Talking Shop

I have decided to regularly listen to recordings from the Naxos site, while simultaneously brushing up on historical/biographical entries online. That would be a good way to keep up with knowledge of music literature.

This past Wednesday, I was hanging out with a fellow musician who goes to my church, and we got into many discussions—the venue of our forum being Chinese buffet. We also went through a bunch of listening at my apartment. It was great.

Rewind a bit further, to Brad and me doing the same thing over coffee at Scooter’s. Talking shop is great when you generally agree with each other, isn’t it?

As I am gradually wading my way out of the cold, clear water that is hermitage, I find myself refreshed for talking shop some more. Apathetics, go ahead and surf the net while I go on.

I haven’t been entirely unproductive since I arrived in Kansas City. The majority of the work I have to show for my time, however, is not music I would willingly present to anyone without many a caveat. The music doesn’t always speak for itself, does it now.

I would like to take this moment to highlight the fact that I am not, contrary to popular belief, fundamentally opposed to (or in any way biased against) experimental music. Brad and I talked at length about experimentalism, and I naturally found myself on the defensive when I had to prove why Louis Andriessen sucks.

The thing is, it’s all about presentation. I can like just about anything… but I give the impression that I hate all experimental / avant-garde music. That is plainly a misunderstanding. Experimentalist works are just that: experiments. For someone to force-feed an academic audience their thirteen-minute concerto for bubble wrap and Kleenex boxes (or a less interesting piece like Andriessen’s Workers’ Union) and demand everyone revere it as “high art” is grating. Obviously. I’m not going to get into the philosophy behind it; that theme cadenced long ago.

A scientist doesn’t gather all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and sit them down to watch them toss potassium into a vat of KY jelly, followed by baking soda and vinegar. “Look at the reactions! Hail, the mighty power of science!!!”

Nay, I say thee. For me, experimentalist music is best heard in such a setting as when a fellow composer says, “Hey, check out this piece. It’s composed entirely of this-this-this-this, and it sounds kinda cool.” Laid-back, no pretentious overanalyzing, no pressure—just a benevolent sharing of experiments and discoveries.

I can even enjoy Andriessen’s “music” if it’s presented in a laid-back setting. Like when Scott Blanchard and I used to sit around and listen to new music while playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 on PS2.

I am not closed to any genre of music. I am a composer. Again, the majority of music I’ve written since moving to KC is experimental in some way. BUT. I won’t force it into a recital setting and expect it to be treated with supreme intellectual favor… like every single Praecepta recital ever. After one piece (I won’t say which) at one Praecepta recital (I won’t say when), a colleague (I won’t say who) leaned over and whispered to me: “So this is what the death of music sounds like.”

No, my experiments are for me, and perhaps people like me who may wish to hear it with an open mind and a casual demeanor.

Now that I’ve hopefully inoculated my readers against any illnesses resulting from the Experimentalist–Existentialist dissertation they might have been expecting to explode like a powder keg, it’s time to give the rundown of every project I’ve done since moving to Kansas City.

First of all, I’m currently working on:

String Quartet No. 2 - I haven’t gotten far with this one, really. I have most of the first movement plotted. I ran into some counterpoint issues and decided to come back to it later. It’s a tonal piece in traditional forms. The second and third movements are only planned in verbal descriptions. I have a third such string quartet planned as well.

Edgar and Sabin - This is the brass quintet arrangement I did for my tubist friend in the Twin Cities. It’s loosely a sonata around two pieces from Final Fantasy VI: Edgar and Sabin and Coin Song. I had a lot of fun with this, simply because I love Nobuo Uematsu’s music, and I love getting new arrangements of his stuff. I figured, why not make one myself? It hasn’t been performed/recorded yet.

The Hill - This was the short film score in addition to The Hollow. It’s kind of a supernatural thriller/mystery, and actually has a really good script. Unfortunately, I think the project was aborted.

Shapes in the Glass - This is a minimalist piece, one I started in July. I sometimes come back to it, then realize I don’t like working on it, then quit. Then I go cry into a pillow and cut myself. I still have ambitions of having this piece finished and performed at BGSU.

Fantascapes – I started sketching several CDs’ worth of ideas. I even finished rough drafts of a couple pieces. Then, I made the mistake of blog posting about it a while back. I pretty much scrapped the project when Josh P. admonished me about marketing it. I’ll come back to it someday. Off and on. As long as it’s fun.

Works I have finished include:

Variations on G [14:55] – For MIDI pitched percussion. This piece began as a satire on block construction. Taking minimalism to the literal extreme, I would tinker with this piece once every few nights or so. The stipulation was that I could only compose it when I was simultaneously watching Seinfeld and drinking hard liquor. It didn’t take long, however, for me to take a liking to the piece, and I began putting more and more thought into where the piece should “go” every eight measures. I used a bit of phasing with polyrhythms, etc… the piece never deviates from a G minor scale. So basically, the piece starts out mind-numbingly simple and gradually turns into something interesting.

Puzzle Box: a commentary on academic ideology [15:08] – This began out of spite, and finished in mild contempt. My intention with this piece was primarily to satirize the as-yet-to-be-disproven-as-bullshit academic concept of “moment form”… and also to directly insult the worth of Milton Babbitt. I wanted all MIDI, since Babbitt often intentionally uses cheesy sounds. The piece sounds like it could be analyzed and “solved” after weeks of rigorous theoretical analysis of pitch sets, rhythmic motives, etc., but essentially it’s completely arbitrary. It sounds like a theorist’s wet dream, but it’s an impossible puzzle—hence the title. Many people seem to believe that the more difficult the piece is to analyze, the smarter the listener is for liking the piece. However, my initial methodology for composing the piece goes something like this: “Let’s see… I haven’t used a dotted thirty-second note in a while… how about on an F-sharp?” Lots of mass moving partial measures and transposing to give the illusion of returning to important material. I even had a few canons in there. One of my trademark comebacks to avant-garde abstractions is, “I could throw a turd at a wall, put a frame around it, and call it art.” Well, essentially, this is that. I was going for obscene length, out of spite for all the shitty, long pieces I had to sit through at Bowling Green—pieces that should have been only 4 minutes tops. However, as I said, it began out of spite but finished in mild contempt. I gradually started inadvertently using more and more craftsmanship to give the piece a sensible shape, direction, growth, and balance. This was an accident. I guess that proves I’ve grown as a composer. I can’t even make deliberate crap without redeeming the piece somehow. In the end, I had an experimentalist, atonal piece that plays the way much of the genre should be played to be enjoyed: in the background. Not taken seriously but treated as cool ambience.

Jukumite I [10:24] – This one is just for Timmy. This is loosely related to an old idea I’ve had for some time now. For about three years now, I’ve wanted to compose a five-movement percussion ensemble piece based on Musashi’s legendary Book of Five Rings. Alas, since I will never have the resources to do it justice, I became more interested in this series. I am interested in all kinds of percussion, as well as primitivism. Kumite is formal, controlled sparring, and jukumite is free-sparring. I wanted to keep it mostly unpitched, and I had six movements in mind. I knew I wanted at least two of the movements to be ten minutes, allowing for a complete immersion in the martial mentality. If nothing else, this could be used for goofing around with Dean. I mean, sparring is not supposed to be accompanied by music.

Jukumite II [4:24] – Much more ostinato than the first, with mostly different samples. And a little shakuhachi never hurt anyone.

Jukumite III [3:58] – Faster, with a swing. Primarily focuses on congas. Heavily inspired by Japanese music.

Jukumite IV [6:52] – More focus on sparse, heavy outbursts atop flowing, steady rhythms. A midget died during the making of this movement. His name was Todd.

Jukumite V [9:06] – Closely related to the first movement, but slower. Uses high-quality brass samples I got from the good Captain.

Jukumite VI [12:23] – Essentially a medley of various passages from all the other movements, but heavier, and with an original coda. Tam tams are applied liberally. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Dice Song No. 2 [0:50] – This is a continuation of an experimentalist series I “started” in 2000. I came up with numerous rhythmic motifs, and rolled a gamer’s die to determine in what order to sequence them. I then rolled a 12-sided die for each note to determine pitch. I dug up Dice Song No. 1 recently and decided to set it for MIDI clavichord instead of live piano. Then I decided to make more of the same, but with different motives. Monophonic. Very simple experiment.

Dice Song No. 3 [0:41] – More of the same.

Total: [78:41] (not counting unfinished pieces)

What? Tim likes experimentalism? Did we have him all wrong? How can this be?! I don’t hate experimentalism. True, I do resent the undue admiration for certain works and composers, but I don’t hate experimentalism itself. I do loathe the apparently ubiquitous Priesthood for the Sanctity of Experimentalism.

I don’t know what more I can say to appease everyone. I don’t feel I’ve said anything here that can possibly provoke a rebuttal, but… strangely, I get the feeling that I’ve done little to stop the touchiness of the impending comments. That’s the price to pay when you talk shop. [sigh] Let us begin.