelled to do it, even when the method is of my own invention, as in the piece I wrote which followed a nearly strict pattern of meter changes: 7/4 5/4 3/4 -or- 7/4 5/4 7/4 5/4 3/4. This led to a cool "counting down" effect whereby the bars got progressively shorter; the process would then repeat itself. Among all of my compositions, this idea had the most possibilities for further development; however, I have yet to find what I deem a legitimate need or even a suitable use for it outside of the piece from which it arose as an intuitive creation. That's just how I am.

I believe that the "personal voice" operates on deeper level than the compositional device. I tremendously enjoy approaching each subsequent piece as an opportunity to create something entirely different from everything else I have written, and it particularly intrigues me when composers say things along the lines of "Oh, I've moved on to x approach" or "I only work in x medium/style now." I always want to ask, "What was it about the previous approach was preventing you from taking the new approach?" I'd like to think that the ideal for a composer would be to be able to answer "Nothing," meaning of course that you would not need to change approaches midstream in the first place.

Lost (not the TV show)

About a month ago now, I mailed entries to two composition contests by way of Priority Mail. As always, I availed myself of the USPS's delivery confirmation option. This service provides no indemnity coverage, but it does tell you when your stuff was delivered...if it was delivered. That's where the story gets interesting, for it appears that according to both the delivery confirmation (or lack thereof) and the people administering the respective contests, the envelopes were in fact never delivered.

One contest had a December 1 postmark deadline, so unless the original envelope turns up and makes it there before they start the judging, that one is a lost cause. No big deal; I threw that one together just for the hell of it and wasn't honestly expecting anything to come of it. The other one is a different story; I wrote the piece especially for it and was hopeful of at least turning someone's head on the committee. The deadline for that one is not until sometime next month, so I should still be able to enter...that is unless this is part of a larger plot by Kinko's to get all of my money from making x number of copies of my pieces. Or perhaps it's a sign from God that these contests aren't worth the trouble, which if I believed in God would be very thoughtful of him to say to me because he'd probably be correct. Of course, even without a God, there's still the blogosphere to tell me this, but as an uncompromising autodidact with no teachers to advocate for my work and very little hope of getting anything performed by anyone but myself, what else is there to do but force someone somewhere to at least see my name flash before their tired little eyes before they glaze over for good, leading them to throw the rest of the entries in the recycling bin and name their cousin the winner?

I do remember overhearing one rather distinguished comp professor say that students should enter as many contests as they feel inclined to because only good things can come of it. Well, kind of. That's only if your magnum opus actually gets out of the damn neighborhood post office. I would normally say that it's always worth it for me to enter these things. I'm very competitive by nature; the satisfaction from winning (it has happened a couple of times somehow or another) is too much fun, while being pissed off at not winning gets me about as motivated to write as ever (sad but true). But having my entry lost in the mail? That pisses me off in a much more counterproductive way, the way that makes me not want to even bother sending the damn thing again even if there's still plenty of time. "It probably sucks anyway," or "I'll bet everyone entering is out of my league" are among the thoughts crossing my mind. Of course, I will do it one way or the other just so that I can look forward to being doubly pissed of when I don't win jack, or going totally ape shit when I'm crowned the winner.

BUT...if they lose my stuff again, expect the next entry to be a Cage-inspired work for fist and postal employee that will get more performances than any previous work of mine. Anyone know of contests for works that eventually land the composer in jail?

(If there's one thing I've learned from communicating via the internet, it's that thanks to the few of you out there who are argumentative literal minded dopes, I ought to say overtly that the last two sentences constitute a classic example of sarcasm, a time-honored literary device that is easily lost over a computer screen. In other words, it was a joke guys; you can't sue me. But seriously, if you know of a comp contest for that kind of thing...)

Orchestral Excerpt = Poorly Orchestrated?

Allow me to reflect on my most recent yet only marginally successful attempts to hack through a few of the orchestral excerpts I've been putting off learning for, oh, let's see here, my entire existence:

I've heard it said about orchestral excerpts for tuba that either anyone can play them or no one can play them. It's funny because its true. What does it mean when something that "anyone can play" (mind you I am talking figuratively here) has become a standard excerpt? Most typically, it's because it's important thematically AND it's famous. The Meistersinger excerpt would be exhibit A; not the most demanding thing in the world, but where else in the entire repertoire (let alone in such a famous piece) does the tuba play the entire tune?

On the other hand, the mechanism by which an excerpt from a more obscure piece becomes a staple of the audition circuit should serve as a warning to all of us wannabe composers. The only way an excerpt from a second rate piece becomes standard is if it's so hard that even the best orchestral players in the world have to practice it for years to get it right. In other words, such excerpts represent things you really shouldn't write (or at least not with the expectation of it being played correctly by mortals).

Now comes the part where I get to whine (eat your hearts out, singers). Want to know how NOT to write for tuba? Just take a look at the Fountains of Rome excerpt. If an undergraduate comp student brought something like that to their lesson, they'd be buried beneath a heap of the usual criticisms. (although come to think of it, I can't say it's not idiomatic; I guess that makes it more "idealistic" than "unrealistic?" It's damn near impossible to play in any case.)

As of today, my new goal as an orchestral composer is that if in the unlikely event anything I ever write gets called on an audition, that it be for the first reason and not the second reason (i.e. because it's famous and catchy, NOT because only 1% of everyone ever to play that instrument can even imagine making it happen). Meanwhile, pardon the clatter while I continue to fluff and cack my way through Fountains a la the other 99%

Some Housekeeping

By popular demand, I've added links to some of my music. Be nice. I regret that I do not currently have a decent recording of an entire "classical" composition to share with y'all. I think I will work on doing something with MIDI. In the meantime, you'll have to settle for all that jazz and the finale of my trumpet sonata.

Also, I have enabled comment moderation with hopes of alleviating the spam comments I've been receiving lately. To the spammers: my you-know-what works just fine, thank you.

Perfunctory Holiday Wishes

Merry Christmakwanzaakah to all you brass types out there:

click here

My Ongoing Adversarial Relationship With The Act of Revision (particularly as manifested in my "classical" compositions)

As listeners, we often experience the phenomenon of a piece "growing" on us. It is not an unusual occurrence, but what if the piece is one that you wrote yourself? This would seem on the surface to be an almost impossible situation; don't you "know" the piece better than anyone else if you wrote it? Maybe it is a natural consequence of what some would see as the inherent flaws in my autodidactic approach to composition, but my own pieces often grow on me. I think I know the reason: I often make compositional choices (i.e. note choices) based on some kind of gut feeling of necessity that I cannot really explain at the time. At the immediate completion of the piece, I hear the awkwardness and almost want to change it, but I can rack my brains for hours finding an array of "satisfactory" solutions only to discard them all in favor of the original "flawed" version. Something always tells me not to change it. I recently listened back to a piece I had nearly forgotten about that has several such moments; I liked most of them and didn't like some of them, but most of all, I still cannot fathom changing anything in it. It seems to me that the rhetoric of contemporary composition pedagogy is one of striving for an odd ideal of perfection; not perfection in the abstract, but some kind of relative perfection, the best you can possibly do under the circumstances as determined not by you yourself but by your teacher and peers. I used the word "choice" earlier, but actually, come to think of it, what I'm getting at is that these things are not choices at all but inevitabilities; isn't that called having a strong vision or personal voice or one of those other press release buzzwords? According to the 60 Minutes story, the sole kink in the armor of whiz kid Jay Greenberg is an even stronger aversion to revision than what I'm describing. Perhaps a baseball analogy would be appropriate here: when Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was asked when phenom Joe Mauer would start hitting for power, he replied that he was not going to be the one to mess up Mauer's swing by telling him to hit the ball out of the park all the time. Anyone who followed the Twins regular season surge last season can see that Gardy knows what he's talking about.

My Ongoing Congenial Relationship With The Act of Revelation (particularly as manifested in 1960's Blue Note recordings)

From Bob Blumenthal's notes to the Rudy Van Gelder edition of "Unity" by Larry Young:
"From its first appearance in the world of jazz, the Hammond B-3 organ has been a controversial instrument. Some revere it as a platform for blues expression, or a keyboard approximation of big band dynamics, or the harbinger of old/new acid grooves; and others, many of whom fashion themselves the most "serious" of jazz fans, consider it a whiny, unsubtle, roller-rinky contraption deserving neither attention nor respect. For nearly a quarter-century, the surest way to make listeners in the latter category do an about-face has been to play them this album."
I generally liked the B-3 before, but this album is certainly all its cracked up to be in the notes. I thought of this quote because I recently listened for the first time in years to Wayne Shorter's "Juju." There is a similar contingent of people who "don't get" Wayne Shorter; I "don't like" some of it (a more honest way to put it, I think), but if you know anyone who wonders why Shorter is considered a master, play them this album. Be sure to stand at least five feet away as a rapid "about-face" is imminent.

Everyone Knows Someone...

...who used to play tuba. Be it a parent, sibling, significant other, or themselves, I cannot believe the number of people who come up to me at gigs and tell me that they or someone close to them plays or used to play the instrument. I asked the drummer last night if anyone ever comes up to him at gigs and starts talking about how they used to play drums. He said no, but that his older brother did used to play the tuba. See my point?

Animusic?

Is this progress?

CD Baby "Out on a Limb" Project Review: Second Installment

A few months ago, I purchased 10 CDs from CD Baby, all by artists I had never heard of previously. I used only the 2 minute sound samples on their pages to judge their work. Needless to say there have been hits and misses, but overall, it has been a successful idea and I'm sure that when I have some disposable income again, I will give it another shot. I highly recommend that you try it sometime; everyone is quick to talk about how many diverse musicians there are working today and how the internet has put them only a click away, yet if we don't actually check them out, none of that matters...so take advantage of it! Anyway, I mentioned one of the "hits" here a while back, so in the interest of equal time, I thought I should also give some props to another gem of the bunch, "Also Not Pictured" by the group Equilateral. I remember that about a year ago there was another band playing a club date in Minneapolis that was billed as "Iowa's hippest contribution to modern jazz" or something to that effect. Whatever the prowess of that band might have been, their marketing department had better come up with a new soundbite, because I would be shocked if anything hipper than Equilateral has ever come out of Iowa, musically or otherwise (and no, covered bridges are NOT hip). The players are individually virtuosic and are equally comfortable playing tunes, playing free, or playing anywhere in between. The tune "Mastroiology" in particular is a real tour de force for saxophonist Chris Merz, both as a player and composer. It knocked me off my chair...which was exactly what I was looking for. There is so much going on (even in Iowa!) that we all owe it to ourselves to seek it out. Unfortunately, it seems that one problem with the internet age is that the good stuff is not the stuff that falls in your lap. At least it is out there somewhere, even if you have to go out on a limb to get it.

An Awkward Silence

The phone rang late last night. It was a musician friend of mine. Get this: someone had given him an iTunes gift certificate and he wanted to know if I could recommend a piece by John Cage! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time...but then there was a pause. While I've read and been tremendously influenced by Cage's writings, I had to admit to almost complete ignorance of his actual compositions. In order to circumvent this inconvenient and embarrassing fact, I just told my friend that the more indeterminate a piece is, the more the performers (rather than the composer) will influence the perceived quality of the music. Perhaps it is fitting that Cage is the recipient (or non-recipient) of many backhanded compliments ("more a philosopher than a composer"?). After all, he aimed to destroy the very mechanism by which accolades are bestowed. Nonetheless, he had enough impact that years after his death, people are still going to iTunes to download his, um...I had better be careful here...recordings of sonic realizations of his scores. I will say this: I have heard two of his pieces performed by top-notch ensembles/performers. Both were highly indeterminate and I tremendously enjoyed them both. That might say more about me than it does about Cage (or at least that's what he would have said), but I think the man deserves some credit; he deserves to be listened to; he deserves to have a piece OTHER than 4'33'' associated with his name; and I had better put my money where my mouth is and pick up some recordings. So...uh, can anyone else recommend ME a recording of a piece by John Cage?

The Difference Between Composition and Improvisation

Gunther Schuller caused quite a stir when he published his analysis of Sonny Rollins solo on Blue Seven. His point (ostensibly, that a jazz performance can make use of motivic development both as extensively and effectively as a classical piece, and therefore deserves to be taken just as seriously) needed to be made, remains valid, and is well taken by this writer. I do, however, want to offer a slightly different perspective based on my intuitive reactions as both a listener and a player, which is that while motivic development is (usually) nice when it happens during a jazz solo, I believe that jazz (and all improvised music) stands on its own as serious music even in absence of this device. In fact, I actually think that it is important that it is not overused, and that it does not dominate one's approach to improvisation.
The reason I say this is that improvisation is, well, improvisation. You could call it "spontaneous composition;" indeed, there are many famous and infamous quotes from jazz legends about the extemporaneous nature of soloing. The most incisive, however (from Steve Lacy if I'm not mistaken), is the one that acknowledges the most important consequence of this distinction between composition and improvisation, namely that improvisation does not allow for revision after the fact: once the music happens, it is out there and then it is gone, whether the players realized their musical intent(s) accurately or not, and whether or not anyone listening is even aware of this. This is the challenge that those of us who improvise (in any genre) accept each time we step out, but it is not a challenge to create the same thing spontaneously that we would create through composition and revision. While we may work at perfecting our technique and approach, it would not be worth the trouble to attempt to truly become spontaneous composers. If we so valued the opportunity to revise and perfect smaller details of the performance, improvisation would probably be the wrong medium for us.
Of course, one must draw the line somewhere. By this logic, even technical proficiency could be labeled a mere "detail" and thrown out the window. Obviously, this is not quite the point I'm trying to make. Of all the various challenges faced by the improvisor, effective motivic development is probably the hardest for the musician to create spontaneously (and in some sense, also the hardest to create with much forethought and revision; just ask a composer). In a sense, in puts the player in the same position as the listener in that they must perceive and follow the progress of such development in music they are hearing for the first (and perhaps last) time. In this age of home recording and internet distribution, perhaps it is more valid than ever to value motivic development in improvised music; nonetheless, it simply cannot become the be all and end all of improvised music because that is not what improvised music is. It is a question of choosing the right tool for the job: one does not use a hacksaw to cut down a large tree because the hacksaw is needlessly cumbersome on account of being too small and not sharp enough; similarly, to choose improvisation as one's medium for creating profound motivic development akin to that traditionally valued most highly by European classical music is, while not fruitless in every case, certainly a more cumbersome way to go about it.
In this sense, motivic development taken to extremes in an improvised context is essentially another form of empty virtuosity, just like playing high or fast simply for the sake of playing high or fast. I have always felt (and this is, of course, an opinion and not a fact) that the traditional jazz approach of improvising on the harmonic structure of the tune lends every such performance a sort of inherent claim to motivic development. And of course, the possibilities for developing the melody are more numerous than most players (myself included, shamefully) are willing or able to explore in the heat of the moment. Where does further development of melodic cells, contours, or pet licks fit into this picture? For me, it is mostly as a composer and less as an improvisor.

Smoke and Mirrors

I really hate the way solo tuba CD's are recorded. It would guess that it is an effort to recreate the sense of space and reverberance from a recital or concert hall, but instead, what you get is a recording where you have to turn the volume way up just to be able to hear it, and where the piano is, if not louder, than at least clearer and "closer" sounding than the tuba. I have personally always been partial to the sound obtained from placing the mic much closer, about a foot above the bell of the tuba; that point, however, brings us to the real issue here, which is that the closer one mics the horn, the more audible every little mistake becomes. I think tubists are sacrificing that more "immediate" sound that I prefer in order to appear "perfect." With digital editing and what not, the pressure to eliminate any perceptible mistake in the performance is indeed high. Add to that the fact that these recordings are going to be heard by lots of other tuba players, and one almost has no choice. Nonetheless, I'd like to see that change. In the end, it is futile to try to appear perfect; it is equally futile to try to create the impression of space on recording. That, I would argue, is not the point of recording anyway.

Against The Gesture

To refer to a passage or a piece of music as a gesture is to insult its distinctive characteristics and autonomous nature. As mere gesture, all crescendos are alike, as are all diminuendos, all fugato passages, and so on. To delight in gesture is to hear the music without really listening. An attentive listener comes away from the experience with an impression that defies the very concept of musical gesture as it is impossible to ignore those unique characteristics which lend each piece its engaging (or not) qualities.