I’m beginning to have mixed feelings about taking “composition” for credit. If I understand right, Dr. Composition hasn’t been in charge of an independent study student before, and doesn’t know if he has time for me in his schedule. I don’t want to put him on the spot. Better to work on my own, and meanwhile scope out the environment this fall semester, see if there’s any faculty who are willing / able to help me.
The areas I will need help are
1) someone who will note that I did, indeed, submit X amount of work this week and
2) someone who can help me write things out in standard notation. I get so far on my own and then get stuck.
3) Critiques of the compositions (“Hey, you might want to think twice about putting parallel 5ths in the baseline”) would be great, too.
By Donovan Govan. – Image taken by me using a Canon PowerShot G3 (reference 7877)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118178
One of my goals for this fall is to go through Emily Reese’s series of interviews with composers, and take notes on each episode. The other night I listened again to one of my favorites, her interview with Lisbeth Scott. Lisbeth started out as a classical pianist but changed direction, branching out into singing and composing. Here she is as vocalist in the soundtrack for the game “Journey”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBXokDs6WyE
In the interview she talks about how this music came about. The composer, Austin Wintory, had specific ideas about what he wanted the score to be like, but he had known Lisbeth from previous work and wanted to use her particular voice as an instrument. Part of the composing process included Wintory bringing instrumental tracks to the studio and having Lisbeth improvise vocalizations over them. [Check — was she improvising or trying out what he suggested?]. As her career continued, Lisbeth began to focus more on her own compositions. In the interview Emily Reese asked her “How did the transition happen?” Lisbeth replied “Did you ever get the feeling that you’re going to throw up and there’s nothing you can do to stop it?” They both laughed uproariously for a few minutes (one of my favorite thing about this interview is the great chemistry between Emily and Lisbeth) and Lisbeth continued to say that there is something there that just has to come out.
When I think of my own composing, it’s not because there’s something inside that needs to come out. It’s more of an urge to build. One of my favorite parts of keeping an aviary is designing different kinds of environments and enclosures for the birds. Species A and Species B both want a lot of room to fly but you can’t put them together because B would bite A’s toes. Species C gets along with A but A would steal C’s food. How to arrange the compartments? One section I invented is a miniature greenhouse jerryrigged from 2 x 2s and shed kit brackets. It’s like building with Legos, but with added constraints. You don’t usually have to worry about Legos biting each other’s toes.
I also enjoy creating worlds in Minecraft. I built this cube-planet in honor of a friend’s birthday. The over-all design was made using software called “World Painter”, and repetitive structures were built with “MC Edit”, but the rest of the work was built block by block.
Unlike Lisbeth Scott, with her overwhelming urge to express something from deep within, most of my composing is about …building. I want to build a sound environment that feels…edgy and dangerous? austere but beautiful? cheerful? awe-inspiring?
I want to build worlds. Places, moods you can travel to.
I’m picturing my upcoming music classes as a visit to the hardware store. Look! A mitre saw! A tile cutter! Stacks and stacks of 2 x 4s!
By Per Erik Strandberg sv:User:PER9000 – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=830530
Dr. Robert Greenberg says (quoting another author) that the definition of music is “sound in time”. According to that definition, music would include what we normally think of as music both instrumental and vocal; also speech, bird song, aleatoric sound environments, traffic noises, heartbeat and breathing, and sounds created by software (artificial intelligence).
Does John Cage’s 4’33” fit the definition? It has time but not sound — unless you count the expectation of sound, or the environmental sounds that happen during the piano’s silence.
I think there is a gradation of purposeful creation, of intent, in these examples. A possible name for this might be “intentional music”. Artificial Intelligence algorithms generate patterned sounds. Are they intentional? Partly — the software was originally created by a human. In a sense the software is a tool or even an electronic instrument. I have a Korg Karma keyboard which has a “Karma Engine”, basically a Band-in-a-Box with some intelligent randomness built in. Someone designed this as an instrument, which (with practice and exploration) I can learn to use. As I choose the arpeggiations and sound patches more insightfully, my music becomes more intentional and meaningful.
Deadmau5 in his Masterclass talks about creating sounds with his analogue synthesizers. He changes the timbre, attack and decay of the notes. Some of his music seems random or repetitive, but the sound quality itself was created purposefully.
Aleatoric sound environments can be created intentionally and may be used to create a mood.
Traffic noises are statistical variations of sound in time. If you took the variations in amount of sound, and then sped it up so that one day’s rhythms took up a few seconds, you would wind up with something that sounded more music-like. In this way, selecting the information and speeding it up / slowing it down / amplifying it adds intention.
Breathing, heartbeat, and footsteps seem like random sounds but they are influenced by the state of the body making them. Because they are so connected to emotions they can be used purposefully to create moods.
And, my favorite example of all, bird song. My family has been keeping an aviary of birds and raising chicks by hand for many years. Is bird song purposeful? Some bird vocalizations are automatic and instinctive. If someone jumped out at you in a dark room you would probably make a sound automatically. In the same way if you startle a bird it will alarm call, and if you grab it suddenly it will “scream”. These sounds seem automatic. Bird song, however, seems intentional. Most young birds go through a stage of “babbling” during which their song is unformed and random. Then gradually over several weeks they will “decide” on what their song will be. Some birds (ex. song sparrows) develop a repertoire of several songs. Other species (such as mockingbirds, catbirds and the brown thrasher) mimic other birds and arrange the “quoted” songs in their own way. And finally, some birds (ex. starlings, budgies) take mimicked bits and warp them, transform them. I need to research this more, but I’m remembering that there is an evolutionary inclination to evolve more complex songs because the female birds give preference to the males with varied songs.
Sound in time…
So — according to Dr. Robert Greenberg, composing music is simply making sounds in time. However, the way I’m thinking of it, there is a gradation of intentionality, of purpose. Am I just making sounds with my voice or my instrument to see what sounds it can make? Noodling, improvising? Improvising in the context of a group performance? Arranging bits very carefully in hope of expressing emotion?
What I would like to do is learn more about music theory and about composition in general so that my “sounds in time” become more intentional and expressive.
But for now, as a composer, it’s good to just make lots of sounds and pay attention to them.
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Here is the Korg Karma featuring its intelligent arpeggiator, the “Karma Engine”
And — I had lost touch with Mike Rugnetta’s work several years ago. I’m excited to discover that he has continued his podcast series, called “Reasonably Sound”. One of the old episodes, called “The Drop”, turned me on to EDM and Paul van Dyk. Now I’m listening to Deadmau5, so that podcast made a big impression!
One of the things I would like to work on for my composition class is to summarize the interviews found in the series Top Score. Here is an article about the series
So, I’m signed up at HCC for music classes!!! Currently these are just a few of the worries burbling through my mind.
What do I wear?
How oh how will I ever be able to drive there so early in the morning?!
Will the textbook that I ordered ever show up?
Do I have to chase the f-ing thing down?
Will Dr. Composition accept me as a student?
I will have to meet with Dr. Voice to be assigned a teacher, oh dear oh dear
I suggested to Dr. Composition that I could treat this as an independent study and submit lessons as blog entries and/or Youtube videos. I made a list of possible projects. Clearly this list could occupy me for the next 5 years. I always aim too high and then feel disappointed. I can already feel the burn of shame! Well, I figured, try to work on this list over the summer and see how long each type of exercise takes. Do a trial run and see how much I can accomplish in a week.
Meanwhile, Dr. Head-of-Department says I should work on my bass clef skills over the summer.
And for my own edification, I should start singing again — warm-ups, breath exercises, just getting used to the sound of my own voice!
Here is my massive 5-year list
Go through the episodes of the podcast “Top Score” and write a brief summary of each; start with introduction. “This podcast series started out as a weekly feature on NPR… “
Go through the episodes of Hans Zimmer’s masterclass. Write a summary of the whole thing
Go through the episodes of Deadmau5’s masterclass. Write a summary
Other interviews with composers. Eric Whitacre? Our Lutheran guy?
Book on Bach My Only Comfort
Take music which I composed for my playlist of 8 No Man’s Sky videos, and write it out in music notation
Analyze music which we did in choir last year. ex. “Eternal Light”
Create new music and present it in Youtube video form. Perhaps one every 2 weeks?
Write a personal essay on music composition (what, why, how)
Take composition “A Cantata for Lent” and re-enter it into Finale
I need to think about what might be a good “end of semester” project. Collecting all the songs for the No Man’s Sky videos, improving them, printing out the music in Finale?
With most of this stuff, I guarantee you if I gave you a blind taste test, you’d at least think it was pleasant, if not actively engaging, which is more than several decades of Muzak could say.
There’s something kind of beautiful when you think about the fact that millions of people are listening to this music to soundtrack mundane experiences. If it sounds right for whatever purposes you apply it to—soundtracking a decision between brands of detergent at your local pharmacy, twisting your body into advanced yoga poses, concentrating on spreadsheets, or emptying your mind entirely—it doesn’t really matter where it comes from.
MIDIUtil is a pure Python library that allows one to write muti-track Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) files from within Python programs. It is object-oriented and allows one to create and write these files with a minimum of fuss.
MIDIUtil isn’t a full implementation of the MIDI specification. The actual specification is a large, sprawling document which has organically grown over the course of decades. I have selectively implemented some of the more useful and common aspects of the specification. The choices have been somewhat idiosyncratic; I largely implemented what I needed. When I decided that it could be of use to other people I fleshed it out a bit, but there are still things missing. Regardless, the code is fairly easy to understand and well structured. Additions can be made to the library by anyone with a good working knowledge of the MIDI file format and a good, working knowledge of Python. Documentation for extending the library is provided. If you don’t have a good understanding of MIDI (and don’t want to acquire one), feel free to request an addition.
One of the free courses I signed up for at Coursera was a beginner’s course on the programming language Python. The reason I did this is because the two other courses I was specifically interested in had sections where they used Python to manipulate audio data.
Once I had signed up, I realized that I really WOULD like to learn some Python. I would like to write a program that generates random chords and notes that I could then use as “noodles” to base music compositions on. I already do this with my Korg Karma, which has different kinds of arpeggiators and randomizers. It would be fun to “get under the hood” and write some noodling software from scratch. It would be an opportunity to put my music theory to use. What kinds of parameters would generate music that sounded normal (ex. 3-chord rock and roll)? What parameters would expand the sound palette? What would generate musical gibberish?
I know that many other people have worked with randomly generated music and procedurally generated music, but it would be cool to try it myself.
I posted this on Facebook — comparing and contrasting Masterclass, Coursera and Udemy
I signed up for a season of Masterclass. I feel conflicted about this because I think it’s too expensive for the value I’m getting. If I compare the amount of information per $ to what I would get buying a season of a TV show on DVD, it is a bad deal. The videos are gorgeous though, and a beneficial side effect is that I’ve gotten inspired to review my previous online courses on Coursera and Udemy. I will now “compare and contrast” 😉 The Coursera courses that I have watched were videotaped lectures of college classes. They were well organized and very informative, but plain vanilla. Udemy classes are not college-based; they can be created by anyone. My favorite music instructor is a hipster PhD who alternates between talking-head scenes (with a backdrop of what appears to be his rather cluttered apartment) and a view of his music software (which he uses like a blackboard). He hems and haws and repeats himself. But in spite of these drawbacks, his style of explanation is just right for my level of expertise. The good parts of his videos are very good. The difference between Masterclass and Udemy is like night and day. The Masterclass lectures are tightly edited and BEAUTIFULLY filmed. It’s expensive “eye candy”. But I’m really enjoying it.
Many classes are videotaped college lectures. Most of them can be taken for free, but if you want to have the homework assignments graded and/or to get a certificate of participation, there is a fee. There is an online discussion forum associated with each class. In order to get the full benefit of the forums, most of the classes have a set starting and ending point (unlike Udemy, whose classes are available to watch any time).
