The collaborative process - Why do I need a recording?

The eminent Christopher E. Wilson has sent me this as my first question(s) for our coblogeration:

The following questions are often asked by student performers... Why are composers always asking for recordings of their works? Finale exists, so why can't you send a midi recording of your works? Is it really that important when applying for schools/competitions that you have not only a live performance, but program notes?

Also, let's say a composer gets you a score last minute asking for a recording. If you are not going to be able to record it perfectly, what's the best approach? Should the piece be slowed down, should notes be taken out, certain passages simplified? Why?

I'll tackle the first paragraph today, and leave the second paragraph for the near future, where we'll all be too concerned with bears with wielding machetes enslaving us to care about such frivolity as music or procedural crime dramas.

The reason why we want a recording comes down to basic composer/performer etiquette if nothing else. Did you know that it takes time, effort, and sometimes alcohol expenses to successfully write a decent piece of music? Much in the same way a performer would be in the right to be pissed off by a venue cancelling a show at the last minute, a composer can get a bit miffed if a commissioned piece fails to receive a performance after sinking many, many hours that could be spent looking at lolcats in to writing a piece. And as long as you are performing it you may as well get a decent recording, right? The performer generally wants a decent recording of any pieces they are performing, which is their musical skill, so it stands to reason that the composer would want audio documentation of their skill as well. This is even more important with premiers, since it can help document any progress the piece makes over time. Unfortunately, we do not live in a musical climate where new works are played in overabundance either, so the recording of the performance of a new work may be the only for a long time (or ever), or may be the determining factor in convincing other performers to take on the piece. Or more importantly to the composer, that recording may help them get a job or residency or admittance in to a school/festival that could help further their career. Then you as a performer can say you knew them before they got big, and who doesn't want that.

That last point bridges in to why Finale and midi recordings are not good enough. Take a look at a Finale box sometime: does it say music notation software, or music performance software. Finale is a great tool for getting a general idea of a piece but it does not capture the essence of a piece. Midi sounds, especially those shipped with notation software, are a pale comparison to real instruments. If you don't believe me, I'll post an audio track of the most Chris Wilson playing the last movement of /dances and then I'll post an audio track of it being played by my computer using the best sampled marimba sound I've got. Unless you spend countless hours teaching yourself make midi imitate a classical setting and many dollars on the best samples available (and yes the best orchestral sound libraries can cost in the $1000's) then what you'll get will sound like a robot playing a Walmart clarinet. Sure, all the notes are there, but there is no nuance or energy to the performance. Some people do excel at making computers sound stunning, but they are generally working for Multimedia, where that is the skill that they are hired for as much as their writing (usually more than their writing.) Many composers also shy away from the use of notation software, so this isn't even an option for them. Finally, many extended techniques are not performable by even the best notation software and samplers out there.

Summary of above: when you tell the composer to use a midi recording for something, you are telling them that you can't play it better than their computer, which is hopefully selling yourself short. While my computer may play something more accurately than you, if I wanted to listen to pure accuracy I'd turn on my metronome and rock out all day.

Also, I get off on knowing that I've made Chris spend long hours of suffering learning whatever bear of a piece (and believe me, as I'm not a marimbist, even when I think something seems reasonable it turns out to be a bear, although I'm getting better) and if I don't get a recording, I have no evidence that I caused him to fight through intense frustration and, hopefully, many delicious salty tears. But that is a Chris exclusive reason, I assure you.

As for sending recordings out to competitions and schools. I'll keep this brief, because I should actually get some important work done today. I've had composition profs at various schools tell to NOT send in midi recordings of works, cause it never does the piece justice and adjudicators will generally give the piece a better mental performance without the midi polluting their view of the piece. So there you go, no recording in many instances is a better recording than a midi recording.

As for program notes, that seems like Chris tossed that in at the last minute as a big "F You Brian." Chris knows that I personally dread writing program notes, especially on programmatic and non-programmatic pieces. I usually do end up biting the bullet and writing something, and usually I hate it every time I read it afterwards. I think that actual program notes are of secondary importance when submitting to a composition, as often these are blinded and I have my serious doubts as to whether anything other than the music will have any effect on the outcome. Hell, the title itself is probably of secondary importance, although I still wouldn't suggest calling your piece Girls Gone Wild Sonata Number 2: The Teabag. What is important is to include any performance notes that are vital and the list of any parts that double on various instruments / list of percussion instruments needed by part on any submission in advance of the piece. These are generally to express any unusual requests or advanced techniques for which there is no standard notation. Unusual notation should also get a footnote in the score to explain it.

So that should do it for today. Feel free to express your opinion below or suggest topics that you would like Chris or myself to tackle. And don't forget to check out his post over here.

The Collaborative Process - an Introduction and Dance for marimba and composer

Well it is so on now. That gangly cracker over at Wilsonmarimba.blogspot.com and myself have decided to get our joint blog venture / publicity stunt a rolling. The goal of this is for myself and Chris Wilson, Masterimbist, to engage in discussion of the typically musical variety. We will be asking each other questions, answering them, and maybe engage in long distance "just friends" spooning afterwards while we watch the sun rise. I would also encourage the readership to submit questions for us to answer from our respective perspectives.

Chris has set the guidelines up as such:

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I feel I should make some guidelines. I am not opposed to reader comments or discussion. However, I have no problems with completely deleting inappropriate comments. The point of many of my blogs is to inform younger readers, so the last thing I want is for their opinions to be warped by the uneducated minds of an anonymous reader. If you’re thinking, “well, why should I care about your opinions?” then you can check my credentials on my website.

< /chris>

My guidelines for commenting on this site will be a little more lax. I will not delete comments unless it is spam, obvious trolling, or completely irrelevant. I'm assuming there are not many young readers lurking around my blog (or many readers in general) so feel free to go nuts in the comments. And as far as why you should care about my opinion? Hell if I know, you are the one reading this blog. I do my best to back up my ideas as I go along, but I realize that my education is no indication of the validity of my opinion (athough it may mean it is a more informed opinion).

So in short: Keep it professional on Wilson's Site, he has sponsors and VIPs reading his blog ready to drop a 5 gallon money hat and a solid gold 7 octave marimba (or however big they get) marimba on him at any moment. I don't, and as a composer, I doubt I ever will have sponsors to worry about (Brian Van Winkle uses exclusively CARTA manuscript paper... see? sounds silly). Also, I want this to be a place where musicians and others feel free to be completely unprofessional, free from the serious world of music.

Anyways, that does it for my intro. Go over to Wilson's blog to check out the answer he gave to the first question I sent him. I will try and answer his first questions (yes multiple... it was like a 15 parter, I may have to break it up to keep this dialogue going longer) tomorrow or saturday, but I am in the middle of the closing week of playing in a pit orchestra for Little Women the musical and have to finish some DMA apps so if I don't get to them until sunday/monday, deal with.

Also, Chris wants suggestions for a better name. I think this works.

New Music is Not A Style

A sentiment I run across from musicians and more musically savvy non-musicians (usually soon after I let them in on the fact that I'm a composer), is that they like minimalism (and yes... it is always minimalism), but are not a fan of most "New Music" or "Contemporary Music." While I'm usually too sleepy or disinterested to beat them until they realize how absurd their statement is, sometimes I will put down my drink and pull out my graduation cap, chalkboard, and ghetto blaster to go over this idea with them.

So first, I generally try and see how much they've actually thought this through, rather than going with their gut reaction after they were forced to listen to Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and thought it was weird. I try and see what they consider to be contemporary. Oftentimes, I am amazed to see how far they go back in this timeline, apparently unware of the definition of the word contemporary. Phrases like "Well, I like early contemporary music, like the Firebird" get bandied about. PRO TIP: If you wouldn't consider the Model T a contemporary automobile, then don't consider a piece of music that was premiered during its production life so either. But being pedantic doesn't tend to win people over so let's move on.

Usually around this time, you can figure out whether this person has really listened to much "new" music or was just scared off by early serialism and never looked back (side note for another blog: I think the reason people find this early atonality and serialism hard to appreciate has more to do with a lack of passion in the music than the notes themselves; a lot of these pieces tend to be very spacious, academic, and intropective, without a lot of stable ground for listeners.) It isn't exactly hard to completely avoid significant exposure to new music nowadays, even if you are a rabid consumer of classical tradition music. Much like the spread of the internet has caused people to pick the news outlets that most fit in to their point of view to continue to solidify their position without opposition, the availability of cheap recordings has allowed people to build up a sizeable amount of art music exposure without ever having to leave the safety of the 1800's.

(I may go in to a rant about classical recordings another day... seriously, I know another set of Brahms or Beethoven Symphonies will probably sell, but you can't milk that forver. I recently looked for a recording of Shebalin Symphony No. 5, after reading that Shostakovich considered it one of the most important pieces of Russian symphonic music... one out of print recording. gah.)

At this point, pump up the jams. Start with big names or important pieces, throw in some more listener friendly stuff, but by no means do I think we should sugarcoat contemporary music for people and pretend it is all Michael Torke and Eric Ewazen out there. You may be shocked to find what speaks to certain people; I've had just as many people resond to pieces like Black Angels, De Stijl, or Winds of Nagual as have responded well to more neo-romantic and neo-tonal music. You may even try some later serialists like Karel Husa or Gunther Schuller to show them that even the most dreaded of musical styles developed in to something with more soul to it.

Play them as wide a range of music as you have time for. What you want to impress upon them, is that now, more than ever, new and contemporary doesn't refer to anything meaningful. There are very few composers, even academics, who follow a strict school of composition anymore. Figure out where their musical interests lie and focus on that, but also play music outside of their preferred idiom. In my opinion, this is also a great time to introduce them to instruments and ensembles that they may not be acquainted with as the 20th century really saw an expansion of music written for non-traditional ensembles. If anyone is interested in pieces I would suggest playing, I'll be more than happy to do so, but I assume most people who will be reading this already have an arsenal of pieces to play.

Something I find fun to illustrate the fracturous nature of new music is to play pieces by Milton Babbitt, Corigliano, Ewazen, and Whitacre to someone. Then explain to them that all of them were either teachers or students at Juilliard towards the end of the 20th century or 21st century.

Overall the goal is to educate them on the variety of new music out there. If they seriously claim to hate everything you play them, assuming you played a wide enough variety of styles, then they are just being stubborn and there ain't no educating stubborn. It is also important to realize that not every style is going to reach every person. Hell, I love new music, but for the most part I can't stand electronic art music. The goal here is to find a niche that speaks to them, so that you can infiltrate their listening practices with music from composers who are still alive to appreciate the support, and in turn hopefully they will support the performance of new music. You want to shock the person in to realizing what they've been missing by making a blanket dismissal of all "new" music.

Anyways, let's wrap this up for today, kiddos. Feel free to post any thoughts or suggestions on what I should write about next in the comments. And by "feel free" I obviously mean "I demand you." Seriously, I do better with input.

First very serious post, on a very serious blog, by a very serious person. Contents should not be taken seriously.

So bloggin. Yeah, let's do this.

First, some background for you, the reader, in case you stumbled in to this blog after a bottle Jack-Quil and have no idea where you are and what is going on.

I am Brian A. Van Winkle. I'm a composer, and many of the topics discussed here will be related to a variety of musical thoughts, opinions, and the whatnot (I do intend however to write about other topics that I find super awesome, however). Although, I am one of them trained-at-a-college type composers (currently interested in getting more delicious college in me), not one of the "I took piano lessons and found out all the black keys sound really cool together when you put the string sustain on" type. I like to write for any medium, but especially ones that I can get performances writing for. Although, I'm not super keen on writing electronic music, but that sounds like a subject for a future post.

Well, why write a blog, you, the blogo-ether, may ask me. First of all, you ask a lot of questions for someone who stumbled here reaking of bourbon and imitation cherry. Second, I have many unsupported opinions and rantings that I go on from time to time, and feel that they should be chronicled for the future ridicule (as I forget what I've said easily), and my book "How to destroy your career with an unprofessional blog". Finally, I fully intend to start a blog war / dialogue about the collaborative process with Chris "MoFo-rimba" Wilson (wilsonmarimba.blogspot.com). You can rest assured that whenever possible, I will attempt to disagree with everything he says.

In an attempt to get my first tl;dr I will now go in to some of my general views on music. I <3 classical tradition music. Not so much classical era music, although that can be nice from time to time. Also, as a side note, I am very fond of the wind ensemble as a medium. Although any medium is fair game to me, I felt I'd mention that because some musicians I've run in to seem to consider the wind ensemble the artistic bush-league, and many of those musicians are also undereducated fucktards (side note: may be swearing from time to time, it is my own blog after all. Feel free to do the same, it is great). If you think I'm wrong, go listen to Schwantner's "...and the mountains rising nowhere...", a Maslanka symphony, and Corigliano's third symphony and come back, I'll wait. If you prefer older, the Mozart Gran Partita and Dvorak Serenade.

I also have an aversion to all the unimportant ceremony and emphasis on tradition that goes along with music nowadays. Especially an evening at a professional orchestral or opera performance. The most ridiculous question I'm often asked by my non-musician friends who are planning on going to Symphony concert is "What is appropriate to wear?" To which I generally will reply "If you're performing, a tux. If not, whatever is comfortable." To me, this exchange demonstrates the attitude that the enterprise of classical tradition music has become too elitist. Music is an aural experience and if someone's day is gonna be ruined by another symphony patron wearing a t-shirt, then they are there for the wrong reasons.

All in all, I feel that music is considered by the people who are involved in the tradition of music that I thrive on, take everything way too seriously. The enterprise of music is important to me, the seriousness that surrounds it seems to be strangling the life out of it to these eyes. I will continue to refine my ideas about this position as I continue to blog, but feel free to send any attacks my way to help focus my rage in to more concise posts.

So yeah... there is my rambling introduction. Future music related topics may include: ranting on new music, music reviews, seduction for conductors, the absurdity of seriousness, what I'm writing and how I'm doing it (hint: in the nude), some theory stuffs, and why working music retail is often worse than being forced in to doing a donkey show in front of your parents, only to realize later you weren't being forced in to doing it. Non-music related topics will be whatever the hell I feel like, and my hatred of proofreading posts for clarity.

Anyways, I'll try and stumble in to mental clarity and post at least once a week. Also, Chris Wilson is a cracker-ass motherfucker. BOOSH!