The Authority of Bytes and Pixels

I was only born in 1982, but I am still just barely old enough that I don't take things like the internet, CD's, and cell phones for granted. I grew up with a black and white television and a rotary telephone in the house (and also with two harpsichords and no pianos, but that's another story entirely). To this day, I take a certain perverse pleasure in being able to listen to myself on CD, watch myself on VHS or DVD, and not least of all to see my words all lit up on an official-looking website like this one, as if I am some eminent writer. The reason for this is that I remember when not just anyone could see their work lit up on a screen, or hear their music played back by a computer notation program, or burn a CD of themselves for a friend, etc. etc. At first, it just wasn't possible; then it was too expensive; today, it's almost commonplace.

Specifically with regard to the internet, I think it is amazing how much venom is spewed over the fact that a kid born today will never have known a world without such modern technology, and particularly over the worry that this kid will never be able to tell the difference between an authoritative source and a phony one. Might I submit that it is, in fact, those of us who actually remember a time when all of these bytes and pixels were exclusively reserved for raging celebrities who are the problem? We are the ones who are most easily seduced into equating packaging with authority because for us, that used to be a pretty reliable way of judging sources. If that is no longer the case (and we all know it's not), then we are the one's who have a problem, not successive generations who will not know any other way.

Rather than fear the day when there are no people left on the planet who were alive before the internet existed, I would posit that once we arrive at that stage, the populace will, for that very reason, be much more adept than it is today at judging authority among various internet sources, and that perhaps only then can the internet come closer to fulfilling its potential as a constructive, utilitarian resource rather than a capricious waste of time and electricity.

Music Education: Pro vs. Con

With funding for public school music and art programs in constant jeopardy, it is crucial for all advocates of such programs to be armed with knowledge of their many benefits, as well as some of the counterarguments that detractors may rely on. Here, then, are the views of two esteemed guest columnists. Defending the programs against the philistine onslaught known as the "small government" movement is Ray Dolcissimo, a veteran band parent, self-appointed child development expert, and hack guitar player. Defending the rights of taxpayers to not educate their children is Dave Ruvido, a libertarian activist, truck driver, and junior high school drop out.

Pro: Mr. Dolcissimo
First off, it is well known that teenagers require far more sleep than the average adult, and that failing to get adequate rest each night can lead to underachievement in high school. Listening to music, however, is a surefire way to put anyone to sleep in short order. I can't seem to stay awake for more than 3 minutes of it myself. Though the music of pre-classic Europeans, minimalist Americans, and most smooth jazz artists seems to be particularly well-suited to this purpose, it's a property that all music seems to share pretty much across the board. We must not be left behind in recognizing this inherent value of music, one which much of the rest of American society has come to embrace wholeheartedly in recent times. By developing a love for music in elementary school, students will acquire a proficiency at sleeping that will last well into adulthood.

Second, as an art that deals with the communication of emotion, music is uniquely well-suited to fostering healthy emotional development among students. Who could ever forget the fear created by an upcoming scale quiz, the anger at malfunctioning school-owned instruments, the jealousy directed at the first chair players, or the utter shock of encountering an accidental in one's part? It's a proven fact that kids who study music are better in touch with their emotions. I don't think that's a coincidence.

I'll close with a question: would you want your own kids to be sleep deprived and full of pent-up emotion? Or do you want to raise healthy, well-rested and spaz-tastic young adults who are so excited about going to school each day, they insist on having a car so that they can drive there themselves? I implore you to recognize the undeniable benefits of a complete education, one which includes music and art as well as all of the traditional "core" subjects. We simply owe our kids the opportunity to experience music and all its attendant benefits.


Con: Mr. Ruvido
What's the worst thing that could happen to a kid just because his school had no band for him to play in? Maybe he actually starts doing his homework, or gets involved in a sport, or better yet, gets a damn job and stops freeloadin' off his parents. Now riddle me this: what's the worst that could happen to him if he does join the high school band and starts to kinda like it? I'll tell you what: he tries to make a career out of it.

The last thing we need is more hippy scumbags fighting each other for work and not earnin' any money. They might as well dropout now and get started drivin' a truck. We hear so much blather about certain activities providing kids something to do other than roam the streets and become drug addicts, but isn't that exactly what musicians do anyway? It's hard to understand how music could keep kids off drugs; if anything, it's more likely to lead the to a drug habit they wouldn't have developed otherwise.

Music not only carries the same risks as teen vagrancy, it is a drug itself: it causes musicians to withdraw from family and friends, spend all their money on recordings and instrument accessories, and become despondent most of the time over finding gigs and having enough time to practice. What good is it to keep a kid off the street when he's going to end up addicted to music anyway? I'm not payin' one cent of my hard-earned dough for little Johnny to develop a music habit. End of story.

Culture

It seems obvious from the outset that most any attempt to define what "culture" is has about the same chance of succeeding as does a similar attempt to define "music" or "art." Nonetheless, this is a concept to which so many musicians so often refer to as a pillar of an argument or a philosophy that we really should understand what it means, or at least what it is taken to mean in any given context. Below are three explorations of the modern dynamic between music and the concept of culture, each taking a different approach: culture as control, the dictionary definition of culture, and the concept of the inevitable influence of culture on art.


Culture: The Control Aspect

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"What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture."
-Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"

There's something about statements like this that particularly roils those for whom music's basis in culture is seen as essential. We know what it means for a person to be assimilated into a culture, but what does it mean for music (or art broadly) to be assimilated into, have a basis in, or reflect a culture? By capitalizing the C-word, Sontag highlights a crucial detail which must be addressed in any such discussion, which is that somewhere along the way, we stopped dealing in terms of specific cultures and started touting capital-C Culture broadly.

For Americans, there are two elephants in the room when it comes to any discussion of the C-word: the long-held view that we lack a culture (or at least a single unified culture), and our particular history of racial oppression. Only through the peculiar combination of these two circumstances (not that they are wholly unrelated) could Culture become generalized and fêted in the particular way that it is (i.e. with no regard for which culture we are dealing with, as if they were all of equal merit). There's a certain knee-jerk reaction that some of us white Americans are prone to whereby white=bad, and black (or, to take it further, non-white, or even non-Western)=good. It's awkward to talk about and we avoid it if we can, but anyone who lives here knows how firmly entrenched it is, especially if you are involved even casually in jazz and its offshoots. It's a token way for us whites to acknowledge that we understand how fucked up things were and are. There's nothing so wrong about that on the surface, but let's just keep in mind that the devil is in the details: there are plenty of places in the world today where the human rights situation is as bad or worse than it is in the USA, even given the substantial regressions of the last 7 years.

Lack of pigment by no means equates to lack of Culture; various European ethnic groups, after all, have vital and distinct cultures of their own. More importantly, however, I don't believe for a second that a lack of Culture equates to a lack of artistic potency or legitimacy. There is a grave contradiction at the heart of capital-C culture advocacy; for lack of a better term, I'll refer to this as the control aspect of culture. Basically, what "culture" imposes on individuals generally is what "style" imposes on music (or any art) specifically: limits, control, hierarchy, or whatever you want to call it. You could, of course, have a "culture of openness" or something similar, but even that is a kind of control, essentially standing in opposition to people who might favor the imposition of something more monolithic. Think equal and opposite forces: to have a unified culture is to exert social control. If we are to merely generalize about Culture, this may in fact be its most universal feature.

"Style" is a concept that captures in a general sense what "culture" does to art. Mastery of a style is eminently more accessible to the musician than is the ideal of functioning beyond style ("synthesis" or "integration" of styles) because the tasks to be accomplished are known and finite. It is precisely where a certain musical style is perceptible to the student that a pathway for mastery of the style also comes into view. Given a bounded musical realm such as style, it is clearer here than anywhere else that the process of attaining mastery can basically proceed in a vacuum, cultural or otherwise.

I would think it would be obvious that synthesis in this case is a pathway to greater artistic freedoms, i.e. away from culture rather than into it. The sort of control that culture imposes is quite the opposite. Without this control, there is suddenly greater subjectivity and autonomy, accompanied by none of the certainty or boundedness that came with finite style. Culture, like style, can be stifling. I would think that were we truly to debate capital-C culture as a general idea rather than taking each lower-case-c culture case-by-case, as musicians, it would be hard to choose the control aspect over the apparent freedom of whatever the alternative is.

In real life, of course, what we find in musical circles where a common practice prevails is a group of like-minded people who are scarcely conscious of the fact that an outsider might perceive their individual works to be very similar. The musico-idiomatic devices that prevail in such circles are taken for granted by insiders, creating the (usually false) appearance of a consciously implemented method or dogma. Actually, these people seem less to be the victims of some authoritarian cultural control than they do to be unmoved by (or simply ignorant of) any of the alternatives, instead remaining perfectly content with what they've got.

This is all well and good; however, once one becomes aware of the breadth of musical expression that exists the world over, it is then much more difficult to remain so content with a common practice. This, I think, casts a shadow on capital-C Culture advocacy as far as music is concerned, for Culture remains innocuous only when its subjects have no reason to question it. Otherwise, it becomes a contrivance, an externally imposed dogma that stifles free expression. Given modern communications technology, I find it difficult to believe that the control aspect of culture will find a legitimate or lasting place in the modern musical landscape.

Culture: Dictionary DefinitionsThe dictionary that came pre-installed on my laptop (the "Oxford American Dictionary") gives the following definition:

culture:
noun
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively : 20th century popular culture.
• a refined understanding or appreciation of this : men of culture.
• the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group : Caribbean culture | people from many different cultures.
• [with adj. ] the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group : the emerging drug culture.

"1" is thought provoking, but I think ultimately of little help. It seems to take for granted that "The Arts" are in fact not only already assimilated into, but in fact comprise culture...that is, along with those less consequential "other manifestations of human intellectual achievement" thrown in merely for good measure. (The arts an intellectual achievement? You don't say!) This is too broad a definition; the toilet is a manifestation of human intellectual achievement, but is it part of culture?

The first bullet point is almost a figurative usage, so I don't think we need to bother with it. I'm particularly intrigued by the second bullet point, which breaks culture into four areas. I want to explore them individually and challenge their relevance to music:

"customs"
To put it mildly, I despise many of the customs where I live. There is no way I'm going to allow my music to either reflect or incorporate most any of these customs. Does that mean that I need to go culture shopping around the world simply to continue to exist as an artist? It might get me a grant, but it won't make me a better musician, or really even have any effect whatsoever on the music that I make. For music to exist outside the jurisdiction of a particular culture's established customs is not so radical a proposition. Of course, some will say that this is what is behind supposedly shrinking audiences for classical music; I, on the other hand, value the "concert" experience for precisely this reason, as an escape from the customs I despise that nonetheless seem to govern the rest of life. Does a certain flouting of culture in this case not merely reflect greater self-determination?

"social institutions"
Some detractors cite the remarks of Schoenberg and Babbitt, for example, as essentially aspiring for music to be its own social institution somehow divorced from the everyday life of the Average Joe and aimed at a small group of fellow professionals, or "specialists." They then oppose this, and argue instead that music must be part of the broader culture such that the social institutions and customs of that culture naturally permeate any musical presentation. The opposite case is one in which music has become "self-referential" "elitist" or "rarefied" and is no longer "relevant." But even granting the "assimilation into culture" for just a moment, can't there still be, then, a difference between being full-fledged member of the culture and being governed by its most pervasive social norms? Social norms, after all, are just one facet of culture; what if the music fits squarely into the culture on every other level with the sole exception of something about its mode of presentation that is foreign or awkward in that culture? Again, the supposed decline of classical music comes to mind, and you'd have to admit that this is a pretty good description: sitting still for an hour without talking is something that is not only awkward for many in our culture, but perhaps even foreign to them entirely. Nonetheless, why should I as a musician accept this and allow it to dictate what I'm allowed to do?

It confounds me how offended the culture mongers get when someone suggests that, for just a few minutes or hours at a time, someone might wish to exist outside the space of their culture's social customs/demands and just listen to some damn music. The argument that the concert experience has become irrelevant once it becomes disruptive to the way that 51% of the population behaves in public just doesn't convince me that a great travesty is being committed every time someone composes a work that is not an unabashed outward embodiment of their ethnicity, or that violates the rules of social hour, or that isn't "about" anything in particular. Before we go around advocating for music that has cultural relevance, we had better understand how severely that condition limits musical expression, as well as exactly which culture we are talking about in the first place.

"achievements"
Some people will stop at nothing to impute an objective importance to their favorite instantiations of the art of organized sound. If it doesn't symbolize something, it surely embodies, expresses, communicates, or implies it, right? There's very little room for talk of the aesthetic experience when we are trying to explain to future in-laws how exactly it is that we might be the least bit useful to society, or when funding for a music department or program is up in the air. In my culture, it seems that we pay lip service to the value of "The Arts" only where some concrete connection to some other achievement can be made. We ride the coattails of politics and the hard sciences so that politically-conscious, enlightened people won't think that we just sit around and smoke pot all day, and we pretend that this is the reason we care so much about music. Even if this is not flat out wrong, I still think it's dishonest. I vote, shovel the sidewalk, bike or take mass transit instead of driving my car if I can, and occasionally I even manage to donate money or volunteer for a worthy cause; but I play, write and listen to music for my own selfish enjoyment. You should too.

"arts"
Music is (or at least can be) an art itself, but there are many other arts as well; are they essential to each other's mere existence? This is even worse than stealing importance from politics and hard sciences. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of successful music out there that has nothing to do with visual art, dance, film, or whatever. I don't think you could argue that such an interdisciplinary background is essential to the musician, although if anyone wants to try, feel free.

Culture: The Inevitability FallacyWhen it comes to the concept of inevitability, composition teachers and students frequently have the same discussion about imitation and creation. Some students (I admit to passing through this phase) become fixated on avoiding influence and becoming "purely" creative and original; their teacher then tells them that it is impossible to create in a vacuum, and that since it is inevitable that they will be imitating something, they might as well expose themselves to a wide variety of stuff. Similarly, we often hear that music without culture is impossible, or at least not a good idea, etc. etc.

Making something that is inevitable a cornerstone of the argument actually works against the position. If it is inevitable, then there's nothing anyone can do about it; let's stop wasting our time and start discussing things that we can control rather than those which we can't. I think that the notion of the unavoidable influence of or basis in culture falls into the same trap as the unavoidable influence of the composer's musical surroundings: if something is so impossible to escape, there's no sense trying to convince someone to acknowledge it consciously. Imagine being told, "If you don't die someday, you're going to be in big trouble." There are no consequences for failing to abide by an inevitability because such failure is impossible.

The Culture monger says that by denying the presence or influence of culture, we are committing a grave error; then they turn around and state that to do such a thing is not even possible. These conditions cannot both be true. The one reason it is important to recognize inevitabilities is so that one can learn to ignore them and function in an uninhibited fashion; where the artist has already reached this state (however ignorantly), it could only be seen as a regression for them to become consciously engaged with so-called culture. It's analogous to a cognitively paralyzing fear of death. Hence, let us collectively abandon any need to proselytize on behalf of inevitablity; I can't think of a worse waste of time.

Musico-Blogging Glossary

It has been obvious to me for some time now that us musico-bloggers are fond of relying on a certain group of big words to make ourselves sound smarter than we actually are. Many of my recent blogospheric explorations have precipitated repeated trips to the dictionary just to understand all the jargon, foreign borrowings, and literary devices that y'all have such a penchant for. Hence, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I'd like to present what I hope will be a useful compilation of these terms and what they really mean. With any luck, this will save future readers from feelings of confusion and resentment. Without further ado...

profligate: show-off

schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the misfortune of classical music

autodidact: philosophy major

zeitgeist: the moment you realize that a whole bunch of composers already did what you are doing now

ersatz: product of zeitgeist

the long tail: theory describing the distribution of income among professional musicians. A graph of the data begins with a short, pronounced spike (the lucky ones) followed by quickly receding "long tail" (the indigents).

frisson: an accessible piece

pugilist: author of anonymous comments

polyglot: crossover artist

monograph: a blog post that is way too long

prestidigitation: typing many posts within a short period of time

legerdemain: typing many posts within a short period of time, then posting them one by one over a longer period of time in order to give the false impression of consistent productivity

metaphysics: if a blogger posts and no one reads it, does it exist?

To be continued...

Overdubs

Most instances of overdubbing that I've run across have been effective, but there's one pitfall that I've noticed quite a few times. What makes it unusually obvious that something was overdubbed is when a player's individual quirks are apparent in all of the overdubbed parts (usually it's vibrato or articulation, but it can also just be their sound). It seems to me to be the musical equivalent of cloning (or perhaps incest). In each case, it raises the question of whether the goal really is to give the impression of different people playing together, or whether the player's artistic vision includes the intent to present copies of themselves (or perhaps the intent to not hire any additional musicians for the session). There's nothing perverse about either of these cases; the technology is now old hat. Nonetheless, I cringe a little bit each time I hear an overdub of a player with a distinctive instrumental style. This attribute is elusive for many, and is becoming ever more highly valued in today's musical environment, where many complain of not being able to tell one young saxophone player from the next. Those that possess it, however, may want to think twice about cloning themselves.

Not Unprecedented

I'm of the opinion that music with supposed political content generally accomplishes less both as music and as political commentary than could be attained by pursuing these two endeavors separately. Extra-musical statements in general are tremendous burdens on composer and audience alike, but more importantly, I think it's high time to admit that making music is a poor substitute for political activism and community service.

Many an artist has fallen victim to that certain strain of bourgeois contentedness whereby they suddenly interpret something they would be doing anyway as also making some larger contribution, hence absolving themselves of the need to take any additional action. This is just another of the myriad forms that our uniquely American brand of political apathy is capable of taking. Everyone is trying to be Bob Dylan instead of Paul Wellstone. The problem is that there are too many intangibles involved in the creation and reception of art for each one of us to assume that we will be successful in accomplishing activist ends through those means.

There is a choice to be made here: we can become political artists and hope for success, or we can become artists who are also politically engaged citizens and know that we are making a difference. My feeling is that the latter path is the one that will facilitate the most immediate and vital contributions to both art and activism. Striking a balance between these two endeavors while keeping them largely separate means finding time in our "busy bee" artist schedules to step away from the canvas and inhabit the civilian world. It also means that when we return to the canvas, we are free to create in the most abstract and non-representational media we choose without any obligation whatsoever for our art to serve extra-artistic purposes or agendas.

I've stated some of these ideas here before, and am working on a much longer essay that goes into greater depth. I have revisited this topic only because I recently stumbled upon a precedent for this position (or something like it, as best I can tell).

Here is a link to an article I read in The Nation about American poet George Oppen (written by James Longenbach):

A Test of Poetry

Here is a link to a bio of Oppen from what appears to be a reasonably authoritative online source:

MAPS Bio of George Oppen

Here are some bits and pieces from the Nation article that jumped out at me:

"...[Oppen] considered the rhetorical excess of political poems–like the rhetorical excess of political meetings–to be 'merely excrutiating.'"


"...[Oppen] refused the notion that a poet could fulfill his social responsibilities by writing any kind of poem, and neither did this refusal engender any contempt for poetry."


"Especially for those readers who are prone to believe that writing itself constitutes political action...Oppen's remark that 'there are situations which cannot honorably be met by art' is problematic enough; more troubling is Oppen's sense that 'some ideas are not politically useful, or useful to the childhood of a daughter'–as if to say that since we'll never know the ultimate value of our work, writing poems is probably less important than being a good dad."

Finally, here's a fragment of a quote within the article from Oppen himself (I tripped over this passage a couple of times, so I've added some boldface to highlight what I assume is the point):

"...it can always be quite easily shown that political action is going to be valuable; it is difficult to ever prove that political action has been valuable. Whereas art is precisely the opposite case; it seems always impossible to prove that it is going to be valuable, and yet it is always quite clear that the art of the past has been of value to humanity."

I feel like something of a charlatan for riding these particular coattails considering that I myself am no great fan of poetry in the first place. I do think, however, that much of what is attributed to Oppen in the article has implications for many (if not all) of The Arts. Perhaps it is a consequence of my own ignorance that I remain unaware of any other prominent artists or intellectuals who hold or have held such views, but it is at least nice to have finally located one.

Returns (Diminishing and Otherwise)

A funny thing happens to me every Thursday afternoon on my way to the non-musical part-time day job that I work in order to keep from starving. After two days off, the first of which I usually spend reading and listening, and the second of which I spend teaching music lessons, I'm actually in the mood for some menial labor that has nothing to do with music. When I was unemployed, I developed this strange longing to be a "normal" part of the rest of society. It came to outweigh even the more practical end of supporting myself and being able to move out of my parents' house. I figured that it would wear off quickly, and sometimes it feels like it has, but in truth, it's still there somewhere, and I don't think it's going to go away soon.

I don't know if there are any musicians active today who don't feel unproductive most of the time. It's easy to beat yourself up for not getting enough done when there's so much to do. Nonetheless, I've found that my productivity level seems to be fixed, and doesn't vary much (if at all), no matter what odd curve balls life throws at me. Even during the afore mentioned period of unemployment, when I had enough spare time to work through a library's worth of books and recordings, I just wasn't in the right mindset to work most of the time. Sure, I waste some potentially inspired, productive time at work, but I also am able to translate a great deal of the uninspired, unproductive time into cash. Why not?

The really difficult realization I've made recently is that I'm uninspired most of the time. I've played the part of high school student and college student; full-time employee and part-time employee; freelance musician and umemployed lout; but none of it seems to matter. I have a fixed amount of focused energy to expend on making music, and once that's gone, it's actually better not to force myself to continue working as much of that work becomes not only pointless but actually harmful or regressive.

Perhaps it's merely a front, but the message I get from most of the music world is that the best thing for us is to have as few non-musical obligations as possible so as to allow for the maximum amount of time to work on music. I would probably take it if I could get it, but it may not make a difference in my case. Of course, there is also a school of thought that says that our cumulative life experience is what we put into our artworks, and hence we ought to be more concerned with having lots of cumulative life experience than with practice. Unfortunately, that doesn't cut it either. What is needed is short term impatience (for daily motivation) combined with long term patience (willingness to endure slow, steady progress that may feel like anything but). Where one or both of those things is absent and we can't be productive, is it better to have a job or play video games all day?

Some artists come to hate the world for not allowing them to make a living through their art. I guess I'm becoming ambivalent, not to mention strangely contented with my current situation. If I was independently wealthy or had a massive grant, I can't say for sure whether or not I would accomplish anything more than I would without it. I'll just keep my mouth shut, then, the next time government funding of "The Arts" comes up, since it looks like I embody a good argument against it. I think it is important to also mention the prospect of earning said cash through musical engagements that aren't your first choice. When I am away from music for 5 hours every afternoon, I return home ready to get down to business; conversely, when I awake at 7am and drive across the city to play background music for the grand opening of a new bank building, I return home not wanting anything to do with my horn (or really anything musical) for the rest of the day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Familiarity breeds contempt. Insert your idiom here; it will probably work, too.

I'm reminded of a story a friend recently relayed to me of a freshman saxophone player who, when asked what his summer plans were, stated that he intended to "get all that technique stuff out of the way" so that he could just focus on music after that. We had a good laugh over that, although I admit to having moments exactly like that at that age, and I'd be surprised if others hadn't also. It's natural to want everything now, but the process of attaining progressively higher levels of musicianship is an inherently slow one, and while some undoubtedly do manage to accelerate it through exceptional work ethic and/or by possessing circus freak levels of innate aptitude, the rest of us simply have to be more patient.

My age is a dangerous age. A lot of 25 year old musicians are nearing the end of their doctoral programs with no realistic music-oriented employment in sight; others who didn't go to graduate school have already let their skills fall into disrepair through a combination of social distractions and economic realities; others have already given up completely. Yet other 25 year olds are already on the downside of their careers: among them are child prodigies who no longer look enough like children (though they may still act like them) to garner attention for the novelty of their age (although with modern medicine, most will live long enough to give that approach another try eventually); then there are sellouts whose best work already lays behind them, the result of the brash creative ferment of adolescence that suddenly becomes inconvenient to maintain into early adulthood not only because it requires continued hard work, but because the alternatives are both less work and more lucrative; finally, there are the local heroes, who developed an unjustified contentedness while growing up as the big fish in an exceedingly small pond and are standing idly by as that rug is pulled out from underneath them.

I can envision plenty of scenarios by which I could have fallen (or could still fall) into one of these traps, among others. My goal, however, is to continue to make slow but consistent progress. At some point, most of us have probably met older musicians who gave up that goal up long ago. It breaks my heart and pisses me off at the same time. It's a phenomenon that has spawned numerous wisecrack cliches about youthful naivete, optimism, and idealism; but if a constant desire to better oneself is an inherently naive proposition unbecoming of an adult, then we have truly fallen a long way.

For someone with a strong aversion to blogs that are "about" their authors, I've spewed an awful lot about myself here. I guess I could have saved everyone the time and just said this: may we all continually aim to play, compose, write, improvise, and live better tomorrow than we did today, whatever that might mean; and when unexpected adverse circumstances arise, may we in the service of the previous admonition always address them in a constructive rather than destructive fashion.

The Editors

In preparation for an upcoming competition (fellow competitors will surely recognize the repertoire), I've spotted a couple of editorial oddities that I thought deserved mention here.

The inside front page to Vincent Persichetti's "Serenade No. 12" (Elkan-Vogel, 1963) features the following statement:

Editor's Note
Serenade No. 12 may be used as both a concert and a study piece. Students may use Arietta (II), Mascherata (III) and Intermezzo (V) as preparatory studies for the more difficult Marcia (VI), Intrada (I), and Capriccio (IV).

Whoever this editor is or was (it doesn't say) ought to be pleased to know that as of the year 2008, most every college music major who happens to play tuba will probably study this piece in some capacity or another. I would posit, however, that the superfluous verbiage opposite page 1 had nothing to do with it. I simply have trouble imagining a customer browsing the selection of sheet music in the "TUBA" bin of a local music store (that is...back when such stores actually carried sheet music), narrowing it down to this and another piece, and ultimately deciding to buy the one that was going to give them more bang for their buck by being versatile enough to function as both a concert (oooh...) and study (ahhh...) piece.

To make matters worse, this being my third go round with this piece, I'm reasonably convinced that the Arietta is actually harder than the Intrada. Perhaps that betrays how little I've actually worked on soft legato playing...or perhaps it betrays the fact that our unfortunate editor merely glanced at the movements and came to the conclusion that a slower tempo and less ink automatically equate to lower difficulty. Didn't they ever have a junior high school band teacher to tell them that's not how it works?

Obviously, I'm being harsh and a little bit facetious. Sometimes you just wonder what people were thinking: was this an overbearing marketing ploy, a momentary lapse in taste, or just an honest effort to educate the customer? The truth is out there...but I'm not holding my breath on getting a definitive answer.

Moving on to piece #2 on the docket, in Alec Wilder's "Suite No, 1 for Tuba and Piano" (Margun Music, 1976), we encounter an editorial contribution that is more humorous than anything else. The third movement calls for pitch bends on two separate occasions, the first of which is marked with an asterisk directing the player to the following footnote:

*Bend: pitch is quickly lowered and returned to the original level.

I laughed out loud when I saw this, and not just because I found it funny that the editor thought that tuba players were so dense when it comes to jazz-derived techniques that a concept as simple as a bend would need to be explained, but because I know that this editor is probably right. Though I don't count it among my foremost goals in life, I'd like to think of myself who has some potential to contribute to the tuba advocacy movement (i.e. in the form of debunking stereotypes, exposing people to what it's capable of, and creating opportunities where there were none before). And every now and then, I stumble on artifacts such as this one that remind me not to get too excited.

Air

"There are no chop problems, only air problems."

"Air isn't everything, it's the only thing"

...so the conventional wisdom of brass players and teachers has gone for two generations or so. I'd like to make the ultra-radical proposition that the case for air has been overstated. Of course it is important, and yes, it can indeed make or break one's technique. To state the obvious, you literally cannot make a sound on an instrument that requires you to blow into it without, in fact, actually blowing into it; and having made that realization, there are, of course, more and less effective ways of blowing into it, whatever your desired result might be. I'd even grant that bad air habits are easier to develop, harder to break, and have proportionately more impact on the overall musical product than embouchure problems. To that extent, I am on board.

What I have a problem with is the absolutist, all or nothing, black and white, "my way or the highway" type of attitude which completely disregards embouchure formation and conditioning in favor of blind faith in air. I dare any brass player who believes that "there are no chop problems" to do nothing but practice breathing for a month, then return to the horn and see where that has gotten them. There's a good chance it will get them a lousy sound and reduced range and flexibility. I would further posit that the case of the raw beginner also proves the necessity of some serious conditioning that, while it may be largely directed at allowing them to use their air effectively, ultimately cannot be taught while simply ignoring "chop" issues altogether.

Of course, I'm also not a fan of embouchure meddling, and perhaps this blind faith in air is one way to avoid stooping to that level (i.e. by demanding a certain way of approaching the use of air, one coaxes a better embouchure out of the student without resorting to the sort of nitpicking that is otherwise necessary to achieve a change, yet rarely effective in doing so). Breathing, after all, is a natural and (aside from musical training) largely subconsciously regulated process, whereas the embouchure is not exactly something our bodies were specifically designed to do, and uses small muscles that are difficult to train and easy to injure. I would merely suggest that we temper the apocalyptic tone that has become commonplace in the discussion of breathing- and air-related brass pedagogy. If nothing else, it's just a good idea to mean what you say; hyperbole, while sometimes useful (and often fun), can only take us so far.

The Independent Academic

I am frequently asked by acquaintances why exactly it is that I am not pursuing an academic career. It runs in the family, after all, and is commonly viewed by musicians as a secure and cushy alternative to either a harrowing freelance career or the hyper-competitive audition circuit.

I would say that this way of thinking about academic careers is somewhat naive. For an interesting reality check on this subject, go here (scroll down to "An Important Perspective on Teaching"). The phenomenon of teachers who would really rather be performing is well known to musicians. In my case, I really do want to teach, but there are enough drawbacks to academia as it is currently constituted to keep me away for the moment. Here's the laundry list:

(1) Location. There are always a few academic positions open, but they are almost without exception located in places that would afford the applicant almost no opportunity for meaningful collaboration or exposure, except perhaps with other faculty members. I've already made the decision that it is simply not worth my time to spend 5-10 years of my career in relative isolation. (Speaking of Isolation, have you purchased your copy yet?) I would jump at the chance to teach at a major university in a major metropolitan area, but this tends to require a significant record of accomplishments, if not by way of climbing the academic ladder, then at least by having a distinguished freelance career. The latter is my first priority anyway

(2) Qualifications. I am not the first person to say this: it would make sense for academia to hire music faculty based on their musicianship and teaching ability rather than the degrees they hold. Nonetheless, many have complained that things seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I have seen job postings in the composition area that simply require a doctorate, with no exceptions made; I have, conversely, seen none in the applied instrumental area that didn't leave at least a small amount of wiggle room for candidates with exceptional "real world" credentials (i.e. world renowned performers); and I have indeed met a few tenured music faculty who do not hold a doctorate at all and seem to have no intent of obtaining one.

Being the son and grandson of professors, I for one have always been somewhat taken aback (if not outright offended) by the contempt many of my peers hold for professors: "He thinks he's so important...he makes us call him Dr. So-and-so...he loves the sound of his own voice..." If this isn't a textbook case of activating a defense mechanism out of sheer insecurity, then I don't know what is. And it is disturbingly widespread among people my age and younger (I'm 25). After 5 years of college, I can't say that I ever once felt that way about a professor; then again, I was in part raised by one, so perhaps that's not surprising. In any case, I am at least peripherally aware of the amount of work that goes into completing a doctorate of any kind, and I can't help but have a certain amount of respect for most anyone who does so; this, however, by no means automatically equates to distinction (or even competence) as an instructor, and especially not as a functional musician. That such an attribute would become the primary determining factor in who is hired and who is not can only be called disappointing.

(3) Politics. Speaking of academia, it was in one of the precious few non-music classes I was required to take as an undergraduate where I learned what I consider to be a very insightful definition of politics: "Institutionalized inequalities of power." A better description of academia itself has never been given. There's no question that in my 5 years of college, the most severe conflicts I witnessed were of the intra-faculty variety. The consequences of this ranged from irreversible long-term animosity to resignations and de facto dismissals. In fairness, it has taken only a comparatively short amount of time spent out here in the so-called real world for me to realize that (and this is, in the grand scheme of things, a more frustrating realization to come to terms with) a certain amount of this sort of thing is inevitable just about everywhere human beings have to be around each other, most notably at the workplace and around the freelance/local music scene. Perhaps it's way too idealistic to aspire to eliminate it altogether; I don't think, however, that it is unrealistic to think that we could do better than we are right now.

Just how bad is it? Lacking any first hand experience myself, I'd be curious to hear other people's stories. Kyle Gann, for one, reports circumstantial evidence that his sabbatical led to a significant drop in blood pressure. Could it really be this bad?

(4) Competition It's safe to say that academic appointments are, in fact, just about as hard to come by as orchestral positions or consistent freelance work. When I was in school, I once served on a search committee that received almost 130 applications for a single position. Essentially, the previous three grievances are all mediated by this one (if not caused by it altogether). I don't doubt that there are academic positions out there somewhere that afford one the opportunity to live in a city with a vibrant music scene, to get along with colleagues, to work with students who are there for the right reasons, and to do as a "musician/teacher" rather than a "teacher/administrator." (I won't spill the beans as to which of my professors I'm stealing that last line from...) If that was my ultimate goal in life, I have confidence that I could make it happen at some point; the problem lies in what would have to be sacrificed in the meantime in order to lay the groundwork.

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What is the alternative? What about those who want to pursue what can only be called an "academic" career in the sense that it entails significant teaching, research, writing, and publishing endeavors, yet for whatever reason don't feel that academia is the right place for them? Let's establish right away that to be opposed to academia as it is currently constituted is a very different thing than being "anti-academic" or, worse yet, "anti-intellectual." I hold no greater amount of contempt for any group of people than for those who claim membership in these two dubious clubs. I'd like to consider myself both an academic and an intellectual, whether or not I have any credibility within the institutional manifestations of those ideas; nonetheless, I'm positive that I'll accomplish more as a so-called freelancer than I would by banging my head against the wall of the Ivory Tower.

An "independent academic" movement would be the ideal response to the current academic and intellectual (not to mention musical) climate, hence taking what we need from academia (the rigor and the perspective) and leaving behind all the bullshit (politics, dogma, compartmentalization of learning, etc. etc. etc.). In turn, it would entail doing the same with the empowerment of individual voices made possible by recent innovations like the internet, making great use of the independence, individuality, and potential for wide dissemination, and leaving behind the vanity, self-indulgence, and the expectation of short attention spans.

A long term goal of mine (and this has been the case since I first got to college and saw little room for improvement in the quality of instruction, yet immense room for improvement in administration, curriculum, structure, scheduling, and so on) is to be the chair/director/dean of a public university music department, and to be afforded the opportunity to restructure said department according to my own philosophy (which is to say obliterate it and rebuild from the ground up). That may yet happen, but the wrong thing to do would be to sit around and wait for it.

I recall once being asked by a fellow musician how I intended to make a living in music. I responded that I intended to freelance, to which he exclaimed, "Freelancing? That's a terrible way to make a living!" As with so many catch-all music-related terms, it has the potential to be misleading: I did not mean to say that I aspire to make a living playing weddings and polka parties, just that I intend to do my thing independently; but I would also say that this "thing," so to speak, is inherently academic. I think we ought to take offense to the notion that this is a contradiction.

The Art of Socializing

When I was in college, one of my professors was fond of referring to music as "The Social Art." It has also been said that an ensemble is very similar to a marriage, only among many people rather than just two. These are indeed an accurate descriptions of music, but it is something to loathe, not celebrate.

Music's inherently social and collaborative nature is overwhelmingly stifling and burdensome to its practitioners, who understandably have trouble putting aside a laundry list of non-musical personal differences: clashing personalities, personal hygiene problems, varying organizational skills, past romantic involvement, physical mannerisms, egotism, substance abuse, and even deep-seated cultural divisions of race and class can all cause an otherwise fruitful collaboration to go up in smoke (or, more likely, never happen at all).

To cite yet another well-known anecdote, "Familiarity breeds contempt." Perhaps it is evidence of how difficult it is to create truly exceptional musical products that performers and colleagues rarely last long without developing irrevocable animosity for each other (i.e. over the failure to produce such products via their collaboration). It is more likely, however, that it merely reflects this laundry list of pre-existing conditions, at least a few of which virtually all of us bring along to any collaborative endeavor.

In theory, music may indeed be "The Social Art," but in practice, it would be more aptly described as "The Art of Socializing" manifested on many different levels, a tangled mess of precarious interpersonal relationships which few people have the patience, skill, and guile to sustain for long enough periods of time to reach whatever musical goals they might have.

Is it realistic to expect people to put aside significant personal differences for the benefit of the music? Some would argue that musical success is crucially dependent on social cohesion among the collaborators. Others would quickly point out that counter examples abound throughout recent musical history. To a great extent, once you have managed to assemble the group and thrust them into action (i.e. on stage in front of other sentient beings), they will, on reflex, simply turn their attention to the task at hand no matter how glorious or dismal the offstage relationships have gotten. Where music particularly becomes "The Social Art" is where the music requires prolonged exposure, rehearsal, and study in order to realize, hence presupposing a commitment on behalf of all involved to remain engaged with these collective efforts.

In other words, familiarity among people may breed contempt, but between a performing musician and a particular piece of music, it breeds proficiency, if not artistry. This is a paradox which few musicians are able to solve (or, more likely, avoid, which can only happen out of sheer luck). Those few musicians, however, will be exceptionally able to sustain fruitful musical collaborations, and whether or not any given observer judges them to have been musically successful, they will likely have the most successful careers in every other sense.

The Abstract is Real

I have a problem with those who blindly claim allegiance to "The Arts." For one thing, if all of "The Arts" share one thing in common, it is our collective inability to define what "art" is in the first place. But to get to the real problem here, we need to go beyond this now rather superfluous observation and ask whether the very idea of a given individual embracing all art as good is not, in fact, an inherently disingenuous proposition.

Being an art where categorization runs rampant, music provides us with a microcosm of the problem with "The Arts." It is startlingly common these days for listeners to report that they like many different kinds of music, or even very occasionally that they like all kinds of music equally well. The former statement is critically dependent on how many total "kinds of music" there are in existence, while the latter, absurdly, would seem to presuppose knowledge of all extant music. In other words, the question of scale must first be addressed to evaluate the validity of either claim. This, however, is mere philosophical nitpicking; the real problem here is that the very concept of "liking" something (anything) requires an opposite (call it "disliking") simply in order to exist.

Put another way, it is impossible for everything to be "the best." If this were the case, there would be no best, only uniform mediocrity. Being an entirely relative concept, "the most good" means nothing except in relation to "that which is less good." It follows that in order to have likes, we must have dislikes as well, for the very idea of preference resists uniform projection.

It seems to me that the most likely reason anyone would desire to like everything is of a purely social nature. I'm sure that most musicians can recall an instance (perhaps many) where they minced words about a piece they didn't care for simply out of a desire to remain in someone's good graces. As a culture, we cave to herd mentality rather easily in such scenarios, if not inwardly, then certainly outwardly. In any case, when it comes to "The Arts," as with styles of music, I have my doubts as to whether any of us can, with any truth or validity whatsoever, report that we judge them aesthetically to be of equal merit. Whether or not this is actually the case, I can say with more certainty that I, for one, most definitely am not capable of this.

Despite having pursued a career in music, and hence being lumped in with other "Artists," I have no interest in most of the rest of "The Arts." Even within music, there is a line in the sand for me, and that line demarcates the border between the abstract and the representational. It has taken me until this point to figure out what it is that my aesthetic "likes" have in common: they are non-representational, non-linguistic, and non-sequential; in a word, abstract.

There is most definitely a tendency on the part of modern day commentators to view this as a sort of perversion or pathology. It may indeed be unusual, but I believe that there is one significant sense in which it is, in fact, highly rational. Take, for example, the difference between a Shakespeare play on one hand, and a Brahms symphony on the other (or, even simpler, a representational painting that attains a high degree of realism, and an abstract one that represents nothing in particular). In the case of the play, we must essentially pretend that what is going on in front of us is real even though we know it is not; same in the case of a representational painting. Abstract art, on the other hand, whether it be sonic or visual, is always real; as an NFL player would say, "It is what it is."

It is mind-boggling, in a way, that abstract art is generally thought to be more demanding and less accessible. In reality, it is the most accessible art there is, but perhaps it makes us that much more uncomfortable by putting us more directly in touch with the fact that to speak of liking something, we must dislike something else. As for likes and dislikes among "The Arts," I have a most intense dislike for things like theatre and film that present the audience with a choice between fantasy and reality while presuming that anyone in their right mind would go for the former. Personally, I'll take reality every time. Abstract art's lack of meaning, representation, linguistic properties, etc. is precisely what makes it so real; conversely, there is an element of artificiality to any presentation that presupposes the suspension of disbelief.

November 24 CD Release

Who: Pan-Metropolitan Trio

Stefan Kac, Tuba

Japhlet Bire Attias, Chapman Stick®

Owen Weaver/Nick Zielinski, Percussion

What: CD Release Show for "Isolation"

When: Saturday, November 24, 2007, 11:30pm

Where: Dakota Jazz Club (1010 Nicollet Mall, Downtown Minneapolis)

Why: who needs a reason?

There is a $5 cover for this show, and we will, of course, be selling CD's for $12 each.

Go here to read an article about the band and listen to a track from the CD.

More Harping on Promotion and The Scene

Something that has been bothering me lately has been the content of music-oriented newsletters and journals. I feel like a fine line is being blurred between the basically noble cause of giving exposure to a brilliant new artist (subjective as that label might be) and merely doing favors for friends; between current events coverage and a concert calendar; between a profile and a press release. I can't help but feel that many such publications I encounter have merely become conduits for promotion, hence neglecting important academic, critical, or news-oriented functions. Ironically, it is a self-defeating enterprise when pursued in this way, for now that this comprises such an astonishing majority of content, I cannot even begin to keep track of all of these people and their always impressive-sounding accomplishments.

I have myself, of course, occasionally been the beneficiary of such things, and am always involved in my fair share of promotional activities (this and similar blogs, I would continue to insist, being included in this category). It is also an unavoidable truth that some of the most enlightening and informative musicological specimens are musicians writing about themselves and their work. In my estimation, however, there is a certain gracefulness about many such works that is conspicuously absent in the garden variety articles we encounter constantly today.

I picked up the most recent issue of the ITEA Journal fearing more of the same, yet this time, I was pleasantly surprised with the cover story on tubist Jens Bjørn-Larsen. Without putting words in his mouth, I get the distinct impression that Joseph Skillen, the author of the article, shares the concerns I've laid out here: in the very first paragraph, he overtly states the intention to present "a different type of article than we normally see in our journal." In my estimation, he succeeded not just in being different but in presenting something useful, proving that granting exposure to an artist need not preclude making a larger contribution to the dialogue.

Though I found this article to be very informative in terms of pedagogy, it was a biographical detail that will probably stick in my mind the longest, and which I think is worth discussing here. According to the article, Bjørn-Larsen grew up living in an apartment, and after he took up the tuba as a kid, the noise of practicing soon became a problem for the neighbors, who sent "an elected spokesman" to talk to the family.

The neighbors said they certainly wanted him to practice, but they didn't want to hear it. Shockingly all the neighbors agreed to pay for soundproofing a room in the Bjørn-Larsen apartment so that Jens could practice and not disrupt the rest of the building. His childhood experiments then continued in this soundproof space.

I feel confident (though not happy) in saying that this is something that would never happen in Minneapolis. When I meet a musician from New York City, I always ask them about practice, and the response is always the same: everyone practices in their apartments and no one complains. I'm sure that's not true across the board, but it's obviously more true there than it is in the Midwest. While I lived with my parents (in a house, thankfully), I often practiced late at night, and even overnight. I talked with neighbors occasionally, and never did anyone tell me it was a problem. Yet one night during the summer of 2004, someone actually called the police on me. They knocked on the door and told me to stop, which I did, only to resume 20 minutes later with a mute. Eventually, I simply resumed playing at all hours of the day without the mute, and never had another problem. I do, however, know people here (some of whom live in houses, not apartments) who have had ongoing problems with neighbors over their practice, even in the middle of the day.

The Twin Cities music scene elicits a great deal of cheerleading from local observers. Since I got serious about playing professionally, I have grown skeptical about our supposedly disproportionately high ranking among music scenes nationally, although I have not spent enough time in cities of similar size to have any standard of comparison. I will say this: music is not "in the air" here; it's not an integral part of the culture. There's a lot of noise made in the press, akin to what I described earlier, but when it comes right down to it, the neighbors default to calling the cops, not building soundproof rooms for their neighbors' kid. The City of Minneapolis has also become shockingly draconian in dealing with venues that host live music: witness Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

There's no point in pouting over it, but I do wish the dialogue was a bit more informed. Take, for example, the situation with Tillie's Bean ("Exhibit A" above). Everything I've read about this story uses the fact that the musicians who perform there are not paid (aside from tips, apparently) as a way of eliciting sympathy for the establishment. I'll get to why I'm upset with the City's handling of this situation in a minute, but I'm also upset (and this is only one of a great many such instances all around the area) that the word "underselling" is never uttered. In some sense, musicians who play for little or no guaranteed money are doing exactly that to their colleagues. Yet it also seems obvious that a workshop-style gathering of amateurs is a far different thing from a polished, professional musical presentation. These two groups of people should not, in theory, be in direct competition with each other* as they ostensibly offer different products, and hence, it should not be hypocritical to assert that both have their rightful place in the local musical economy. This all rests, however, on the fickleness of that abstract entity known as "the scene," and as usual, "the scene" disappoints.

One of the truly maddening things about the Twin Cities is that these two groups are by no fault of their own in very direct competition with each other for the precious few dedicated listeners out there who have the time and the money to spend listening to live music, yet either value the ostensible social status associated with this or that venue over the music itself, or simply aren't bothered by substandard acoustics, poor intonation, and unprofessional stage presence enough to demand better of the performers. Predictably, most of them take the path of least resistance and opt for the performers they most relate to socially, and who cost the least to hear. I would posit that the national economic situation has something to do with it too, but that's outside the purview of this blog, as well as my expertise.

Suffice it to say that if we really want to have a scene,** then we (the audience) need to demand a scene, and then put our money where our mouths are. If trends start on the coasts and move inland, us Minneapolitans can expect that sooner or later, musicians will be paying to play in high-profile venues. If we really are serious about having a music scene, we ought to be giving these kinds of things some thought and heading them off at the pass. That, however, requires some serious hipness that I'm not sure exists here.

This is where you call me an elitist. This is also where you tell me that hipness is relative and socially constructed, not absolute. This is also where you call me a hypocrite for saying (as I often do) that there's no right or wrong way to listen to music, and that "educating listeners into conformity" (I love saying that) is the musical equivalent of fascism. I continue to stand by all of that, and am merely pointing out a simple cause and effect relationship: for every professional/accomplished musician working on the scene, there are 25 amateur/unaccomplished musicians underselling them. The salient feature of the professional presentation is the quality; the drawback is the cost. The exact opposite is true of the amateur. Hence, the only way the professional musician will be economically successful is if audiences choose quality over cost. If this does not happen, the professional will either move to a city where it does happen, or enroll in law school. Either way, the choices made by scenesters have a direct effect on which music is viable in that scene. If we are going to label scenes "hip" or "not hip", we have to look at what is viable there and judge it, not the people who put it out there, to be "hip" or "not hip."

Having arrived at this conclusion, the logical next question is, "Whither the Union?" Having joined for the first time a few months ago and now had a chance to review all of the relevant bylaws, I can only assume that many of them are not strictly enforced out of the practical realization that the situation here is so far gone that doing so would do more harm than good (the City could have used a dose of this sort of reasoning before they jumped all over Tillie's Bean, as could ASCAP, who has been on their own crusade against neighborhood coffeehouses for some time now). I was particularly shocked to read that as an AFM Local 30-73 member, I am not supposedly not allowed to sit in or make a guest appearance if I am not being paid. I have trouble seeing how this policy makes things better for musicians here, particularly considering (sorry, here I go again) that the Twin Cities jazz scene is spectacularly devoid of artistically and socially fruitful collaborations between young and old musicians (largely, in my estimation, a result of the latter viewing the former more as competition for the precious few paying gigs than as potential collaborators and much-needed new blood).

Given that I've witnessed this rule violated countless times, and sometimes in high-profile situations, I'm then comforted to know that whoever is in charge of policing such things obviously sees that doing so now would yield nothing positive. The same cannot be said of the national leadership's position on the RIAA's anti-piracy crusade, which has finally hit close to home. My impression of the slant of the International Musician (the AFM's monthly journal) is that they are just fine with these sorts of things; the short (3 paragraph) summary of the Thomas case was a cold, objective rundown of the verdict, concluding with a typically rosy-sounding excerpt from a statement released by the RIAA shortly thereafter. Perhaps this is the only tenable position for them to take given their role in negotiating with media conglomerates, which we have to assume is an overwhelmingly positive contribution. I wonder if the membership agrees? (And how many are "pirates" themselves?)

Somehow, I've found my way all the way back to critiquing music-oriented journals. For some reason, I feel guilty about skimming rather than reading and digesting these publications, but this is only the unavoidable result of there not being too much to digest in the first place. In talking to one fellow member recently, I realized I'm not the only one. In any case, the blogosphere has become a much more vital conduit of the sort of dialogue we're missing in print in many cases. As for the local scene, I'm happy to report that both concerts I went to over the weekend were very good, although they both involved musicians from other cities to some extent or another. They were also both very well attended, which is also good news. Maybe there's some hipness lurking here after all; or maybe the fact that a media blitz will lead a concert of Ligeti and Lutoslawski music to sell out is further evidence that it's "see and be scene" in the Twin Cities after all.

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*For a fascinating take on amateurs competing with professionals (from shockingly early in history), see Arnold Schoenberg's "The Blessing of the Dressing" in the tome Style and Idea (I've cited it before here).

**In writing that line, I'm suddenly reminded of one of the all time great Onion headlines: "New Poll Finds 86 Percent Of Americans Don't Want To Have A Country Anymore."

Engagement

What matters is not how many people listen to your music, but what their relationship is to that music. If they are people who show up only to see and be seen, or who collect books and CD's as household decorations so that guests will see them as more intellectual, then you have not really succeeded in the most important way. It is infinitely more gratifying to play for small, appreciative and engaged audiences than it is to play for throngs of distractible yuppie chatterboxes. I say this as someone who has done both.

Following up on the last post

One of the truly maddening things about brass playing is conditioning. A day off can be constructive, or it can set you back a week; two or more days off is just about fatal. To go along with this seemingly high lower limit, there's also a comparatively low upper limit to how much one can practice at a time. Suffice it to say that it's not a pursuit that lends itself to sporadic intense periods of focus, yet unfortunately, that is the mode in which I am most productive. At least writing (music and words) lends itself better to this sort of unpredictable inspiration; as for tuba playing, it's a constant struggle.

Much has been made in brass pedagogy about the so-called "smile" embouchure. It's considered one of the cardinal sins of brass playing, but it's one of the most common nonetheless. While it is often approached as a simple mistake or bad habit, I've found it to be entirely a matter of conditioning. When I don't put in enough time with the horn to keep the relevant muscles in shape, I start smiling; once I've had a good workout for a few days in a row, the smile goes away. I've started to wonder how many brass students who have been confounded by the smile embouchure would benefit from better conditioning with their current (often their "natural" or intuitive) embouchure rather than undergoing the physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing process of making wholesale embouchure changes. While certain embouchures appear to offer better chances of success, it is also true that somewhere, someone has gotten away with just about every embouchure deviation any teacher has ever thought it worth condemning. How much might excellent conditioning (something that is, let's face it, elusive for the majority of aspiring professional brass players, and often the same ones who have been diagnosed with embouchure troubles) allow players to overcome petty idiosyncrasies of the embouchure?

This is something I think about a lot. When I was 16, I was hit in the mouth by both a baseball and a cleat within 6 months of each other; hence, I have a lump of scar tissue in the left-center part of my lower lip that causes it to appear visibly larger than the rest of the lip, and a left corner that was severed 90% of the way through, and hence is noticeably weaker than the right corner despite the great deal of playing and conditioning that has taken place since then. Neither incident had a noticeable effect on my playing at the time other than to take me out of commission for a couple of weeks, yet a few days of substandard conditioning and suddenly the smile shows up with all of its attendant flaws of sound, intonation, and general control.

The smile, at least in my case, is a symptom, not a root cause worth pursuing. To eliminate the smile during one of those substandard playing days requires contortions of the embouchure that would only make things worse. As always, it seems to me that result-oriented pedagogy trumps adherence to supposed technical norms, and in my case, the way to get rid of the smile is not to change the embouchure but to "feel the burn" in the corners for a few days.

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Is classical music the most technically demanding music out there? Or does it (and any other kind of music) merely pose a particular set of obstacles that makes it uniquely challenging, but not necessarily more challenging? I've wrestled with this one for a while also, and I'm still not sure that I've reached a satisfying conclusion. What I do find maddening is when people speak as if classical music has a monopoly on discipline. In reality, discipline has nothing to do with style: many players would have to work especially hard to sound like, say, Chet Baker, whose playing sounds so easy and relaxed to so many people.

I freely admit that classical music is harder for me than jazz, and to take it further, that notated music is harder for me than improvised music. That could simply be a consequence of how much time I have put into each, and/or of an innate inclination, and/or of a tendency to set the bar higher for myself in one case than in the other. But what I mean by this is not even necessarily that I am "better" at jazz and improvisation than I am at realizing and interpreting notated music, but more that there does seem to be a certain amount of technical wiggle room when it comes to improvising in just about any context, and that there is no such thing in the realm of classical solo playing.

I think that when it comes right down to it, improvisation, while infinitely more challenging both cognitively and expressively, affords the player the opportunity to roll with what they've got technically on any given occasion. This is in stark contrast to notated music where the piece is chosen months ahead of time and then subjected to specific preparation that presupposes a set of technical abilities that is relatively stable from day to day. Without this stability, such preparation is scarcely possible; that is why "consistency" is a word that classical musicians in training hear with some frequency. I have never found the consistency in either realm that would allow me to become a world class player, yet after years of feeling closer to this ideal as a classical player, I now feel completely the opposite.

For many years, my improvising (which for most of that time was pretty much limited to bebop and post-bop idioms) was maddeningly inconsistent. There always seemed to be a cycle; call it biorhythms or a male period or whatever. It didn't seem to have much to do with how much I practiced or how I felt in general. One thing that was nearly fool-proof was to listen to a great band or recording that played in those idioms, but even that did not get me going sometimes. This, happily, is changing for the better: ironically, after intentionally expanding my musical purview and spending less time than ever on bop-specific concerns over the past few years, my "inside" playing has solidified in ways that were once highly elusive.

This is going to sound horribly pretentious, but "inside" jazz playing just doesn't seem that daunting any more. What is almost paralyzingly daunting is the realm of Improvised Music (note capitalization), stylistic versatility, stylistic synthesis, and stylistic subversion. Those are becoming increasingly important pursuits to me, and they seem as challenging as bebop once did. I guess it's time to come to terms with the fact that I spent a whole shitload of time practicing to become a better bebop player, and that if I spend a whole shitload of time on something else, I'll get better at that, too.

I want to be crystal clear that this is not to say that I've lost my fascination with jazz. Very much the opposite is true. When I was 20 years old (ca. 5 years ago), I was shocked at how many musicians that were only a few years older than I was were professing to have become disillusioned, uninterested, and even downright hostile to jazz and it's practitioners. Now I too have seen the need to move on in a sense, but I'm still a bit puzzled by all the hostility and repudiation of past endeavors; is it genuine? Ego-driven? Money-driven? Or what?

Jazz is a gateway drug. For me, and I suspect many others, it has been a bridge from classical music to things like prog rock and Improvised Music. In my case, it had to be a bridge that traveled over and around popular music, which got in the way of me being able to really take in a lot of things at face value. By the same token, there are plenty of people for whom jazz is a bridge from pop to classical as well. As a high school student at jazz camps, I was always able to tell the difference between players who came to jazz from classical music and those who came to it from rock. I've talked a lot about feeling out of place in Minneapolis because I feel like practically the only person in the jazz/improvising circles who does not come out of rock and/or pop. The "classic rock" angle in particular colors a great deal of the jazz-oriented stuff that goes on here, and while I can relate as a listener, I sometimes have trouble relating as a player. In any case, jazz may only be the bridge for me, but this trip really is all about the journey and not the destination.

Given my investment in composition, education, and writing, the discipline (and hence the technique) required by classical solo playing is almost inevitably transient; yet improvised music by its very nature is not only accommodating to this situation, but given that one of its primary challenges is avoiding merely repeating old habits, it almost demands a certain inconsistency ("variation" would be a less stigmatized term) in technical ability and outlook. There are aspects of improvised music that demand consistency in other areas: one might label them creative potency, listening skills, mental focus, etc. The difference for me has been that this latter set of abilities have improved and been nurtured through the non-tuba related musical endeavors which occupy so much of my time. Ironically enough, it seems as if the same things that essentially prevent me from spending more time working on the fundamental technique required by classical music are the very reason that my improvisation has continued to improve in absence of putting in said time.

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A friend recently asked me if I was relieved to be done with the recital. I wanted to say what I said in the previous post, which was that if one has to put everything else in one's life on hold simply to pull off a given performance, maybe one has chosen the wrong profession. But to be honest, I was relieved to have it behind me, even though (as should be obvious from the recent activity on this blog) it also causes a certain amount of lingering anxiety that was not there before it happened. Here is yet another aspect of musicianship that can't be addressed in the practice room, but it's still no substitute for playing long tones...first thing...every day.

Recital Reflections

Please excuse the uncharacteristically diaristic blog entry that follows. If nothing else, I'm sure there are a few fellow brass players out there who can relate.

As a college student, the recital (graded or not) was always kind of the ultimate event. Students would essentially plan their entire semesters or even school years around their recitals, and in the weeks and days leading up to the big event, it was almost as if nothing else mattered. This was not infrequently the result of prodding by an ambitious or belligerent teacher, who wanted everything done yesterday (of both the musical and logistical type), and hence placed a lot of undue pressure on the student. It always seemed to me that shame played a large role in the fiasco. It was a toss up whether a poor performance would be a greater blow to the relationship with one's teacher, or to one's social standing within the music department. There was even a certain amount of shaming about recital attendance, usually under the blanket catchphrase of "supporting" your peers/friends/teachers.

I could not be happier to be out from underneath all of these burdens, all of which are small but crucial reasons why I don't see myself earning another music degree in the near future. Last weekend marked my first appearance ever in a non-academic, freelance recital that was put on for all of the right reasons and none of the wrong ones. Suffice it to say that this experience matches up closely with most all of my other post-collegiate musical experiences: while eliminating all of the social and political ills that permeate the academic atmosphere, I have found it difficult to perform up to the level that my collegiate performances would lead one to expect.

For the longest time, school seemed like more of a burden than a means to an end. My chops were always in excellent shape because I was required to play so much each day, both in rehearsal and in individual preparation for performances, and yet I was never allowed to spend that time working on what I thought was important rather than what my required ensemble and recital participation dictated I use it for. That was the single biggest factor in deciding to put off graduate school indefinitely, but it has only half worked out: while I have addressed many of those issues that were pushed aside during college, I simply have not been able to play for as many hours each day as I did before, and my overall conditioning is not what it could be. This time has not, as many predict for those entering the "real world," gone entirely to non-musical day jobs and other "practical considerations" of "real life," but also largely to composing, writing, and teaching, all things which also got cut short by the performance degree curriculum. This, however, has led me to solidify a somewhat different self-image than I had in school: rather than my creativity be subservient to my performing endeavors, I'm feeling increasingly drawn to using my capacities as a performer moreso to serve my creative side rather than for their own sake, as was the case before. I'm afraid this means stunting my growth as a performer ever so slightly, but I think it was probably inevitable anyway.

Returning to academic recital preparation for a moment, my preparation for this event was nothing of the sort. I was even denied the day off from my non-musical day job, which meant waking up to an alarm, warming up early in the day, not playing all afternoon, and then going straight from work to the recital, all heresies of a sort when it comes to academic recital preparation. I had found out the hard way several times over the last few years that without the required academic chop-busting every day of the week, the "chop cycle" I used to rely on to have an automatic good day (i.e. heavy practice through two days before the event, and a very light routine the day before) is no longer reliable, and hence, I don't really know what I am going to get when I show up. In the end, I played okay, but could have played better. I was a little more nervous than I should have been simply on account of the uncertainty. All in all, however, the event was immensely more enjoyable than an academic recital: with no arbitrary repertoire constraints, the program was decidedly modern, with the earliest piece dating from the 1940's; and despite the comparatively sparse attendance, it was far more fulfilling to play for 20 people who showed up out of their own free will than it ever was to play for 100 sleep-starved 19 year-olds who would rather be back in their dorm room playing X-Box.

The point I've been working up to is this: in the end, if one cannot pull off an important musical performance without putting every other conceivable aspect of one's life on hold, perhaps one is not cut out to be a musician. Forgive the gratuitous sports reference, but I was reminded of this point listening to Tim McCarver's analysis preceding Game 7 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Indians a couple of weeks ago. He pointed out that managers must manage differently in a Game 7 as opposed to any other game, throwing out much conventional wisdom, and being willing to try just about anything if necessitated by the circumstances. Professors and students alike seem to approach senior recitals the same way, making scheduling, diet, social, and academic accommodations in an attempt to maximize performance as if for those couple of days, absolutely nothing else matters. In the end, this is not what I feel like I signed up for when I decided to try to hack it as a musician. Even for professionals, music should be an integral parts of life rather than an irrational obsession or undue burden. In light of this, it seems to me that the seed for burnout is planted in music students from a very early stage. I am only part of the way towards recovering, but I think that with the recital being the ultimate example of this throughout my training, it has been therapeutic to finally fit it into life rather than fit life into it.

Recital

More Cutesy Philosophy

For lack of having anything more substantive to present here for the last few weeks, here are a couple of unrelated ideas that have been bouncing around my head recently:

On Technique
Technique is like money in that we tend to focus on its ability to corrupt rather than the good things it can enable a person to do. As such, there really isn't any argument to be made in favor of discouraging the acquisition of either, assuming it can be done ethically; it's a person's actions after this has been accomplished that say a lot more about them. As I've said before, that the possession of great technique might corrupt a musician probably has at least as much to do with something that was wrong with them beforehand as with any intrinsic properties of what they might later acquire. The tasteless virtuoso has an analog in the materialistic tycoon.

On Preservation
Recording has changed the nature of aural traditions in music. Imagine if Charlie Parker's or John Coltrane's influence had been limited to those who had heard them in person! I find this interesting to ponder only because it points towards a possible element of hypocrisy among the most conservative of jazz commentators. These commentators are the most likely to advocate a neo-traditional, highly imitative (and, in practice, artistically stagnant) approach; but I have also on multiple occasions read and heard the opinion that the music was better off when recording technology limited each tune to 3 minutes, hence precluding the epic (they would say "self-indulgent") improvisations that became commonplace shortly thereafter. I even occasionally run into someone who attacks the value of recording altogether. Nonetheless, the whole dynamic of imitation-versus-creation would be vastly different if we learned only from other living players; rendering "the greats" inaccessible to subsequent generations might actually ensure more rather than less diversity. It seems to me that the advent of recording is largely responsible for this particular brand of musical conservatism (classical music had its own brand before recording because the music was also written down).

Atonal Ear Training

When I work with my students on intervals, I use the "atonal" system where you count the number of half steps rather than the traditional "tonal" system. In other words, a major third would be a 4, a perfect fifth would be a 7, etc. What I want to know is if anyone else has experience using this system with raw beginners. Purely out of habit, I tend to start with 1's and 2's (major and minor seconds), then add 3's and 4's (major and minor thirds) and so on, hence still kind of following the tonal system even though the terminology is different. Has anyone tried starting with 0's and 12's (unisons and octaves), then 1's and 11's (minor seconds and major sevenths), then 2's and 10's (major seconds and minor sevenths), and so on? I'm wondering whether it might not make more sense to proceed this way, by pairing intervals that are inversions of each other and hence sound more alike. Has anyone tried this?

A Bit of Cutesy Philisophy

Popular discourse makes a distinction between an art and a science, the latter being applied to any pursuit that is empirical, objective and/or quantifiable, and the former being used to indicate that the rules of engagement are somehow vague, undefined, and/or subjective. Dating, it might be said, is an art in that there's no quantifiable recipe for success; conversely, bicycle maintenance could be called a science in that there is more clearly a right and a wrong way to do things. Hitting a baseball or a golf ball are good examples of tasks that might appear to fall somewhat in the middle: some great players may appear to have wildly erratic or idiosyncratic swings, your coach might say, but they all do a few crucial things exactly the same way.

This widely understood distinction notwithstanding, abstract art and the hard sciences do have at least one thing in common, along with athletics as well: they afford human beings the opportunity to cultivate, demonstrate, and freely exercise their understanding of and control over their physical environment. The hard sciences may be empirical, logical, and rigorous, but they are also expressive in this way; and abstract art, while devoid of literal meaning and hence ensured of the most subjective of receptions from its audience, is not created randomly, but by being in touch with physical reality in a way that can only be called scientific.

Accomplishments such as calculus, the slam dunk, and The Rite of Spring are all brash displays of a certain level of control over and understanding of the parameters of our physical environment. In my view, this is every bit as much an inherently artistic or aesthetic concept as it is a scientific one.

Work For Hire?

This is really appalling: apparently some film schools require students to sign the rights to their student works over to the university. According to the article, the University of Hawaii claims that most any work done by students and faculty belongs to the school.

Can you imagine not owning the rights to anything that you wrote or recorded or while a student? How about the trade off for landing a college teaching job being losing the rights to all the music you create during that time? Since there's no money to be made from most of what comes out of college music departments anyway, I guess it would be surprising if this happened. Nonetheless, this is still a bit shocking to read.

Buying and Listening Habits

In talking to several acquaintances recently, I have learned that most of them have at least one quirk when it comes to their CD buying and/or listening habits that seems very counterintuitive to me.

I know someone who buys lots of CD's and listens to them only a few times. Schoenberg said that to like something one must first be able to remember it; probably too broad of a generalization, but certainly one that I find myself identifying with most of the time. In any case, if you can't remember it at all, how's that any different from never having listened to it in the first place? It's also good to give everything a fair shot; early on especially, I found that things that sounded "weird" at first I often ended up far more attached to in the end than the things I liked right away. This, however, is changing the more experience I gain; nowadays, my early reaction is much more indicative of my eventual "final" judgment.

I know someone who has almost stopped buying recorded music completely. This seems very strange to me. The more you know, the more you don't know, right? New recordings are being made at an alarming rate, and this only adds to an already staggering cumulative body of work that is available. The more music one is exposed to, the more one becomes aware of what one hasn't heard. It starts to appear unmanageable sometimes, but rather than get discouraged, it comes to seem even more imperative that one continue to investigate. Time is running out, you know? I can't imagine living without hope of anything interesting ever materializing again. That would really suck.

I know someone who does not expect a CD to last more than a couple of years. Many concerns have emerged about the durability of CD's. I treat mine poorly, and yet I have had no problems yet that were not due to gross neglect (i.e. major scratches and scuffs). My earliest computer burned CD's have also held up quite well considering that they are supposed to have a much shorter life span than their commercially produced counterparts. I'll be holding my breath as the oldest among my CD collection enter their second decade.

I know someone whose CD collection is heavily weighted towards only a few favorite artists. Conversely, back when I was starting from scratch, I figured that I ought to focus on breadth rather than depth simply because there was so much out there. I figured that I could start to specialize after I got a decent idea of what I was dealing with in the first place. I seem to recall developing this approach based largely on what I was hearing and reading from jazz pedagogy, although come to think of it, I can't place the exact source right now. I seem to think that Aebersold advocates this somewhere, but I'm not sure. Lo and behold, I have stuck to this mindset for almost a decade and the sum total of all recorded music seems more unmanageable than ever. I've also found that, according to acquaintances, this is probably my oddest quirk as a consumer of recorded music; nonetheless, I plan to stick by it for a while to come. The toughest issue is posed by major figures who have reinvented themselves multiple times: Miles Davis, Anthony Braxton, Gyorgy Ligeti, etc. One does not simply pick one CD by one of these artists and call it a representative sample, so essentially, you end up counting music from different periods of the artist's career as if it were made by different people. There's so much out there that you're going to miss some of it no matter what. If nothing else, the creative process demands stimulation (if not downright influence), and I think my approach works well in this way. I also think that there's a certain amount of professional obligation to be aware of what's out there, as well as to stay abreast of new developments (if not as a player or writer, than at least as a teacher).

Finally, check out the comment to here. Critics selling their review copies of CD's before the official release of the album? You'd expect there to be an unwritten rule against this in the profession, but either it doesn't exist at all, or it isn't a sufficient deterrent. I guess chronic exposure to less-than promising releases leads some critics become so cynical about musicians that they have no conscience about this.

What are some of your buying and listening quirks?

Postroll

The blogroll concept has always bothered me. If someone puts you in their blogroll, are you obligated to put them in yours? Why bother putting the most widely-read blogs in your blogroll when they already appear on every single other music blog the world over? In the link, do you use the name of the blog, the name of the person, or both?

Suddenly, the cartoon light bulb appeared over my head and the solution became obvious: the postroll. From now on, when I read elsewhere a post or article that I judge worthy of my readers' attention, a link to said post or article will appear in my *postroll* at right. Besides avoiding the piddily hang-ups already listed, there are 4 really good reasons for doing it this way:

(a) because none of us share exactly the same interests or depth of knowledge about the same subjects, and hence even at a "good" blog, not every post is going to be worth everyone's time; this way, the postroll becomes an extension of the content on your own blog as it more strongly reflects your own opinions and interests;

(b) none of us are perfect, and we are all bound to turn out a few turds here and there; in recommending a particular writer, you want to showcase their finest work (same as with musicians, right?);

(c) for better of worse, the blog world seems to be entirely concerned with the present, at the particular expense of the past. In most cases, it seems as if the archive feature is almost superfluous; upon discovering a new blog, how many of us dig through the entire archive before checking out what is up on the home page? With the postroll, worthy contributions are sorted from the duds as they happen, which affords readers who may only later discover blog a more efficient means of catching up on what they've been missing.

(d) no more "link-and-run" back-patting posts; simply link to the post in the postroll and resume turning out your own masterpieces!

I've got a few links up already to get the ball rolling, none of which are likely to be news to many of you regulars...but if they are, check them out.