One day as a high-schooler writing music on my Dad's PowerMac, I discovered that ConcertWare had a meter called "Free Time." Thus began an abiding compositional habit of periodically dispensing with barlines. Having now seen much more printed music and made many more forays (not totally successful ones) into hand-written/mind's-ear composition, it is always a bit embarrassing to think back to moments like this, when composing was for me something of a video game. Whether the software thus encouraged that impressionable young person to play fast and loose with convention or whether it merely allowed him to is a question of framing rather than of substance, and one which composers will answer more according to our own orientations rather than according to reality. Since the reality was in my particular case lost to the sands of time without anyone (including myself) caring nearly as much as composers seem to care about this issue in the abstract, perhaps this is just fine. Admittedly, from the perspective of a more experienced quasi-teacher attending to a hypothetical student, I would not be totally at ease with such a process now. Yet the same hindsight shows that there were at least two undeniably propitious elements in my case: (a) the ease and accessibility of this feature exploded a hitherto unquestioned convention rather than rigidifying it, and (b) ConcertWare undeniably handled unmetered notation far more flexibly than Finale, Sibelius or MuseScore do, even now.
It is true that such departures can be made too easy as well as too difficult, depending on the technical intermediary and the cultural atmosphere. It is also true that frequent interface with printed music outside of one's computing life has a way of diluting the computer's influence over notational decisions. I was fortunate as a tween to at least be seeing printed music in band class, and occasionally tripping over stacks of it at home. I suppose it was only later, when I realized that composers, publishers and conductors I had heard of (or at least a few of them) were open (or at least not irrevocably opposed) to temporarily dispensing with barlines, and when I encountered my first gentle opposition to this practice on the part of other musicians, that my decision thereby became something of an informed decision, taken freely. And when a beloved college wind band conductor habitually referred to barlines as "a necessary evil" in rehearsal, as an idealist I of course heard "evil" more than "necessary," and at that point all barline bets were off.
Unmetered notation remains controversial, even among the most seasoned and fluent musicians. Periodically I have occasion to pause and reflect on this situation, and it occurs to me now that there is a significant connection here to another Style Wars polemic which bubbles up occasionally: the question of learning one's part from notation as against learning it via aural transmission. In addition to asking for unmetered music to sound a certain way, by writing unmetered passages composers are asking the player to do some extra work; perhaps to figure out for themselves, by shedding, where the barlines might be if they had been used; perhaps to become familiar enough with (essentially, to memorize) the passage such that the coordinating function of the barline is superfluous; and perhaps therefore not to concern themselves with what other players' parts might be asking of them, nor with how those other players might handle those demands, including the possibility (within reason) of different grouping/phrasing in different parts. There is more to unmetered passages than the possibility of multiple "correct" meterings or the absence of composerly guidance (not to say intent) on said point: there is, more importantly, a practice, rehearsal, and performance process which is mediated by a notational decision. The result of this now-changed process is what I am seeking with unmetered passages. I am not seeking a "perfect" rendition as if barlines had been deployed and subsequently observed by unusually adept players or by a machine. I am, in a sense, actually going out of my way to avoid this.
Process is the only reason that the performance of unmetered music might, potentially (hopefully?), sound different than if the music were metered; getting music to sound a certain way is the only logical reason to depart from received notational convention; and departing from received notational convention is a good way (if not the only way) to shake up the performance process. This is the kind of procedural perfect circle that composers dream about, and usually only dream about. If the "process" merely consists of the performers staying 5 minutes after the first rehearsal to compare parts and draw in uniform barlines, then we can still say that the notation has mediated the process, and that the music might still sound different than if the composer had provided the same information to them from the outset. But this amounts to normalizing/conventionalizing what was non-normative about the piece in order to make it easier to play. That maneuver is the domain of Jobbing, not of Artistry. Shedding also makes any given piece easier to play, regardless of notation, and invites the reflection which breathes life into Dead Tree composition. It is socially ungraceful to point this out in a world where Everyone Is Busy and there is already plenty of music to listen to. I accept that judgment on a cosmic level. On an earthly level, meanwhile, I see unexplored/neglected aesthetic avenues hiding in plain sight and conjecture that they might be fun to explore. So come fly with me, or whatever.
Reflection tends to be baked into the process of aural transmission, and it tends to be eschewed (usually almost totally) by users of notation. This I do not deny, but I do choose to find fault with the users rather than with the notation. Thus for me the basis for preferring one mode of transmission to another is a matter of what I might want to do with it, not what everyone else thinks everyone else is doing with it. Modes of transmission are mere vehicles for the realization of the abstract concept of a work; it is the concept which indicates favorably or poorly for either process, not the other way around. Notation is all about expedience, and this is both its best and worst quality. Notation allows Eye Players to realize music without reflecting on it, perhaps even, as the figure of speech would have it, without even thinking about it. Owing to innumerable big-picture factors which are best set aside for now, this is normally exactly what happens (or doesn't happen). Certainly no one is more puzzled by or discontent with this situation than I am, and I will not be out-discontented by partisans of Ear traditions who choose to resolve this structure-agency question one-sidedly. It is true that the structure here (the notational system) is what enables users to become passive re-creators, but it is not true that it imposes passive re-creation, nor that the etiology of passive re-creation is entirely or even mostly a matter of the notational system, nor that the notational system has nothing more to offer us than the shortest on-ramp to the path of least resistance. If any given Eye Player chooses to reflect upon their Eye Music, they will find every bit as much to reflect upon as will the ear player upon theirs. If they neglect to take this opportunity where it presents itself, then my heart bleeds for them.
Writing without barlines aims at imposing a process that is intermediate between the rhetorical extremes of the Ear Player who is forced into a reflective outlook by the laboriousness of their process and the Eye Player who habitually tears through piles of written music without any reflection whatsoever because Everyone Is Busy and reflection would slow them down. Writing without barlines aims at imposing selective reflection by omitting small pieces of customary information, while nonetheless providing all the other information that written music customarily provides.
Notation doesn't breed soulless performance; rather, soulless performers gives soulless performances. Unfortunately this conclusion has become unavoidable as Ear Playing increasingly carries the day and soullessness remains rampant. Yes, Everyone Is Busy, and so there aren't too many bands around today where everyone really commits to the Mingus process. We're so Busy, actually, that the dwindling repertory has moved decisively away from anything even as structurally specific as Haitian Fight Song. The overdetermination of musical structure by social structure is a material question, not an expressive or metaphysical one. You cannot claim the exquisite-corpse process as an affirmative creative decision when your five band members have moved to five different states! You cannot claim notational or conceptual simplicity as an affirmative creative decision when you know that no one is willing to rehearse! I am not saying that you cannot succeed under these circumstances. What I am saying is that you cannot claim success.
When process is materially circumscribed from the outset, concept can only trail at a distance. It is unideal for process to lead concept in this way because all processes are conceptually limiting. Ideally the creator of the work would have taken account of this from the embryonic stage of creation, identifying a process which best serves their concept while working around the inevitable potholes. That is, ideally the mediation between process and concept takes place though the creative process itself, not in sequence with one consideration leading the other around by the scruff of the neck after the piece is "done." When process dictates to concept, its flaws and slippages are foregrounded anywhere the creator is unwilling to sacrifice concept to expedience. On one hand, this unwillingness is socially maladaptive; on the other hand, it is one leading indicator of the presence of a soul. Hence owing to unconscious self-other identifications that even educated citizens of enlightened post-industrial societies are subject to, this unwillingness to compromise tends to be rewarded by the soulful and punished by the soulless. And that's where we're at!
Showing posts with label notation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label notation. Show all posts
30 May 2020
06 November 2010
On Analysis
It seems to me that the benefits of any musical analysis tend to be rather exclusively available to the person who performed it, and more or less unavailable to anyone who might later come upon the finished product. Think about the time that must go into preparing an analysis for peer-reviewed publication, then think about the time it takes to read said article. The author cannot possibly replicate in any reader the brute force with which such a process tattoos the material on their brain; to do so, the reader must become an analyst themselves, and they might as well start with the primary document, not someone else's reduction of it.
An analogy could be drawn to learning musical material by ear versus from written notation, the latter being more efficient because the content has in a sense been reduced, the former being presented in its purest form. To be candid, I feel that the fear of written music which prevails outside the classical world is largely irrational (maybe I'll tell you why later this month), but there's no denying that to learn by ear is to learn everything all at once, while reading, though it doesn't have to be this way, certainly enables the musician to gloss over important details that aren't on the page, often making it more difficult to add them back in than it would have been to learn them concurrently.
An analogy could be drawn to learning musical material by ear versus from written notation, the latter being more efficient because the content has in a sense been reduced, the former being presented in its purest form. To be candid, I feel that the fear of written music which prevails outside the classical world is largely irrational (maybe I'll tell you why later this month), but there's no denying that to learn by ear is to learn everything all at once, while reading, though it doesn't have to be this way, certainly enables the musician to gloss over important details that aren't on the page, often making it more difficult to add them back in than it would have been to learn them concurrently.
27 October 2008
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.
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.
26 October 2008
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.
-----
*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.
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.
-----
*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.
11 October 2008
Write It Down So You Don't Forget It
I'm not embarrassed to admit that at one point in my life, I was one of those people for whom there were two kinds of music: classical and jazz. Everything I was involved in could be placed in one of those two categories, and mingling them or going outside of them didn't seem particularly important or interesting. Today, while I've broadened my horizons a little bit, as well as found productive ways of blurring the line between the two areas, I still have a tendency to see my musical world as a dichotomy, albeit a slightly different one. Rather than classical-versus-jazz, it has become notated-versus-improvised.
I think this has much to do with the music scene in Minneapolis, or at least the ostensibly non-classical part of it that I've inhabited for the last few years. We seem to have quite a bit of improvised or mostly-improvised music and a paucity of the more heavily notated or through-composed stuff. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; it's the results that matter anyway. Nonetheless, I can't help the sneaking suspicion that this condition represents a mere end run around the more logistically challenging process of putting on a concert-length presentation of fully notated music.
In no way do I wish to suggest that improvised music does not require individual or group practice, although I do think that it can be done well by a group that has never played together before, and that playing in the same configuration over a long period of time can lead to the formation of habits that may come to inhibit "real" creativity. There is, however, a certain flexibility present in that the instrumentation of the group, the duration of the performance, and the precise amount of rehearsal time required are infinitely more malleable than they are with notated music, which essentially dictates these things to us with few other options. And though I've been fortunate to work with a lot of really talented and genuine improvisers, we all know that there are people out there who are attracted to improvised music for all the wrong reasons.
Forgive the cynicism, but it seems to me that as a function of our eminent adaptability, us musicians have now figured out that when creation, rehearsal and performance take place simultaneously, it saves time and money. Hence, while I'm skeptical of the death of classical music per se, I do fear for the health of notated music to some extent. I've been giving some thought lately on how to bring more through-composed, mostly notated music to the ostensibly non-classical areas that I work in simply to provide a counterbalance to all of the improvisation. There's good reason to think that such conceptual diversification would be healthy for the performers and for the scene; it would also be good for improvised music, which I fear is becoming perfunctory without a foil.
The same would certainly be true of notated music were we in the opposite situation (hang out around classically trained string players if you don't believe me). As a teacher, my highest priority is to develop in my students both a firm grasp of notation and the ability to "play by ear." It is astonishing and disappointing to me the extent to which most musicians possess only one of these two skills, even when they are exceptional at the one they have; it is equally frustrating that the preferred method of working breaks down along stylistic lines, sometimes making collaboration difficult if not impossible. This is not surprising: a musician will not develop a given skill if their chosen musical endeavors do not demand it of them. By demanding it of students, we can give them the tools they need to have fulfilling musical lives in whatever stylistic area they wish to explore.
For those of us whose musical interests are broad enough that working entirely with or without notation is simply not possible, necessity is the mother of invention, and hence, we tend to be motivated to become equally comfortable with and without a piece of paper in front of us. However, since the two skills tend to benefit each other, even specialists would undoubtedly benefit from at least dabbling with the alternative (and let's face it, unless you have ultra-perfect pitch and can score-read Schoenberg orchestral pieces like a computer, there's room for improvement).
I think this has much to do with the music scene in Minneapolis, or at least the ostensibly non-classical part of it that I've inhabited for the last few years. We seem to have quite a bit of improvised or mostly-improvised music and a paucity of the more heavily notated or through-composed stuff. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; it's the results that matter anyway. Nonetheless, I can't help the sneaking suspicion that this condition represents a mere end run around the more logistically challenging process of putting on a concert-length presentation of fully notated music.
In no way do I wish to suggest that improvised music does not require individual or group practice, although I do think that it can be done well by a group that has never played together before, and that playing in the same configuration over a long period of time can lead to the formation of habits that may come to inhibit "real" creativity. There is, however, a certain flexibility present in that the instrumentation of the group, the duration of the performance, and the precise amount of rehearsal time required are infinitely more malleable than they are with notated music, which essentially dictates these things to us with few other options. And though I've been fortunate to work with a lot of really talented and genuine improvisers, we all know that there are people out there who are attracted to improvised music for all the wrong reasons.
Forgive the cynicism, but it seems to me that as a function of our eminent adaptability, us musicians have now figured out that when creation, rehearsal and performance take place simultaneously, it saves time and money. Hence, while I'm skeptical of the death of classical music per se, I do fear for the health of notated music to some extent. I've been giving some thought lately on how to bring more through-composed, mostly notated music to the ostensibly non-classical areas that I work in simply to provide a counterbalance to all of the improvisation. There's good reason to think that such conceptual diversification would be healthy for the performers and for the scene; it would also be good for improvised music, which I fear is becoming perfunctory without a foil.
The same would certainly be true of notated music were we in the opposite situation (hang out around classically trained string players if you don't believe me). As a teacher, my highest priority is to develop in my students both a firm grasp of notation and the ability to "play by ear." It is astonishing and disappointing to me the extent to which most musicians possess only one of these two skills, even when they are exceptional at the one they have; it is equally frustrating that the preferred method of working breaks down along stylistic lines, sometimes making collaboration difficult if not impossible. This is not surprising: a musician will not develop a given skill if their chosen musical endeavors do not demand it of them. By demanding it of students, we can give them the tools they need to have fulfilling musical lives in whatever stylistic area they wish to explore.
For those of us whose musical interests are broad enough that working entirely with or without notation is simply not possible, necessity is the mother of invention, and hence, we tend to be motivated to become equally comfortable with and without a piece of paper in front of us. However, since the two skills tend to benefit each other, even specialists would undoubtedly benefit from at least dabbling with the alternative (and let's face it, unless you have ultra-perfect pitch and can score-read Schoenberg orchestral pieces like a computer, there's room for improvement).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
