February 2012
2 posts
“Don’t play the butter notes.”
– Herbie Hancock relating advice given to him by Miles Davis:
I felt like I was getting in a rut, and I was playing the same thing over and over again, and he noticed that. So he suggested that I not play the butter notes … I started eliminating certain notes from my chords - some of the notes that...
3 tags
“Why do you look so sad? You should be happy. We have the easy job, they (the...”
– Maestro Dennis Russell Davies, giving me some of the best advice I have ever received on the art of conducting.
January 2012
1 post
3 tags
Excellent advice on self -criticism from Arnold...
From Schoenberg’s awesome Fundamentals of Musical Composition.
“The preceding discussion of melody and theme is chiefly aesthetic, rather than technical. Technical advice can be formulated more easily in the negative than in the positive. The sense of melody enables one who has it to do the right thing at once without the intervention of self-criticism, but even a master may stray on...
November 2011
4 posts
This is something of a counterpoint study. Still...
Here’s another bit of something. This one...
There is no Try
Composing is either something you must do, or it is not.
If it is, get on with it.
5 tags
As I keep trying to make myself write more I have...
October 2011
3 posts
Composition, Google Maps, and more!
I think it might have been Arnold Schoenberg who wrote about how even though a piece of music is perceived temporally from beginning to end it exists for the composer in an instant. This is how music exists on paper, beginning to end and middle are all there in one place, perceivable at one time. Static, complete. It’s like taking a scene from a film and putting the celluloid on the wall so...
Is pre-composition a waste of time?
A lot of my classmates, when I was in my undergraduate, seemed to dislike the idea of pre-compositional work. After deciding upon an ensemble they would dive straight into writing, no formal scheme in place and no defined thematic ideas upfront. This frequently resulted in backtracking, getting halfway through a movement and realizing that the material now in play was far better than that with...
“You must listen without always wanting to compare with the musical basis you...”
– Ernst Toch , 1932
June 2011
1 post
9 tags
Boxes
I remember when I was a child I enjoyed playing the piano despite having no formal music training at the time. I would spend hours, no doubt to my family’s despair, attempting to fashion crude progressions of chord-like things and melodies. Occasionally I would discover a few sonorities I really liked, and really liked how it sounded moving from one to another. When I finally got a little...
April 2011
1 post
On Writing Bad Music
I hate writing bad music. I hate the idea so much that I write a lot less music than I should in some crazy attempt to control how much bad music I put out. It’s always been a problem of mine, I mentally edit and revise and critique long before I put anything on paper. And then I do the same thing. It takes a long time, far too long, to get much music out that way.
Bad music happens,...
March 2011
3 posts
Think Forward, Look Backward
Beethoven based his early works on the models of Haydn, then broke away and formed his own rules and interpretation. Brahms did the same with Beethoven. Stravinsky rewrote Pergolesi and discovered Neo-Classicism. Schoenberg looked to expand the harmonic language of Wagner and developed his Twelve-Tone Method.
Look at other composer’s ideas, take what speaks to you and leave the rest. Make...
4 tags
I don't want to be Beethoven, I want to be better...
It’s not for the money, or the fame and friends. It’s not to be remembered in history, or whatever. It’s not my ego speaking.
It’s a reminder. To not settle for less than my best. To not think that my current best is as good as I can be. To not stop trying new things, or looking for new ways to express things in music. To never stop writing music until the last drops of...
4 tags
“Music is music whether it is for the stage, rostrum or cinema. Form may change,...”
– E.W. Korngold