March 27, 2018
Do you hear what I hear? The composer who has figured out a piece provides you (the listener) with an open invitation to hear “their way.”
What part does fear play in your evolving work process? Can you use the fear in order to harness or conquer it?
March 26, 2018
To encompass yet penetrate with music, study and listen like hell for maximal intake, then minimize to find exactly what you want/what you can offer.
How do you “interview” your sounds before you use/embrace them? Is this interview process an “art form in and of itself?” Can the process be presented as “performance”?
Parameters do not equal rules, but they ARE informative directives.
Is staff paper a “blank page to fill”? Even if it has those staves?
March 24, 2018
To be able to do what you ask performers to do is a composer’s imperative (within reason). Prepare to demonstrate your intentions in some effective musical way (conduct, song, play, describe). If you are unsure of something, admit it and take well-intentioned advice. But don’t wait or hold back specifics out of uncertainty or the rationalization that a performer will “take freedom” and decide for themselves — commit; regroup later if you have miscalculated.
March 21, 2018
Using a digital notation program from the get-go squeezes chunks of personality out of a score well before it is performed.
March 20, 2018
Contradiction/Negation 2: You’ve proposed a new musical skills course after long-standing encouragement from your colleagues. As it is about to run, they suggest that a student teach it.
March 16, 2018
What you say isn’t what you play. [This refers to vocal notation that organizes declamation in syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic divisions; this obscures the rhythmic clarity of “beaming notation” that would be necessary in instrumental notation in favor of the “sculpting” of the words/text]
March 13, 2018
Question from performer: Why on earth do you put a natural sign in front of every single note that doesn’t have a sharp or flat? I am now having to go through and white out every one of them…too hard to read
Answer: [Explanation for the extra accidentals]: chromatic harmony that sometimes changes unpredictably to most ears (or so I think). A cellist previously flagged the same problem some years back when I took it to a really ridiculous extreme. Another way to say it is that my “courtesy” accidentals are in the end discourteous. Maybe it’s a pianist thing in the end (harmonic thinking). Sorry if it is taking you extra work! Hope the scores are readable otherwise.
March 6, 2018
If music is medicine, “pieces” of music are doses.
Fountain pen found: inflow rhythm regained. (for Peter Desmond, poet/writer and tax preparer).
(Follow up from March 3, 2018) The big issues of your compositional language are perhaps best addressed in brief, specific offerings. Writing big, important-sounding pieces is a different proposition that may or may not develop your personal quirks and qualities.
March 3, 2018
Big things can often be best addressed in small forms.