A while ago, I wrote this article about How to Get Better Results From Your Sonicbids Submissions. Since then, there have been a few changes to the site (both for promoters as well as performers). All of the advice from the first article still applies so if you haven’t read it, take a look at it first.
Here’s some practical advice for those of you who would like to use Sonicbids to get gigs and what my thoughts are on it (both as an artist as well as a promoter):
Make Your EPK Stand Out: There’s nothing worse than submitting an incomplete EPK. This includes tour dates. Contrary to what you might think, the EPK is the first thing that the promoter sees, not the submission questions that you’re sometimes required to complete. If you plan on using Sonicbids often (let’s face it, it’s one of the few ways to submit to SXSW, CMJ, or some other opportunities), then splurge a little and pay for the premium account, at least for the months that you’re using it often. Get your elevator pitch down. Grab their attention immediately. Listing the band members in your bio (unless you have a celebrity in the lineup) is a waste of time, same with spending an entire paragraph talking about what you sound like. Instead, focus on what sets you apart from every other artist, how you will make them money, and a deep understanding of your target audience. Use bullet points when possible: if it easier to read and you make every sentence count, promoters are more likely to read it thoroughly. If you are not as active, simply downgrade your account later.
When Submitting to Gigs, Use the Sort Function: If you want more time and attention spent on your EPK, then get in line first. When you log into your profile, click on “Find Gigs” and then sort the listings by “Date Added.” Check this often. Artists that get in the door first show initiative and have a better chance of getting in (as opposed to those who submit last, after most of the decisions have already been made). Make it a weekly habit to check your status/messages from promoters and follow up. If you want to try being the last one in, you can always sort for submissions based on their deadline.
Link Your Account to All Other Social Media Sites: As soon as a promoter opens your EPK in a submission window, your social media stats are featured. In fact, they are shown more prominently than your bio or anything else. Right of the bat, a promoter will see how many fans you have on Myspace, what your Jango score is, and how many fans you have. Leave no stone unturned: even as irreverent Myspace is, a higher number of fans on your profile still looks more impressive than an empty space. To add sites, click on “Edit My EPK” and enter the field in “Other Sites.” Drag the most prominent and active sites to the top. While you’re there. customized your URL. It looks much better to be sonicbids.com/BANDNAME than a collection of numbers/letters.
See What Others Are Doing: Check out the EPK’s of artists getting the most gigs each week (Track Buzz) so you can see what they’re doing right. Getting gigs helps you get more gigs (believe it or not, the little icons you get for “Booking your first 25, 50, or 100 gigs does stand out and is highlighted to the promoter).
Keep Up With Your Stats: If you have a premium account, you get access to your profile stats (Manage EPK>My Stats) so you can see how many views/plays you’re receiving, what parts of your profile are being looked at, etc. However, one of the greatest features is the oft-ignored “Plugins” section on the right hand side. The social media stats/buzz that you see here are the ones that are shared with promoters. If the Twitter Buzz results are pulling up results that are not relevant, make adjustments to the search query so that your music is being talked about (and not something else with a similar name).
Keep the Gig Calendar Full: I know, it’s a pain. Shows to enter on your own site, Reverb Nation, Myspace, Facebook Events, etc. It can get overwhelming with the amount of data entry. However, Murphy’s Law suggests that wherever you forget to include your tour dates, that will probably be the area that the promoter looks at. Promoters don’t have the time to following up with each of your sites to see how busy your band is. You might have an extensive tour booked all over the world on your website, but if someone looks at your EPK’s empty gig list, you’re going to look pretty pathetic. If it’s easier, delegate calendar updates in the band to different members – just make sure that the same basic information (show time, entry fee, etc.) is the same across the board.
Whether you like it or not, Sonicbids is a tool that is being used by many, many promoters, especially larger music festivals. If you are going to use the site, then do it properly so that you can maximize the results. If not, then focus on your own sites that you do well (most of the basic principles remain the same).
Simon Tam is owner of Last Stop Booking and author of How to Get Sponsorships and Endorsements. Simon’s writing on music and marketing can be found at www.laststopbooking.com
- The Crossing and Network for New Music collaborate on a new work by Pulitzer Prize winner Lewis Spratlan called Hesperus is Phosphorus. Read more about the piece here. Performances in Philadelphia, Saturday, June 2, 8:00 pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and in NYC, Tuesday, June 5, 7:30 pm at Park Avenue Christian Church.
- Dolce Suono Ensemble offers a Mozart and Schubert program, Sunday, June 3, 3:00 pm at the Trinity Center for Urban Life in Philadelphia. Of special interest is the premiere of some arrangements of Mozart concert arias by another Pulitzer Prize winner, Steven Stucky.
- Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is a piece where the degree of excellence (it’s as good as anything he wrote) is in inverse proportion to the number of performances. But you can hear it in a Music from Copland House performance at Merestead in Mt. Kisco, NY, Sunday June 3 at 3:00 pm. The program also features a premiere by Pierre Jalbert – my first composition student at Penn way back in the 20th century – not that he needed much teaching; he was pretty great right from the start.
- Mary Mackenzie will be doing three performances of Pierrot Lunaire with members of Ensemble ACJW in New York. The details:
Thursday, May 24, 2012
1:00 pm
Trinity Church (Broadway at Wall Street)
This concert will be streamed live on www.trinitywallstreet.org
Thursday, May 31, 2012
8:00 pm
The Juilliard School, Paul Hall
Sunday, June 3, 2012
5:00 pm
Music of Our Savior’s Atonement Concert Series (Bennett Ave at 188th St.)
- The Crossing and Network for New Music collaborate on a new work by Pulitzer Prize winner Lewis Spratlan called Hesperus is Phosphorus. Read more about the piece here. Performances in Philadelphia, Saturday, June 2, 8:00 pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and in NYC, Tuesday, June 5, 7:30 pm at Park Avenue Christian Church.
- Dolce Suono Ensemble offers a Mozart and Schubert program, Sunday, June 3, 3:00 pm at the Trinity Center for Urban Life in Philadelphia. Of special interest is the premiere of some arrangements of Mozart concert arias by another Pulitzer Prize winner, Steven Stucky.
- Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is a piece where the degree of excellence (it’s as good as anything he wrote) is in inverse proportion to the number of performances. But you can hear it in a Music from Copland House performance at Merestead in Mt. Kisco NY, Sunday June 3 at 3:00 pm. The program also features a premiere by Pierre Jalbert – my first composition student at Penn way back in the 20th century – not that he needed much teaching; he was pretty great right from the start.
- Mary Mackenzie will be doing three performances of Pierrot Lunaire with members of Ensemble ACJW in New York. The details:
Thursday, May 24, 2012
1:00 pm
Trinity Church (Broadway at Wall Street)
This concert will be streamed live on www.trinitywallstreet.org
Thursday, May 31, 2012
8:00 pm
The Juilliard School, Paul Hall
Sunday, June 3, 2012
5:00 pm
Music of Our Savior’s Atonement Concert Series (Bennett Ave at 188th St.)
By 4 PM, however, the Met, not the Guild or its magazine, had issued a press statement reversing course. By close of business, Gelb had given a second interview to the Times. "I think I made a mistake," Gelb told Wakin.
The Opera News tussles came not long after two other incidents involving the Met and the media. In August, the Met asked fan Bradley Wilber, the amateur blogger behind the site "Met Futures" — which listed with impressive accuracy the Met's repertoire, casts and conductors several years ahead of their public announcements — to stop publishing, and Wilber did so immediately. Earlier this month, NPR member station WQXR, which receives some sponsorship from the Met and broadcasts the live Met performances on Saturday afternoons, deleted a blog post by Olivia Giovetti that criticized the Met's ambitious and very expensive new production of Wagner's Ring cycle, after Gelb personally complained to WQXR's parent organization, New York Public Radio. (Walker told the Times that the post "wasn't up to WQXR's high standards" and that it was already under review by the time she heard from Gelb.)
What seems to have precipitated this reversal in less than a day was an immediate and loud outcry from fans and critics. The Times was deluged by reader comments, along with hundreds more posted on the often biting opera blog Parterre, which also posted an essay comparing Gelb to Vladimir Putin, written by an anonymous contributor who chose the nom de plume "Lenny Abramov" for the occasion.
Across the country and around the world, noted critics also leapt to comment under their own names — and many of them didn't mince words. Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, wrote in a post that Gelb has "castrated the magazine ... he has guaranteed that nothing published in Opera News about the Met, be it positive or negative, will henceforth be taken at face value, and that no reputable music journalist will ever again agree to appear in its pages."
In her Washington Post blog, Anne Midgette wrote: "The takeaway now seems to me to be that Gelb is losing his mind," adding, "it seems surprising that an experienced marketer like Gelb, however sensitive he may be to writing he finds off-message, would opt to attack a field that's already beleaguered, that of arts journalism, and actively work to hobble one of the few organs in the world devoted to writing seriously about his company's own art form." Alex Ross of The New Yorkerfollowed along a similar path: "Even those who have defended Gelb's artistic choices at the Met — I am not one of them — must have wondered at the bizarre sequence of events that unfolded yesterday: It appeared that America's leading opera company was cracking up in public."
Over at New York, Justin Davidson wrote, "Instead of batting away a bad review or hostile comment as one person's opinion, he has taken to bullying the very people who care most about the art form he is ostensibly there to advance," and prognosticated: "This bodes very ill for the Met, if only because an executive so intolerant of criticism is unlikely to allow internal dissent ... Gelb's not just killing stories — he's setting fire to the Met." Writing from London, author Norman Lebecht went so far as to suggest an international boycott of the Met by critics until the house reversed this decision.
Those sentiments weren't universally held, however. A number of opera fans posting commentary online yesterday argued that Gelb's logic was correct; given the even indirect ties between the Met, the Guild and Opera News, the Met's GM had every reason to tell the magazine not to bite the hand that feeds it. In the Met's afternoon press release, the company seemed to underscore that position by rather derisively referring to Opera News as its own "house organ." (The statement also included a comment about the Metropolitan Opera Guild that warrants its own unpacking at some point: "The Met and the Met Opera Guild, the publisher of Opera News, have been in discussions about the role of the Guild and how its programs and activities can best fulfill its mission of supporting the Metropolitan Opera.")
Despite their complicated ties, however, the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Opera Guild are legally two separate and distinct entities — and in large part, Opera News contributors are freelancers who are in no way employed or contractually tied to either the opera house or the Guild. Moreover, Opera News has evolved over decades into the world's premier English-language opera publication, covering the national and international scene quite credibly with many respected critics on its roster. It's not a glorified Met brochure. As Anne Midgette (who started out in her own career in the States as an Opera News reviewer) put it succinctly in her blog post: "Opera News is a publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, which is a support organization for the Met — that is, the Guild exists to support the Met, not the other way round. The Met is not paying for Opera News."
Aside from the drama of the Gelb/Met situation in particular and the personalities in question, this firestorm elicits some interesting broader questions — threads that several writers took up yesterday. The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith, who has written for Opera News for about a quarter century, wrote of himself and his fellow critics: "We get concerned (or annoyed or offended) when standards slip, when the art is obscured by gimmickry, when performances are more about surface than substance. Strange how we want our musicians to be passionate, but our critics to be docile. ... The process of creating art and putting it before the public and, yes, the critics is essential if art is to develop. All that you gain by squelching dissent is to buy a little time, usually at the expense of integrity and respect."
Meanwhile, Philip Kennicott, the Washington Post culture critic and columnist for Gramophone magazine (where I was for several years the North America editor) wrote on his own blog something of a clarion call for critics: "It's easy for critics, like me, to become tribal and protective about criticism, without explaining why it matters. One reason it matters is that, when done well, it provides a template for how to listen and remember. The latter, remembering, is key. Criticism isn't just part of the public memory of a musical performance, it is a demonstration of how to process and analyze a complicated aesthetic experience, what to take note of, and how to organize those memories into something that may stay with you long after the performance."
Should arts criticism per se — not arts journalism and reportage, but reviews of either live performances or recordings — be part of any publication that is part of a larger institution, and especially one that is not a news organization operating by journalistic standards? And what happens when that larger institution is a presenter, which has an understandable vested interest in positive coverage?
And what, exactly, should good arts criticism accomplish? Should it be strictly a thumbs up, thumbs down consumer guide? Should it be a form of advocacy for the art form itself? (That's not an unpopular view, especially within such narrowcast fields as classical music and opera.) And if or when it is advocacy for the art — which sometimes can mean disliking a particular artist's performance or vision — is saying something not nice better than not saying anything at all? Please share your views in the comments.
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Music: Cognition, Technology, Science set a formidable intellectual task before participants of the selfsame conference at semester’s end on the quieting campus of Cornell University. Under the attentive care of organizers Caroline Waight, Evan Cortens, Taylan Cihan, and Eric Nathan, what might have been an overwhelming conceptual storm proved smooth sailing through a series of back-to-back panels. The lack of overlap meant that everyone in attendance could take in the full thematic breadth and draw connections that might otherwise have been missed in the three-ring circus of a larger conference, thereby allowing interaction, a building of new relationships while strengthening the old, and dialogue conducive to the intellectual goals at hand.
The Panels
I had the privilege and the honor of presenting first in the opening Friday morning panel, entitled Patterns, Schemata and Systems, for which I was joined by Bryn Hughes (Ithaca College) and Joshua Mailman (Columbia). I did my best to set a tone in my discussion of Modell 5, a museum installation piece by Vienna-based duo Granular Synthesis, whose eponymous approach to motion capture and digital manipulation of synchronous sound and image activated, I hope, our shared interest in the intersection of technology and sonic arts. Hughes was interested in more mainstream sonic outlets. In problematizing expectation in rock music through harmonic progression as both a function of context and of socialization, he asked: Does harmony behave in a universal way? Why do some chord progressions sound “wrong” and how do we gain knowledge of these rules? Hughes plotted a matrix of influences on such choices, discovering through controlled testing that expectations are genre-specific (diatonic successions, for instance, are preferred by classical over blues listeners) and that the impact of voice leading, lyrical (a)synchronicity, and other variables must also be taken into account. Mailman took a more phenomenological approach to music as a site lacking in expectation, advocating a cybernetic model of listening and feedback practices. In positing retrospection as an active shaping force of musical experience, Mailman privileged context over convention in musical structure. By looking at otherwise undeterminable aspects of musical form and development—what Boulez might group under the term “listening angles”—as a means of analysis, Mailman made a provocative case for cybernetic phenomenology as a viable site for sonic inquiry.
Qualities emerge through change and exist by virtue of being measured as such. Hence the assertions of David Borgo (UC San Diego), who in the second session on Improvisation challenged the dominant paradigm of musical spontaneity as an individual act, seeking rather to enlarge the notion of agency to its extra-corporeal aspects. Because action of response happens more quickly than consciousness can grasp, our interpretations of the very same can only come a posteriori, subject to the same misinterpretations as any and all memory. Consciousness, argued Borgo, is autopoetic and under constant perturbation. Improvisers must therefore negotiate contingencies in all directions. To locate them at the center of webs as amorphous as their melodic constitutions is as difficult as it is to locate the true center of a universe that is forever expanding. Neither are improvisational gestures simply plucked from the ether, as Jeremy Grall (University of Alabama at Birmingham) showed in his exploration of the hierarchies at work in seemingly indeterminate music-making. Grall’s interest was the divide (or lack thereof) between composition and improvisation and whether or not the two can be subject to the same analytical vocabularies. For him, improvisation is an already problematic term, one that may be absorbed into composition insofar as improvisation abides by underlying schemata. In order to negotiate the ambiguities of perception and the phases of concrescence therein, he looked to 16th-century improvisational models and their inherent blend of immediacy and indeterminacy.
A fascinating Demonstration Session kicked off the conference’s first evening. William Brent (American University) gave us a visual and aural tour through his Gesturally Extended Piano and Open Shaper, while Mailman returned with Columbia colleague Sofia Paraskeva for a demonstration of their “comprovisational” interface. Both of these technologies take advantage of the primacy of the body in communicating information at once inter- and intra-musical. (Click here to see more…)
The wndfrm track titled “Further” lists itself on soundcloud.com as playing at the intersection of four vaguely defined genres: “dub techno,” “ambient,” “fieldrecording,” and “dubtechno,” in that sequence. Perhaps that is three genres, not four, since the absence of a space is all that distinguishes two of them. The doubling up on these two slight variations on dub techno speaks to the desire for category association that informs much activity on SoundCloud, the hope on a musician’s part that a given individual track will, amid those posted on and listened to on the service’s some 10 millions (yes, 10 million) accounts, find its appropriate audience. As with the fly in the typewriter in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a simple missing character can threaten to lead to the divergence of two entire realms of listening — or at least be felt to. The emphasis that wndfrm has put on dub techno, the effort to assure that both variations are applied, isn’t just in the track’s favor; it’s in dub techno’s favor. It raises the subgenre’s aspirations. Much dub techno is simply the two things combined: voluminious reverberations amid, or put upon, the somewhat dulled clang of electronic percussion. But “Further” is a welcome melding. The techno, to begin with, is severely muted, the percussion little more than an insistent shuffle and beading background pulses, and thus the dub is less a matter of those beats themselves echoing, and more a generous space in which the minimalism plays out. Arguably, the song “Further” is closer to “dubtechno” than to “dub techno” in that it is a conscientious amalgam.
The embedding feature on SoundCloud isn’t working at the moment, but the track is available for streaming and free download at soundcloud.com/wndfrm. More on wndfrm, aka Tim Westcott of Portland, Oregon, at twitter.com/wndfrm.
Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)
What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.
GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)
GarageBand features a combination of familiar, accessible UI features and useful tools for quick sketching and recording. Underneath the hood, you can often get more sophisticated with things like key and chords, for those who do know what they’re doing musically. It’s not the only tool you’ll need, but for beginners, it could mean a window to other tools on iPad and desktop. And for more advanced users, it has some unexpected treasures.
I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:
Design Strengths
I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting.
It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length.
It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.
Smart Guitar is an excellent view of some of the layers of usage possible in GarageBand – and a view of what other iPad apps could explore. In “Notes” mode, you play it almost like a conventional guitar, one string at a time, with frets and bends as expected.
In “Chords” mode, this view is simplified.
Switch on Autoplay, and you can select some fairly nice-sounding guitar licks. You’ve seen that in plug-ins before, but in the “take it on a bus and sketch songwriting ideas” context of the iPad, and coupled with touch, it can be useful even if you know the guitar.
At first, this setup can feel constraining, but tucked into a menu are options for adjusting song parameters. From there, you can choose to edit chords.
By editing chord configurations, you can set up a touchable sketchpad for song ideas – without having to feel like you can’t use the chord progressions you want. (In other words, no, you’re not as you might initially think limited to root-position I – IV – V. And this is a strength of various applications for the iPad for the serious musician. It’s also a nice gateway for people who are learning.)
Now, for a few details you might not know.
A showcase for the iPad’s tech
Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:
It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.
I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.
Playability
The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.
Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.
The Smart Strings instrument is well worth a play-through.
Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)
My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.
Above, synth and keyboard features.
In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
It’s a fascinating simplification of drum part arrangement, but the Smart Drums may just need more patterns or some other groove control. Still, it’s a decent starting point for a song idea.
Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.
Editability
Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.
A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)
It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.
Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.
It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.
The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.
Sharing and workflow features:
Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.
You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.
You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.
But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes.
Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.
Conclusions
Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.
On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.
When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.
My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.
Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.
I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:
The disc begins with the String Quartet No. 1 from 1868. In four movements, the piece opens with a moving study in melancholia. The second movement, an adagio, has an enticing folk-song-like theme you won't soon forget, while there's something of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream in David's fleeting scherzo. The masterfully crafted finale, a somewhat droll allegretto, is built around two rustic subjects, ending this charming work on a light note.
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The second quartet, from one year later, is also in four movements with an intricately delicate sonata form opening allegretto and reverential chorale-like andante. The feline scherzo stalks in and out on pizzicato feet, while a group of happy peasants enter for the dancelike final allegro, which concludes the quartet unassumingly.
Written in 1876, the year he died, the album ends with David's unfinished fourth quartet, which consists only of an opening allegro. Austere thematic material and rigorous construction make it a throwback to the more anguished movements in Beethoven and Schubert's late quartets. The composer penciled "The last work of Félicien David" on the score, which seems in keeping with the mood of this music.
The Cambini-Paris Quartet, from France, gives sensitive and technically accomplished performances of these rarities. Their expressivity in the andante of the first quartet makes for a moment of recorded bliss that only comes along in a blue moon.
Sound technology pioneer Bob Moog’s birthday is May 23, and just about the whole Web will be in on the celebration.
Play Google like a Minimoog: Google’s Doodle, the image you see on their homepage, is one of their best yet: it’s a fully interactive, playable Minimoog synthesizer. You can even record and playback little musical sketches and share with friends. Since the Earth is round, Google Japan gets an early scoop. (Yes, the Moog sun will rise first on the land of Roland, Yamaha, and KORG.)
Get swag, save cash, benefit the Moog Foundation: Rags and riches will be on sale for your shopping pleasure, including a benefit for the Moog Foundation on Moog-logo merchandise and clothes, with 50% of proceeds going to the Foundation’s educational and historical mission, which goes far beyond just Bob Moog to synthesis in general. That one-day birthday sale includes the lovely new Moog travel mug (I need one, after mine sadly broke in the mail to Germany), and a huge knob on a t-shirt (nice). See image, below.
Moog Music is also discounting their iOS apps, in case you missed discount pricing on their superb Animoog synth.
I Want My Moog TV. But let’s get back to the man himself, with a series of videos shared by the folks at Moog Music.
From an 80s BBC TV special, here’s Bob Moog demonstrating the synthesizer:
Moog Music are painting their spiritual father and founder’s image on their offices in North Carolina; see a timelapse of this gorgeous mural:
And in the sweetest gesture for the day:
To #celebratebob on what would have been his his 78th birthday local Asheville piano teacher, Kim Roney, brought two of her pupils to the Moog Store to perform a song in celebration of Bob Moog’s life and legacy. Bob Moog is still inspiring creative exploration in children of all ages. Thank you Dr. Moog, Happy Birthday! How has Bob Moog inspired you? #celebratebob
Finally, here’s a five-part series on synthesis fundamentals that uses the Moog Voyager. That seems, perhaps, the best way to celebrate Bob Moog’s legacy: it’s a chance to learn ideas about sound that can allow you to unlock the world of electronic music. With that knowledge, you can use any synthesis, anywhere, with or without a Moog logo on it – or use your imagination to invent the next great music technology, something Bob Moog I’m sure would have loved to see you build.
Moog Music Inc. is proud to present Dr. Joseph Akins’ five part series on the fundamentals of synthesizer programming. Dr. Akins is an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University and strives to teach his students a complete understanding of synthesizers and computers as tools for modern music production. In this five part series Dr. Akins uses a Voyager to teach the process through which a synthesizer’s sound is generated and the techniques needed to program your own sounds and sonic experiments. In part one of this five part series Dr. Akins gives a brief history of synthesizers, goes over basic synthesizer theory, and overviews basic signal flow.
Here’s how interfaces normally break down. You’ve got your conventional, tactile interfaces, like a knob. You’ve got your touch interfaces, which lack tactile feedback (you touch them, but they don’t push back). You’ve got your gestural interfaces, which have you waving your hands in the air without touching anything and without any tactile feedback. (They’re generally the most challenging, because your brain has no feedback for what it’s doing.)
Syntact creates an entirely new category. It’s a gestural interface, of the “waving your hands around in the air” sort. But while your hand is in mid-air and isn’t touching anything, it does provide tactile feedback. It pushes back as you move your hand around, giving you interactive feedback. The way it pulls it off: sound. 121 ultrasonic transducers beam sound at a particular point, so that you feel something as you move.
You can see a bit of what this means in the new video, above. I’m hoping to get a hands-on (erm, hands-off) demo soon from the designer. The basic specs:
Optical analysis of gestures, using a USB camera built into the interface
MIDI control, for use with any live performance or music making rig (or other media)
A control panel for selecting different sonic images and adjusting scaling.
A built-in music solution visualizes sound and makes it easier to map to your own MIDI files.
Saturday night at St. Paul the Apostle on Manhattan’s west side, the Schola Cantorum on Hudson (SCH) brought the audience their season’s final concert, Thresholds, based on the theme of healing. As artistic director and founder Dr. Deborah Simpkin King states in the program, this “theme was chosen in honor and commemoration of those lost, and those left suddenly and unexpectedly behind, by the terrorist attacks of ten years ago… it was our feeling that our national grieving had only barely gotten underway when war engulfed national attention, thereby short-circuiting the healing process.” To restore this process, the ensemble performed works based on texts that highlight the transitory nature of life’s events, and of life itself, from a wide range of cultures: pre-Colombian New World, medieval Europe, and the Himalayas.
SCH is a 35-voice choir with an impressive collaborative mission. ‘Thresholds’ was sung with the Caldwell College Choir, the soloists were chosen from SCH membership, and the ensemble supports new music by organizing a Featured Composer Program, which this year highlighted the work of Ivo Antognini. His Life is a Circle is based on a text by Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux:
The sun comes forth and
Goes down again in a circle.
The moon does the same
And both are round.
Even the seasons form a great circle
in their changing
and always come back
to where they were.
This meditation on the cyclical nature of existence was captured with very gentle beauty by SCH, whose high and low voices wove around one another through the great vaulted space of the church.
Following the sparkle of wind chimes, a spare series of plucked harp notes, and an electronic track of droning voices, the choir achieved a very convincing medieval chant atmosphere with “Media Vita,” a chant by Irish monk Notker Balbalus (9th century), set by Michael McGlynn. The refrain pleads, “Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and merciful Savior / Do not give us over to the harshness of death” and the low voices imbued these lines with a humility and resignation pointing to acceptance of the chant’s opening and closing line, “In the midst of life we are in death.” Soloist Alexander Wentworth took advantage of the natural resonance of his space with sostenuto delivery of stark, unadorned phrases.
Following the intermission came the featured offering, the cantata Tse Go La by Andrea Clearfield, in the premiere of its chamber scoring (mixed and treble voices, electronics, piano, harp, flute and the original scoring for three percussionists). In 2008, Network for New Music commissioned the composer to collaborate with painter Maureen Drdak, whose art is inspired by Buddhist iconography. Together with cultural anthropologist Sienna Craig, they traveled to the remote Lo Monthang, a culturally Tibetan region which, since it is located in Nepal, escaped the cultural destruction that is still visited upon Chinese-occupied Tibet. Clearfield recorded over 130 gar glu (court songs) and tro glu (traditional folk songs) of Tashi Tsering, the last of the royal court singers of Lo Monthang. She sent cassette tapes of these recordings along with boom boxes to Lo Monthang to preserve the songs for posterity.
Andrea Clearfield
Tse Go La opened with a prologue which features a feverish repetition of the word do, Tibetan for ‘stone,’ which found kinship ringing out within this marble edifice. The first movement, Kye (birth) is a poem by Sienna Craig, a meditation on the mystery of the creation of life, and the marriage of matter and spirit. The Tibetan words for the elements earth, water, fire, wind, and space are whispered by the choir (Sa, lung, chu, me, nam kha), along with an electronic track of sounds derived from these elements, which Clearfield recorded in Lo Monthang.
Shar Ki Ri (mountain in the east), for treble choir, is punctuated with vocal percussion (‘tss, tss, tss’) that helps mark time for this folksong-inspired movement, which the audience is invited to imagine being sung to dancing. ‘Thresholds’ could also definitely apply to the space between these six movements, as they lead into and out of each other with the smoothness of time, and yet use time to delineate the introduction of a new musical frame of mind. The next movement, Tse Go La (at the threshold of this life) gave soprano Sara Livolsi and tenor Kerry Stubbs the chance to sing of the desire, awakened by nature, which seeks the union of marriage: “This high mountain pasture nurtures luscious grass, / Just as this is so, it is my karma to wed this beautiful bride.” A bass flute solo plumbs the depths of a valley as seen from these high mountain passes. Kusum, the next movement, climaxes in explosive percussion, followed by conch shells and flute, phasing in and out of unison. A lament is sung with doleful piano accompaniment, mourning the departure of a queen. The cantata closes with an aleatoric reprise of the “do” motif, and the singers empty the performance space in processional, ringing bowls in hand, the basses chanting the Heart Sutra mantra.
Andrea Clearfield
What impresses me the most about Andrea Clearfield’s compositional ethos is her fidelity to both the spirit and the form of Tibetan chant. When Stravinsky and his colleagues set out to recreate ancient pagan Russian rituals in Le Sacre du Printemps, they used considerable artistic license, and musicologists have sometimes pointed out that it shouldn’t be seen as an authentic ethnological treatise. The tremendous global upheavals in the last century have made plain the fragility of indigenous cultural traditions, and artists like Clearfield and her colleagues should be commended for celebrating these traditions in a way designed to save them from extinction, with a view to preserving their authenticity. This is not the routine, ritual music of detachment heard in a yoga class, but a more polished meditative exercise, the piano, harp and percussion poking and plucking out points in time while the choir chants in a weightless probing of space. Anthropology, musical elegance and creativity, and a spirit of interconnected human experience coexist in her work in an organic way, which obviates the question, “Is it activism, or is it art?”
–
Rob Wendt is a pianist / composer / music educator living in Astoria, NY. You can follow him on twitter: @RobWendt
Detroit Symphony just held a concert with Kid Rock that raised $1m for the symphony. In an area of the US suffering some of the worst economically, this fund raiser proves there is still interest in having a symphony orchestra, even in hard times. Part of the fund raising was due to a popular artist, but part of it was also due to musicians getting out there and showing their passion. If you've not seen the photos from this concert, or watched the DSO Live performances available on the internet, you're missing a revitalized orchestra. Detroit Symphony musicians are re-inventing themselves, jumping into the fray, shouting from the roof tops. They are involved.
I recently posted an article about TwtrSymphony and the attention we're getting. The musicians are involved in the success of the organization. There is no division between the administration and the musicians in terms of 'ownership' of the orchestra. Yes, there are different jobs. TwtrSymphony has a few people who are doing administrative tasks. When it comes to getting the word out, the musicians are just as enthusiastic (if not more so) than anyone.
Orchestras need to find a way to bring the musicians back. The orchestra needs to be the musicians; the musicians need to feel as though they are the orchestra. Orchestras also need to find ways to engage directly with their audience and personalize the experience of the concert hall. When this happens, the passion of both the musicians and audience will translate across social media channels. I believe you'll find fuller concert halls and balanced budgets as a result.
NPR reported that CD sales tanked in 2010, particularly among younger buyers. The trend suggests that vinyl and iPods are sinking the audio CD into the so-called “fidelity belly,” where mediocre products go to die.
In his book Trade-Off, journalist Kevin Maney wrote that a truly successful product provides either the richest user experience (fidelity) or the greatest convenience. Less successful products fall into what he labeled the fidelity belly, “the no-man’s-land of consumer experience,” characterized by commercial apathy, insufficient fidelity, and insufficient convenience.
Apple succeeds in the consumer computer market by providing the richest pre-sales experience in its retail stores. Dell and HP succeed by providing an ultra-convenient pre-sales experience online. Who is in the belly? Everyone else.
Sinking into the fidelity belly is essentially the fast track to obsolescence. Staying out of the belly is never assured, because customer expectations for fidelity and convenience constantly evolve.
While it may seem that the audio CD thrived for more than 20 years because of high fidelity, what it really offered over its fraternal twin on vinyl was convenience — better robustness, more portability, multi-disc changers, in-vehicle players, random/repeat play, and remote control.
In the last decade the iPod arrived to match all the conveniences of the CD, adding small (and ever smaller) player size, ubiquitous portability, invisible storage, and greater (and ever greater) capacity. Nothing can match the convenience of dematerialized digital audio, now available in a variety of formats at both lower and higher resolution than CD quality (choice is convenient, too).
On several online forums catering to vinyl aficianados, I posed the question, “What is it about playing an LP that appeals to you?” After all, the fundamentals of record playback haven’t significantly changed in 100 years. It isn’t necessarily sound quality (except among self-described audiophiles). Almost unanimously, the response came back that the real appeal of vinyl stems from interaction with an LP as a satisfying physical object — large format album art, liner notes, even having to flip sides. Respondents were quite eloquent about it.
When was the last time you ever heard anyone wax rhapsodic about interacting with a CD? Has anyone ever considered a CD collectible for its nostalgia value or status as an art object? The audience for vinyl will keep it out of the belly by uniquely defining fidelity for themselves, establishing a multi-sense standard no other physical medium is likely to meet.
Thus, the CD has been forced back along the convenience axis by dematerialized digital audio, forced down along the fidelity axis by vinyl, and ultimately swallowed up in the fidelity belly. It is now or will be soon become obsolete. (What to do with obsolete CDs? Here is one idea.) At least one study concluded that less than 10% of listeners will be buying physical media in 2-4 years; that population will likely consist almost entirely of vinyl buyers, not CD buyers.
Way out in fidelity/convenience space is Maney’s “fidelity mirage,” a product that can deliver both super-high convenience and super-high fidelity. It is virtually impossible to do this in the commercial marketplace. Companies that attempt to reach the mirage usually fail and sink back into the belly.
But, consider a high-resolution digital transfer of an LP, taken on the owner’s own equipment, calibrated to his exact specifications, and restored in software to the best possible sound quality. The dematerialized result delivers super-high convenience, the original physical object retains its super-high fidelity. Is the fidelity mirage real?
Source: How Vinyl and iPods Ganged Up to Kill the Audio CD (http://inaurem-a2d.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-vinyl-and-ipods-sunk-audio-cd-into.html) by Thomas G. Dennehy
luanna is a beautiful new application out of Tokyo-based visual/sound collective Phontwerp_. Amidst a wave of audiovisual iPad toys, luanna is notable for its elegance, connecting swirling flurries of particles with gestures for manipulation. I imagine I’m not alone when I say I have various sample manipulation patches lying around, many in Pd, lacking visualization, and wonder what I might use in place of a knob or fader to manipulate them. In the case of luanna, these developers find one way of “touching” the sound.
As the developers put it:
luanna is an audio-visual application designed for the iPad
that allows you to create and control music through the manipulation of moving images.
The luanna app has been designed to be visually simple and intuitive, whilst retaining a set of rich and comprehensive functions. Through hand gestures you can touch, tap and manipulate the image, as if you were touching the sound. The image changes dynamically with your hand movements, engaging you with the iPad’s environment.
The interface is multi-modal, with gestures activating different modes. This allows you to select samples, play in reverse, swap different playback options, mute, and add a rhythm track or crashing noises. It’s sort of half-instrument, half-generative.
Phontwerp_ themselves are an interesting shop, descibed as a “unit” that will “create tangible/intangible products all related to sound.” Cleverly naming each as chord symbols, ∆7, -7, add9, and +5 handle sound art, merch, music performance / composition / sound design, and code, respectively. That nexus of four dimensions sounds a familiar one for our age.
Sadly, this particular creation is one of a growing number of applications that skips over the first-generation iPad and its lower-powered processor and less-ample RAM. Given Apple can make some hefty apps run on that hardware, though, I hope that if independent developers find success supporting the later models, they back-port some of their apps.
See the tutorial for more (including a reminder that Apple’s multitasking gestures are a no-no).
US$16.99 on the App Store. (Interested to see the higher price, as price points have been low for this sort of app – but I wonder if going higher will eventually be a trend, given that some of the audiovisual stuff we love has a more limited audience!)
The first piece in this 3 part series discussed steps you should take before you start promoting a new album, such as having your online presence all in order. In Part 2, I will go over some basic elements for, yep you guessed it, promoting a new album.
Album Pre-Sale
A great way to build excitement amongst your fanbase leading up to the release of a new album is to organize a pre-sale campaign. Hold a contest, where everyone that makes a pre-sale purchase is entered in to win a prize. Prizes could be additional merchandise, tickets to the CD release show, or if you really wanted to get crazy, offer to write and record a song about the winner. From your online store, you should have a few different pre-sale packages at different price points available. For example: - Tickets to CD release show and digital album - Autographed CD and tickets to release show - Autographed CD, T-Shirt and tickets to release show and make sure everyone who purchased the album during the presale gets their purchase by the release day (that’s the point of the pre-sale!), so mail out any packages a week beforehand and send them a digital download of the album by release day or better yet, the day before.
Press Campaign
A big component when promoting a new album is the press campaign, working with either a PR company to handle your press outreach or going the DIY route. I talk to many independent artists who don’t see the point in a press campaign for their new release, usually because either an artist they know, or they themselves, had spent thousands of dollars on a PR company in the past with little to no results. I definitely feel for artists here, but ignoring press completely is not the solution. When hiring a publicist make sure your music is a good fit with their existing roster and that the publicist has a well thought out plan for the campaign, and most of all, honestly likes your music. An expensive campaign with a PR company that has some major label big name clients is not by any means a slam dunk that you will get “tons” of “great” press for your independent release, and many times will be the exact opposite. Try contacting boutique PR firms that can offer more personal attention or PR companies that are focused on independent artists. A PR company will work with you on making sure you are prepared and will handle the press outreach, but if you’re going with a do-it-yourself approach here are some tips and strategies for an effective campaign:
Pictures Make sure you have at least 3-4 great press shots. And variety is very important, so try and have both landscape and portrait options, and some that are in color and also some that are black & white. Taking the photos in interesting locations or while dressed in “wacky” outfits are good to have, too to help make you stand out, but you should also have some simple and more straight forward shots.
Bio I know I said these were all “DIY” tips, but I’d suggest hiring a professional writer to write your bio. Even if you are a great writer, it can be hard to write about yourself or your own band. A professional writer will be able to write a compelling bio and one that can effectively convey all the important details while keeping in mind the audience, which in this case is press and music industry folk.
Press Outreach The first people to target should be local press and press outlets that have written about you in the past (if applicable). When contacting blogs make it personal, say Hi and their name, and then start off by saying how much you liked a recent post of theirs, before launching in about the new album. Include a download link to a song from the new album that they can give away for free, blogs love to offer free music to their readers. Follow up about once a week and if you’ve received some press since the last time you contacted them, make sure to include a link and press quote in the follow up email. Then as I touched on in Part 1, plan ahead so you will have content for multiple press releases for the months after the album comes out, such as a new music video and tour dates, as you don’t want to just keep sending out the same message about the new album over and over, but you do want to keep contacting press and drilling it home that you are someone who deserves to be noticed.
Launch Timeline
Plan some milestones starting from two months before the release date to at least one month after the album comes out. Here is how this could look:
Two Months Before Release - Release a single, a great way to get the fans excited and also to get some current press quotes to include when contacting press about the full length album - Announce to your fans that tickets are for sale for the CD release show
One Month Before Release - Press campaign begins for new album - Announce pre-sale campaign through your newsletter, and social networks including Facebook and Twitter - Set up a Facebook invite for the new release, send it to all your Facebook friends and post on your Fan Page
Two Weeks Before Release - Keep the excitement going, hold a contest to win a copy of the new album or tickets to CD release show
Release Day Activities - Write a news post about the release on your official website - Send out a Newsletter to mailing list - Update Twitter and Facebook with an “album out now” post and link to where they can purchase it.
One Month After The Release - Service press with official music video and announce tour dates. Again, the more activities you can plan leading up to the release will help build the excitement with your fans, and the more press points you can arrange for after a release will enable you to keep contacting press with new content, while at the same time reminding them about the new album. Also, don’t forget to ask your family, friends, and fans to write reviews of your new album on iTunes and other digital retailers the minute it becomes available. Studies have shown that albums that are reviewed at iTunes actually sell more than albums with little to no reviews posted. In the next and final post, I will talk about supplying content while you’re in between album cycles, as a means to stay relevant and fresh with your current fans, and to increase your fanbase as well.
To honor Philip Glass' 75th birthday this year, we here at NPR Music commissioned Glass to create a short work that would be great fun for amateur and professional singers alike. We're inviting the public to take part in this event on June 21, which will take place at one of the world's most iconic locations: Times Square. We'll be videotaping and recording the performance, so even if you can't be in New York that day, you can still experience this premiere.
We're joining forces with a festival that has in short order become a highlight of summer: Make Music New York, which presents hundreds of free, outdoor concerts across the city right on the summer solstice, June 21.
Glass's short piece is called The New Rule and features text by the medieval Sufi poet Rumi translated by Coleman Barks. The work for eight-part mixed chorus is adapted from the composer's 1997 3-D "digital opera" Monsters of Grace. Conductor Kent Tritle, one of America's leading choral conductors, will lead the singers in the Glass and movements from Bach's B Minor Mass; you can access the Bach parts at Make Music New York.
Let us know you're coming (although a reservation is not required to attend) and learn the music in the coming weeks.
On Thursday, June 21 at 6:30 p.m. ET, meet us in Father Duffy Square (the northern triangle of Times Square on Broadway between West 45th and 47th Streets). Arrive warmed up and ready to sing — and we hope to see and hear you there!
Additional Information:
'The New Rule'--Click the image to access a PDF
NPR
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Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Physical as it may be, the inspiration, say the creative team, was SoundCloud. UK-based creative team Us, consisting of Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, explain:
When we were asked to pitch on the promo they sent us the track as a ‘Soundcloud’ link, we usually get it sent as an MP3. For the first time we were not just listening to the track we were also watching it. There was something mesmerising about this in its simplicity. This ignited the idea to create a real life three dimensional waveform. We started to think about the fact that a vast amount of our music is consumed online and has lost a sense of physicality this lead us to the idea of using vinyl records. We also loved the way it related to Benga as an artist who’s background comes from using records as a DJ or producer.
The maths worked we would need 960 records to create 1 minute and 20 seconds worth of wave form. Each one had to be individually cut to a specific size, hand labeled, hand numbered and then finally polished. This prep took 7 full working days and then the animation process took around 30 hours.
No 3D printers here: the process of making the individual, differently-sized records sounds painstaking. Us tells Creative Review:
To animate the wave form, we built it and then carefully removed each individual record. This had to be done very gently as any shift in the position of the sculpture would result in the failure of the animation and as we had to literally destroy each piece of vinyl to get it off, there was only one chance to get it right. Once the sculpture was finally built, the animation process took about 30 hours.
As you can see in the behind-the-scenes photos, actually working those records onto the pipe involved removing the far end, making this still more challenging (though adding a great deal to the impact of the effect).
This is all quite similar to another radial, sample-by-sample waveform made of physical circles we saw earlier this year:
Making a waveform view in the digital realm is dead-simple. But something about going to physical media makes that decision more than just afterthought, as though these creators really are touching frozen sound.
The recent slew of tracks uploaded by Phillip Wilkerson to his soundcloud.com/phillipwilkerson account have titles like something out of an ancient haiku practice, albeit one situated in modern Florida. There’s “Osprey at Pine Island FL” and “Midnight Rain at Naples FL” and “Thunder in the Ebb at N Ft Myers,” not to mention the more explicitly contemporary “My Afternoon Commute at Naples Florida.” Most recent is “Sunday Morning Sounds at Palm Island, FL,” which is simply a steady combination of whole-earth white nose and occasional bird song. That’s “simply” as in “elegantly,” not “simply” as in “This is all you have to offer?” It isn’t so much bird song as bird speak, not the full-on melodic enchantment of birds, but the quotidian calls of birds going about their business, which the more melodic bird song is likely as well, but here it is the truly mundane bird call, the one that settles in the background — which Wilkerson has teased into the foreground by recording two solid minutes of it, and making it available separate from its natural environment. The ending of his recording is quite sudden, a file trimmed so immediately it almost recommends the fade out by comparison, but the hard cut is the right approach; it’s a wake-up call from the reverie.
Juilliard–structured learning into homes and classrooms; anywhere there is an Internet connection. Juilliard eLearning links Juilliard’s acknowledged history of excellence in performing arts education and Connections Education’s expertise in high-quality online learning.
The program will launch to an already-established national audience. Connections Education will offer the new arts education courses to the 40,000+ K-12 students enrolled in its national network of Connections Academy virtual public schools; it will also market the courses to educational institutions and directly to K-12 students and adult, lifelong learners.
“Providing exemplary arts education programs to youth and the community has always been central to our mission at The Juilliard School,” said Joseph W. Polisi, President of The Juilliard School. “Our partnership with Connections Education will greatly enhance our ability to fulfill this mission. Juilliard eLearning will expand K-12 educators’ and students’ access to Juilliard performing arts educational content, delivered via the highest quality e-learning courses and materials that have become the hallmark of Connections Education over the past decade.”
Educators and e-learning experts from Connections Education will collaborate with Juilliard’s noted faculty, teaching artists and designated alumni to develop and manage the content of Juilliard eLearning courses.
The first courses to be offered by Juilliard eLearning in the 2012-2013 school year include Elementary, Middle and High School Music, and will be constructed around and aligned to the National Standards. In subsequent years, courses such as music theory, music history, drama history, or dance history, may expand the Juilliard eLearning offerings. Synchronous virtual music instruction courses and virtual “master classes” are also being considered.
Chief Education Officer for Connections Education, Steve Guttentag commented, “The Juilliard School is widely recognized as the quality standard bearer for performing arts education, so we’re really honored to be Juilliard’s partner for this initiative and to develop courses together for students in grades K-12.”
Juilliard eLearning courses and learning materials will feature exclusive music, video, animations and other immersive content, plus synchronous and a-synchronous learning opportunities from both Juilliard’s experts and Connections Education’s certified teachers.
The Connections opportunity was identified by Brandgenuity, Juilliard’s independent trademark licensing agency, after an extensive review and analysis of the online K-12 educational market. Brandgenuity will continue to assist Juilliard in extending its authority into new products and services.
For more information about the Juilliard eLearning, call 888-440-2890. A public website with more information will be available soon.
The Golandsky Institute has announced the performers for its 2012 International Piano Festival, to be held at Princeton University for its ninth consecutive summer, July 8th – 14th. The Festival will feature six recitals by internationally acclaimed artists from the classical and jazz piano music worlds. This year’s season will also feature an Evening of Songs with soloists from Opera New Jersey. The first four of the six concerts will be held in the Berlind Theatre of the acclaimed McCarter Theatre Center, the last two in Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University.
On Sunday, July 8th at 8:00 p.m., 15 year old artist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner makes his Princeton debut at the Golandsky Institute on opening night. The youngest student ever to attend Juilliard’s College with a portfolio of critical accolades from Baghdad to the White House, this young emerging star will dazzle, charm and touch your heart. The performance will be held at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton.
Monday, July 9th at 8:00 p.m at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, soloists from the Opera New Jersey production of HMS Pinafore – Sarah Beckham, soprano; Jennifer Feinstein, mezzo-soprano; Sean Anderson, baritone; and Mathew Edwardsen, tenor will collaborate with popular Golandsky Institute pianist, Thomas Bagwell in a special art song recital. Songs of Debussy, Poulenc and composer Jack Perla will be featured in a program of vocal duets, quartets and solo repertoire.
On Tuesday, July 10th, An Evening of Chamber Music: The Jasper Quartet with Ilya Itin, at the piano at 8:00 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center. 2012 winners of the Cleveland Quartet Award and now poised to be the next top string quartet in the US, the Jasper is a “powerful” (NYTimes), quartet holding the position of ensemble-in-residence at Oberlin as well as Classic Chamber Concerts of Naples Florida, in partnership with Ilya Itin. Their multi-year artistic collaboration culminates in Princeton with this superb program of beloved piano quintets, quartets, and the string quartet of living composer, Ler Auerbach.
Thursday, July 12th, 8:00 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Spain’s young star pianist Josu de Salaun de Soto returns to Princeton directly from critically acclaimed tours of Europe. This much heralded artist will delight listeners with a recital program of piano masterworks by Schumann, Brahms and Debussy. In addition, the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s birth will be celebrated with a related lecture preceding the concert by New York composer and musicologist , Nils Vigeland.
Friday, July 13th, 8:00 p.m. at Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University, Russian born virtuoso, Leed’s Gold Medalist, Ilya Itin returns to Princeton from a year of hugely successful concerts in Japan, China and the USA. This year’s thrilling program will include some of the most challenging repertoire ever written for the piano: the complete Chopin Preludes, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, and La Valse. Itin will be making history at Richardson Auditorium by giving the World Premiere of the work written expressly for him by Pulitzer prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner.
For the grand finale, international jazz superstar Bill Charlap, performs a solo concert at Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University on Saturday, July 14th at 8:0p.m. Considered one of the best jazz pianists in the world, Charlap will perform a 90 minute set of jazz classics in his superb style revealing every perspective of melody, harmony and rhythm.
Tickets for all concerts are on sale at the McCarter Theatre box office, www.mccarter.org, 609-258-2787.
Admission for the concerts is $20, senior/student:$15
The transsubstantiatio.tumblr.com site collects sounds as images: tracks of audio that are, quite simply, opened in an unexpected and unintended computer program. A source file encoded so as to be heard is instead transferred through that which is meant to be seen. Up top, for example, is the resulting visualization of a track by Nine Inch Nails, “Pinion.” The Tumblr appears to be a sibling site to the soundcloud.com/null66913 account, where the latest track appears to take the opposite course (this is all based on interpreting a page originally in Spanish and itself computer-rendered in a different language, in this case English, courtesy of Google’s Translate service). The track appears to be the sound of an image. What image, I can’t say for sure. Perhaps someone else can be of assistance. The result, nonetheless, is striated noise. In the mind’s eye, it’s the fuzz of a dead channel. I wonder what the channel would show if it were properly dialed in.
A few weeks have passed since the announcement, but I have not been posting very much lately (end of the year busyness at my day job, combined with trying to get some composing done), so I am only now sharing with you the news that the 21st Century Consort has received an NEA grant to support the recording of my Sacred Songs and Meditations. My program note on the piece follows. The plan is for a performance of the piece next summer, to be followed immediately by recording sessions. The album will also include Stephen Albert’s Cathedral Music and Christopher Patton’s Out of Darkness, with all three pieces receiving their first recording. Heartfelt thanks to the director of the Consort, my dear colleague Christopher Kendall who has been a tremendous supporter of my work over the years.
Sacred Songs and Meditations
When Christopher Kendall asked me to create a piece for his two consorts (the Folger and the 20th/21st Century) to play together, I knew immediately that I wanted to accept, even though I was already booked this past year with commitments both professional and personal (the birth of our twins!). I had been lucky enough to have both these splendid groups perform my music separately in the past, and the idea of a “millennial” piece that both groups would perform together was too good to pass up. But there was no way I could meet the deadline for the piece if I was to create something from scratch.
I dealt with my time constraints by eventually settling, with Christopher’s encouragement, on a set of arrangements of already existing pieces. Christopher had long wanted to perform my Four Sacred Songs — arrangements of old sacred melodies for soprano and performers on modern instruments — so what developed was a piece that would incorporate the Four Sacreds (with parts added for early instruments), interwoven with a set of instrumental pieces that would feature the early instruments, occasionally supplemented by the modern instruments. The instrumental movements are arrangements of earlier pieces of mine, drawing on music used in a string quartet, a work for organ, and even an orchestral suite. (I put aside any guilt about concocting a ragbag of arrangements when I recalled that music with a flexible instrumentation performable in multiple realizations is very much in keeping with the musical practice of earlier times that the players of the Folger bring so beautifully to life.) This new set is thus a kind of summary of my preoccupation with making music based on old sacred melodies, an interest that goes back to the Three Sacred Songs of 1989, and continues through a number of compositions throughout the nineties for various ensembles. My work as a liturgical musician is the real source for this preoccupation, for it was in working as a church musician, principally in New York in the eighties, that I got to know most of these melodies. This new composition, like its predecessors, represents a uniting of my work as a liturgical musician with my work as a composer of concert music. This union is vividly symbolized both by the sacred space in which we hear the piece today and by the contribution of the Cathedral Choir, giving us a taste of the melody on which each movement is based before that movement is played.
Here are some notes on the individual movements:
1. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
The musical substance for this piece began as a simple choral arrangement which I later plundered for my String Quartet #2. I had thought I would have Latin titles and texts for all 8 movements of the Sacred Songs and Meditations, but a scholar friend informed me that the 19th century text for this piece is based on a Greek hymn dating back to the 5th century and there is no Latin to which we can return! The tune is a traditional French melody known as “Picardy” that dates from the 17th century.
2. Jesu Dulcis Memoria
This movement retains the original scoring for modern instruments as in the Four Sacred Songs. The text is attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian monk and preacher and is set to a chant melody.
3. Pange Lingua
My setting of this Eucharistic hymn draws on both the modern and ancient instruments and is based on a movement from my orchestral suite of Five Meditations on old sacred tunes. The music, perhaps the darkest portion, harmonically speaking, in the whole cycle, reflects the deep mystery of subject dealt with in St. Thomas Aquinas’s text.
4. Corde Natus Ex Parentis
“Of the Father’s Love Begotten” is the usual English title for the hymn on which this piece is based; the title comes from a 19th century translation of the original fourth century text. The chant melody is from the 13th century. I have set the tune using a somewhat free version of the medieval technique known as a mensuration canon: except for a few freely imitative phrases, all the parts have the same melody, but played at different speeds. For example, the low cello, viol and harp notes mark out the tune at a pace six times slower than the voice.
5. Caelestis Formam Gloriae
My best efforts failed to come up with the Latin original for this 15th century office hymn and the choir will sing a verse in the English translation by John Neale from the 19th century. The title literally means “form of heavenly glory” and the hymn speaks of the mystery of the Transfiguration of Christ. The tune is the Agincourt Song, the same 15th century melody used by Walton in his music for Henry V. This arrangement, exclusively for the old instruments, is based on another movement from my Five Meditations.
6. Christus Factus Est
The chant “Christus Factus Est” appears in the Liber Usualis as part of the Holy Week liturgy; the melody is unusually wide-ranging and highly melismatic. The text is part of St. Paul’s famous “Philippians Hymn”, and speaks of the mystery of Christ’s suffering and exaltation. The first setting I did of this melody was for voice and piano, with the long ringing piano notes evoking the resonances of a great sacred space – it is a kind of homecoming now to hear this new arrangement in a space of the kind that inspired the original conception.
7. Christus Vincit
Based on an organ piece I wrote for the rededication of the organ at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey in Indiana, this movement employs several sources: the refrain (in slightly modified form) and verses of Christus Vincit (Christ Conquers) and a hymn called Vexilla Christus Inclyta (Raise Christ’s Banner). The former is a very old melody, said to have been sung at the coronation of Charlemagne; the latter is a modern conflation of older text and melody probably devised by a monk of Solesmes.
8. O Fillii et Filliae
The origins of the tune for “O Fillii” are obscure, and may be secular in nature. (One friend suggested to me that the tune is a medieval drinking song that “got baptized”.) The words date from the 14th century and somewhat discontinuously narrate the Easter story, closing with a call to give praise and thanks to God.
Beethoven’s crowning achievement, the epic Symphony No. 9, “Choral,” featuring the soul-stirring “Ode to Joy,” brings Pacific Symphony’s classical season to a memorable close in a variety of ways. First! The concert, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, features a monumental fusion of orchestra and voices that includes Pacific Chorale and four world-class opera singers; plus, two timely works by Frank Ticheli: “Rest” (world premiere version for strings) and “Radiant Voices” provide a stunning prelude. Taking place Thursday-Saturday, May 31-June 2, at 8 p.m., in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa, this concert is also part of the Symphony’s Music Unwound series and includes a display of Beethoven-inspired artwork by local artists who responded to the call: “OC Can You Create?” A preview talk by composer Ticheli begins at 7 p.m.
Second! The Symphony, in association with Segerstrom Center for the Arts, presents the very first “Pacific Symphony PlazaCast,” a live simulcast of the Symphony’s Beethoven Ninth performance shown on the Center’s plaza during the Saturday, June 2, concert starting at 9 p.m., with festivities, beginning at 8:30 p.m. The evening is a celebration of Maestro St.Clair’s 60th birthday, the Center’s 25th anniversary and John Alexander’s 40th anniversary, hosted by Classical KUSC’s Rich Capparela. This unique event is free and open to the public with no ticket required. The community is invited to come early, bring chairs and blankets, and picnic on the plaza, while enjoying a preview and live interviews with key guest artists—and a few surprises.
St.Clair also leads an afternoon performance and conversation for Classical Connections, “Beethoven’s Ninth Revealed,” on Sunday, June 3, at 3 p.m.
The Colorado Symphony has partnered with the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus under the direction of Ben Riggs for the highly anticipated follow-up to the wildly successful Broadway Rocks from the 2009/10 season. Also featured on the program are three top-notch vocalists, direct from Broadway; American Idol finalist, LaKisha Jones, Rob Evan of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Tony Award nominated actress, Christiane Noll. These vocalists join the Symphony and the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus in modern favorites from Jersey Boys, Lion King, Wicked, Rent and Phantom of the Opera along with some of rock-n-roll’s greatest songs from Queen, Journey and The Beatles.
Broadway Rocks 2 comes to Boettcher Concert Hall on Saturday, May 26 at 7:30 pm.
Program:
Act I
Rocks Overture (arr. Fleischer)
We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions (Queen)
This Is The Moment (Jekyll and Hyde/Wildhorn)
Defying Gravity (Wicked/Schwartz)
Jersey Boys Medley
Total Eclipse (Dance of the Vampires/Steinman)
Circle of Life (Lion King/John)
Proud Mary (Fogerty)
Seasons of Love (Rent/Larsen)
Don’t Stop Believing (Rock of Ages/Journey)
Act II
Come Sail Away
Nobody’s Side
Hey Jude (Beatles)
Mama Mia Medley (Andersson/Ulvaeus)
Conga (Estafan)
And I Am Tellin’ You (Dreamgirls/Krieger)
Phantom of the Opera (Phantom/Lloyd Webber)
Music of the Night (Phantom/Lloyd Webber)
Performance: Saturday, May 26 at 7:30 pm
Tickets: Tickets are on sale now at www.coloradosymphony.org, the Colorado Symphony Box Office: (303) 623-7876 or (877) 292-7979 or in-person in the lobby of Boettcher Concert Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Hours are Monday to Friday from 10 am to 6 pm and Saturday from 12 pm to 6 pm.
We can be found on Twitter (of course), also on Facebook, Tumblr and the web. Our klout score is at 45 and growing. Several major orchestras are following and socializing with us. Other industry professionals are checking us out and even some record companies have expressed interest in our project. We don't have sponsors yet, but we haven't released our first track either. Everyone is waiting to see what the results of our experiment will be.
How have we gained the attention of all these people in the classical world? Social Media. But it's not only our own tweets, facebook and tumblr posts that are causing all the stir. The real momentum behind the project is our enthusiastic musicians. This blog, for example, posts an article about TwtrSymphony and the musicians mobilize. A TwtrSymphony article has three to four times as many hits in a single day as pretty much any other article I post. Interchanging Idioms posts news about a lot of different classical music stars, but it is TwtrSymphony articles that get the most attention. Our Facebook or Tumblr page don't have thousands of followers yet, but we have more people checking our pages on a daily basis than we have musicians, so it isn't just our musicians who are making all the hits. The news is getting out to a host of other people. With less than 100 fans on Facebook, we typically have a reach of 3-5k people. Just imagine when we have 5,000 or 10,000 fans, how far our reach might be?
A look at these statistics made me wonder --are orchestra musicians normally this enthusiastic, or did we just get lucky? A number of professional and semi-professional orchestras on Twitter and Facebook have a far bigger following. Although it is not uncommon to have musicians comment on their own orchestra's facebook page, I rarely see musicians tweeting about their upcoming performances. Most major orchestras perform two to three different shows a month. Each orchestra has 70-100 musicians for these performances. If only 10% were talking about upcoming shows, that would still be a LOT of chatter. The best part about this kind of chatter is it's honest enthusiasm for the artform.
Still thinking that maybe TwtrSymphony musicians are unique in regards to social media I ran a small survey --The Power of Musicians. In two days I had almost double the number of responses I expected. Beyond that, the responses were glaringly lopsided: musicians clearly want to promote their performances. The "advertising" of the survey was done on social media alone, so already I'm talking to a select group of musicians, but of those that replied +80% are semi-professional musicians or better, 98% of them have a facebook account, over 90% would use their personal pages to promote not only groups they are performing with, but even promote these groups when they aren't performing. Many more musicians replied to this survey than just TwtrSymphony musicians, so I think it's safe to say these statistics aren't the anomaly, but rather the norm.
The key is inclusion. The musicians are not employees of TwtrSymphony; they are TwtrSymphony. Any success we achieve is a direct result of the hard work and enthusiasm of the musicians. With no real product to sell, we are creating a buzz in the industry. When our music does become available, this 'buzz' will only serve to further promote who and what we are: Musicians promoting their Music.
In the final analysis it seems that ownership is key to enthusiasm. When musicians feel invested in an organization's success they are enthusiastic about getting the word out.
Anne Midgette has a remembrance of her friend and co-writer Herbert Breslin, who managed Luciano Pavarotti's career for more than 35 years and who died yesterday in Nice. He was "a man who routinely screamed expletives into the telephone before slamming it down, cut various financial corners, and made gleeful use of his star client's fame to manipulate journalists and other artists ... But there was a lot more to Herbert's story than that."
And yesterday, the French pianist France Clidat died at age 79. She won the Liszt Prize in Budapest in 1956. (link in French)
Der Spiegel has the story behind Dietmar Machold, the "Stradivarius man" going on trial this summer in Vienna for embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud and grand commercial fraud, with criminal complaints also coming from the U.S., Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Prosecutors' efforts "have pieced together a picture of a businessman who was probably cash-strapped for years and sold violins he had taken in commission for millions — often failing to pass on the proceeds to the instruments' owners or to banks, allegedly using the money to pay off other debts instead."
Remember that planned partnership between Kid Rock and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra? Well, it happened: "There was a lot of entertainment, energy and even a few moments of enlightenment."
The Sacramento Philharmonic has raised enough cash to sustain itself through at least one more season.
Speaking of cash, the Wall Street Journal has a look at the New York City Opera's current financial standing: "City Opera scheduled only four performances of Orpheus, which seriously limits its income-producing potential. Indeed, this season, only 8% of the company's $15.3 million budget was met through ticket sales. ... By contrast, the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., has less than half City Opera's budget, does 40-plus performances of four operas in a 900-seat theater, and last year earned about 34% of its budget in ticket income (42% in earned income when you add in rentals, T-shirts, and the like)."
After the first year of partnering with Carnegie Hall in the "Achievement Program" teaching standards program, the Toronto Conservatory has doubled its enrollment. (Famous alums: Glenn Gould, Jon Vickers, Diana Krall.)
Have you heard about the hot young Venezuelan conductor who's come out of El Sistema? No, it's not Dudamel (for once) — it's 32-year-old Rafael Payare, who has just won the very prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen.
I don't speak Mandarin, but this fight between the (Russian) Oleg Vedernikov, the principal cellist of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, and a random female passenger on a Shenyang-Beijing train is kind of bananas. Vedernikov has apologized, but in the meantime he's been suspended from the symphony and is awaiting further disciplinary action from his employer.
Here's a completely subjective list of the 10 most musical American presidents. (Me, I would have picked Thomas Jefferson over Warren Harding.) Interesting tidbits gleaned: Jefferson practiced three hours a day! Chester Arthur played the banjo!
And the snarky and yet widely beloved (actually, probably in part widely beloved due to the snark) blog "Proper Discord" blog is back at long last. The not-so anonymous author has revealed himself to be Andy Doe, the former classical buyer for iTunes and until recently the COO of Naxos.
Van-tiques Road Show Results. Last week we mentioned that more than 150 items belonging to piano icon Van Cliburn were up for grabs May 17 at Christie's auction house. The event was a success, bringing in $4.3 million. The top lot of the sale was a pair of George II Giltwood Mirrors, attributed to Matthias Lock, dating from around 1570. The final price was $464,500.
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From his home in LA to the global scene, John Tejada is a planet-navigating techno ambassador and one of our favorite electronic musicians. He’s one of a handful of artists successful today who has managed to cross eras, whose experience isn’t just of this moment but who has touched the evolution of that scene. We turn to guest writer Alex Brandmeyer, who interviews Mr. Tejada about his own work as well as where the music scene is headed. What I like about Alex’s interview is that he asks some really fundamental questions about the evolution of the international audience for this music and tools – and Mr. Tejada is just the sort of person whose answers are worth reading. -PK
John Tejada’s music has been raising the bar for more than fifteen years. Alongside an intense schedule of performances all across the world, he’s managed a steady stream of high-quality releases on dozens of labels, including his own baby (now fully-grown), Palette Recordings. Add to this some high-profile DJ mixes for outlets like Fabric, along with strong support for his music from top international DJs, and what you’ve got is one of the highest-calibre electronic artists around. Despite this success, he remains a very friendly, down-to-earth guy who’s instantly approachable, and whose love and enthusiasm for electronic music and performance immediately comes across. I caught up with him following one of his recent live shows at Studio 80 in Amsterdam.
One thing that interests me most about dance music, and about house and techno music in particular, is the fact that its appeal traverses national and geographic boundaries. What do you think the common thread is? Psychology? Biology? Culture? And what is it about four-on-the-floor electronic beats and sounds between 120-130 BPM that allows dance music to tap into these things?
I feel these days it has become such a global movement, with everyone around the world linked together through social media and other sources on the net. My experience in the early 90s, however, was much different. These avenues didn’t exist yet, and you had to grab magazines to find out about what was going on abroad and order new releases with your local shop. These days it is so instant. Most of my friends and I still can’t wrap our heads around it. Back then, it was such a treat to find the thing you were looking for or hear an artist you loved live, because you couldn’t just do an MP3 search and have it instantly or watch clips on YouTube from last night’s concert half way around the world. I see all these new developments as mostly a positive.
The sound seems to spread to all cultures at this point. Everyone likes to dance all over the world and many want that moment of hearing a new sound for the first time and wondering what it is. For these reasons, I don’t think it is all that unique that the music is loved the world over now. Many genres of music exist worldwide because people love music and keep all these scenes going.
Of course there are differences, too. As someone coming from California with strong connections to Europe, how do you feel about moving between these places, between the different audiences and cities? Does it matter in the sense that it pulls music and music communities in different directions over time? Or does the music itself make this type of question less important?
I still have a tie to Vienna with my father still being there, and being able to travel to Europe on a regular basis, so I feel connected to both places. I feel when it comes to audiences being different, it’s usually a case of a venue or the people you meet that can have a big impact on your opinion of that place. You may have a good or bad experience in a certain city and your whole experience might rely just on that one club night, when down the street at another club could have been potentially a completely different good or bad experience. It took me repeat visits to cities to realize this and to try not to make up my mind about a place just because of one night. I think the music will keep evolving, as it always does.
Every year, there are new pieces of gear, new bits of software, new labels, new clubs, and new ways of spreading music. Apart from the internet and social media culture you mentioned before, what have been the most important evolutions in your own music making over the years? Have there been specific ideas or techniques which really opened up new creative possibilities for you?
I feel while technology comes along and makes many things easier and options pretty much limitless, it also turns the same solutions into problems. Music has become more of a “paint by numbers” type of process for many people, which has made lots of new music less interesting for myself. The difference between imposing limitations on one’s creative process and actually having limitations is a different thing. When we were all starting out, the creative process was different than it is now. We now basically have limitless options, which can keep you second-guessing your work. At the same time, sure, it’s great to have new tools working more the way they were intended, and the resurgence of analog has made quite an impact in my workflow and sound. Generally, computer programs have developed mostly in positive ways, making music creation a lot more straightforward.
Again on the subject of evolution… an interesting question is always where this is all headed. People predicted a lot of different outcomes of the digital revolution, but underground clubs, labels, and to some extent, vinyl, all still seem to be doing pretty well, hand-in-hand with the ‘new era’ of Beatport, laptop DJs ,and commercial dubstep. What are your feelings about where the underground dance music scene is headed? Do you have any hopes or fears for the music? Does history repeat itself?
Things do seem to go in circles. I think we’re at the beginning of the next phase in the way music is being distributed. I have a strong belief that physical media will in some form make a comeback, wether it will be records or something else. I just can’t imagine a future where one’s music and book collection are only digital. It sort of misses the point of having a collection. Part of the fun of collecting is finding these physical objects that are tangible. While watching the new Comic-Con documentary, I had this thought that no one values PDFs of classic comic books, or JPEGs of hard-to-find baseball cards. The real physical item has great importance. This is why we love to collect records. I think people will start to miss that the more it disappears.
The past year I’ve been lucky enough to catch a couple of your live shows, and have enjoyed seeing you perform some of the tracks which I’ve come to love over the years. I’ve also really enjoyed listening to some of your DJ mixes. What for you is the difference between playing out as a DJ and playing using your live setup? Do you have a preference for one or the other? What are the challenges in each type of performance?
DJing can be stressful in the way that I’m looking to make a playlist with the goal of being an entertainer. Sometimes I don’t want to bother with that, and just concentrate on my own art and being creative that way. Playing live limits me to my own ideas which is a little easier for me, but can also be stressful, because if the set isn’t going down well I’ve got nowhere to go, really. I may have the ability to change my set list and arrangements live, but for the most part, it’s just me. At the moment, I’ve been enjoying the live sets quite a bit more. I’d love to bring more gear, but I’m usually shoved in a DJ booth, so for now, it’s a small synth and computer mixer set up.
I think distinguishing between a DJ as entertainer and a live performer as artist taps into something interesting about the way in which electronic music is performed and consumed these days. How important is your connection to the audience when you perform? Do you notice a difference in this connection when you perform live as compared to when you DJ?
When DJing, I have a stronger connection to the audience, because I’m choosing songs based on what I perceive to be their reactions. When playing live, I am really involved making sure I am doing all the right things and controlling the right parameters; I hardly have time to take a look around. That can also be a good thing, as I’m less influenced by people’s reactions. I’m limited to my own compositions, so my main goal is to perform those pieces that as best as I can.
Do you notice differences in the types of crowds that will come to see a live PA as opposed to those who come out for a DJ set?
The crowds can be different, more in the US I think. In the States you’ll have more “concert” shows, and that’s where people are more open to what a live performer will do. If I’m just shoved into a DJ booth in Europe and asked to make it work somehow, and the crowd is just a party crowd, then there is no difference there. I find in those spaces a DJ set is more appropriate.
You’ve been involved with electronic music for quite a while now. Do you have any particular achievements or peak moments that really pop out from the rest?
I’ve had some really unique opportunities including doing some shows here in LA at the Disney Hall which were really special. Checking out most of the planet has been quite great as well.
Could you tell me a bit more about the shows you did at the Disney Hall? How different is performing in a proper concert hall from performing in a club?
I got to play there twice. Once opening for The Orb at an all night event, where I played a hardware set and covered a table full of synths. The other time was when I got to play my piece “The End Of It All” with a 100 piece male chorus. The piece was reinterpreted by myself as well as adding all the vocal harmonies.
What was it like performing with a choir?
It was quite an experience to be able to do that, especially in that space.
Did the acoustics kick ass?
The acoustics are really tailored for acoustic performances. It was designed for the LA Philharmonic. While they have a really high-end PA, it is not really geared towards electronic shows. However, the space below the hall, The Red Cat Theater, hosts a big variety of very cool synth shows and avant garde programs. I’ve seen tons of shows at both recently. Definitely LA’s best venue.
Can you amuse us with any anecdotes about bizzare/amusing/plain weird things that have happened to you so far during your career as an electronic musician? No need to name any names.
There’s just so much and of course nothing comes to mind immediately. It’s usually disasters that end up being a little bit funny later on, but at the time they are not amusing, unless someone just says something completely ridiculous at dinner like the Italian promoter who was repeatedly asking Arian (Leviste) and I “don’t you think my wife is beautiful?” I remember in Tokyo, a good friend from Germany was playing and asked if I could start immediately. I said “sure,” and he went off to a corner of the stage and huddled on the ground in fetal position and just stayed there, apparently a bit food poisoned. He was soon OK.
For the coming years, what are the things that keep you motivated to make new music? Do you have any projects or ideas that you’re really excited about? Are you still looking for the perfect beat?
I’m always striving for something, tweaking my technique, my mixdowns, quality of sounds, stripping things away, the list goes on and on. I’ve just completed work on a new full length. Hopefully details on that will be announced soon.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau — often cited as one of the greatest and most influential singers of the 20th century — died near Starnberg, Germany this morning at age 86. His wife, soprano Julia Varady, announced his death from undisclosed causes.
Fischer-Dieskau's lyricism and sensitivity to the words he was singing made him unmatched among song interpreters. His repertoire was said to include more than 3,000 songs by composers including Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler and Wolf, and he made hundreds of recordings over the course of his 50-year career. When he made his American debut in 1955 (singing Schubert's Winterreise), the New York Times cheered, "The performance left no doubt that last night's listeners were in the presence of a singing artist." In Richard Wigmore's 2007 biography Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: The Baritone of Our Age, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf hailed her frequent colleague as "a born god who has it all."
Reached this morning by phone, critic and author Tim Page said, "What makes Fischer-Dieskau such a significant artist, especially when it comes to lieder, is just the way he throws himself completely into the music. You have the sense that he's examined it from every possible angle and he's chosen this way to go with it. The shading and the sensitivity with which he works with words, not only their meaning but the way he caresses their phonemes, is quite remarkable."
Fischer-Dieskau was also widely respected on the opera stage, with roles that ranged from the Count in Mozart's Nozze di Figaro to the title roles of Verdi's Rigoletto and Paul Hindemith's Cardillac. After his retirement from the stage in 1992, he continued to be a vigorous presence in master classes.
The baritone was born May 28, 1925 in Berlin. By his own figuring, he tried to start singing somewhere around age 2. His mother supported his fascination by taking him to concerts even when he was barely school-aged. By the time he was a teenager, he was already becoming a force to be reckoned with.
He first sang Winterreise in public at age 17, in 1943. He was singing at the town hall of Zehlendorf, a suburb of Berlin. The performance was interrupted by an RAF bombing. In an interview he gave to The Guardian upon turning 80, the singer recalled, "The whole audience of 200 people and myself had to go into the cellar for two-and-a-half hours. Then when the raid was over we came back up and resumed."
One of his most frequent collaborators, the pianist Gerald Moore, wrote in his memoirs: "He had only sung one phrase before I knew I was in the presence of a master." (At the time, Moore was 52 years old, while Fischer-Dieskau was just half the pianist's age.) As time went on, the admiration only increased for this musician's musician: Fischer-Dieskau partnered with such pianistic legends as Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Barenboim and Alfred Brendel.
The baritone's very first recording, of Brahms' Four Serious Songs, was made in 1949. Within two years, he was giving his first concert in London and made his first recording with Gerald Moore — the first of no less than three recorded traversals of Schubert's Die Schoene Muellerin with Moore, along with other recordings of the same cycle with Alfred Brendel and other pianists.
The Second World War defined a large part of the singer's youth. Conscripted into the German army, he was captured in Italy by the Americans in 1945 and spent almost two years as a POW; while there, he gave recitals of Schubert songs. Once the Nazis were defeated, Fischer-Dieskau returned to Berlin and began singing professionally.
In a gesture suffused with symbolism, it was Fischer-Dieskau whom English composer and conductor Benjamin Britten requested to sing in the premiere of Britten's War Requiem in 1962 at the shattered and then rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. Britten's choice of wording speaks volumes about Fischer-Dieskau's immense reputation among fellow artists: "With great temerity," Britten wrote in his letter, "I am asking you whether you would sing the baritone."
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"fullattribution">Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
There is nothing typical about this 2 disc set. I would submit that when most flutists are putting together a recording project of music for flute and electronics, they would tend to shy away from the majority of the works that Manuel Zurria has so expertly collected and performed. Not only that, Zurria ups the ante by leading off with his own Scelsi-hommage. Casadiscelsi is really a combination of Scelsi’s bass flute work Maknongan and flute work Pwyll with sounds that Zurria himself recorded from Sclesi’s house in Rome. It sets the stage for this whole first disc which is one of luminesce and slow-moving atmospheres. The virtuosity of performance is not one of a million notes per second but one of tone, mood, and environment. Zurria nails it every single time and loops4ever is consistently captivating. In Portrait by Oliveros, Zurria is almost invisible, with the voice taking center stage, yet he could not be removed. Few flutists are brave enough to feature a work like Lucier’s Almost New York for flute and three oscillators, giving up 25 minutes of precious CD space so they can play long tones, but Zurria anchors the first disc around this particular work to great affect. After the Scelsi and the Oliveros, the Lucier is exactly what we want to hear, played in precisely the way we want to hear it.
Curran’s Madonna and Child is a relief from the stasis which culminated in the Lucier but still the work floats in a somewhat restless and rocking manner. Zurria’s bass flute tone is sumptuous and once layered upon itself, the lullaby nature of the piece is exponentially amplified. I couldn’t believe my ears with the last work on the disc, The Carnival by John Duncan. A single sustained piccolo pitch (and not the most comfortable one, I should add) is held, Lucier-style, for 17 minutes. There are gradual spectral and timbral changes through the electronics but for the most part, it is a monolith of piercing brightness. Imagine a piccolo arrangement of Lucier’s Silver Streetcar. I don’t mean any of this is a bad way, although some folks will be quick to skip this track. The Carnival is an amazing listen, the perfect tonic/alarm clock to the slumber found in the Curran.
Disc two contains works that are more expected of a “flute and electronics” recording. Zurria has packed in more peppy and traditionally-technical works with the same quality of performance found in disc one. Jacob TV’s works are rhythmic and cool, quirky and spiky with the electronic component coming almost exclusively from voice editing while the flute zips out perky punctuations. I Will Not Be Sad in this World by Eve Begrarian is the perfect palate cleanser, silky smooth and tender with subdued sustained vocal manipulations.
Clarence Barlow’s work for piccolo and drone finds the middle ground between Lucier’s work and Berio’s oboe Sequenza. Barlow’s repetitive melodic fragment changes subtly enough to keep me engaged while the drone does what drones do. It was also refreshing to hear a drone in the middle of the flute’s line as opposed to underneath. Once again, Zurria highlights his programming prowess by contrasting the bright sounds of the Barlow with the murky and luxurious sounds of Basinski’s A Movement in Chrome Primitive for bass flute, temple bells, and delays. Rzewski’s Last Judgement uses the bass flute as well but in a more strained and tense register, focusing more on propulsive energy than letting the listener wallow in sound. Either way, Zurria sounds great. Dorian Reeds, originally for soprano sax, gets the final word on the second disc. The overall take on this track uses more reverb than I expected, leaving the different delayed lines a grayish wash instead of dense contrapuntal lines.
The notes for the disc consist mainly of the short interviews that Zurria did with each composer and they make for a compelling read. I find the music and the performances speak for themselves, though. This is a terrific disc full of great repertoire and expertly performed.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau — often cited as one of the greatest and most influential singers of the 20th century — died near Starnberg, Germany this morning at age 86. His wife, soprano Julia Varady, announced his death from undisclosed causes.
Fischer-Dieskau's lyricism and sensitivity to the words he was singing made him unmatched among song interpreters. His repertoire was said to include more than 3,000 songs by composers including Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler and Wolf, and he made hundreds of recordings over the course of his 50-year career. When he made his American debut in 1955 (singing Schubert's Winterreise), the New York Times cheered, "The performance left no doubt that last night's listeners were in the presence of a singing artist." In Richard Wigmore's 2007 biography Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: The Baritone of Our Age, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf hailed her frequent colleague as "a born god who has it all."
Reached this morning by phone, critic and author Tim Page said, "What makes Fischer-Dieskau such a significant artist, especially when it comes to lieder, is just the way he throws himself completely into the music. You have the sense that he's examined it from every possible angle and he's chosen this way to go with it. The shading and the sensitivity with which he works with words, not only their meaning but the way he caresses their phonemes, is quite remarkable."
Fischer-Dieskau was also widely respected on the opera stage, with roles that ranged from the Count in Mozart's Nozze di Figaro to the title roles of Verdi's Rigoletto and Paul Hindemith's Cardillac. After his retirement from the stage in 1992, he continued to be a vigorous presence in master classes.
The baritone was born May 28, 1925 in Berlin. By his own figuring, he tried to start singing somewhere around age 2. His mother supported his fascination by taking him to concerts even when he was barely school-aged. By the time he was a teenager, he was already becoming a force to be reckoned with.
He first sang Winterreise in public at age 17, in 1943. He was singing at the town hall of Zehlendorf, a suburb of Berlin. The performance was interrupted by an RAF bombing. In an interview he gave to The Guardian upon turning 80, the singer recalled, "The whole audience of 200 people and myself had to go into the cellar for two-and-a-half hours. Then when the raid was over we came back up and resumed."
One of his most frequent collaborators, the pianist Gerald Moore, wrote in his memoirs: "He had only sung one phrase before I knew I was in the presence of a master." (At the time, Moore was 52 years old, while Fischer-Dieskau was just half the pianist's age.) As time went on, the admiration only increased for this musician's musician: Fischer-Dieskau partnered with such pianistic legends as Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Barenboim and Alfred Brendel.
The baritone's very first recording, of Brahms' Four Serious Songs, was made in 1949. Within two years, he was giving his first concert in London and made his first recording with Gerald Moore — the first of no less than three recorded traversals of Schubert's Die Schoene Muellerin with Moore, along with other recordings of the same cycle with Alfred Brendel and other pianists.
The Second World War defined a large part of the singer's youth. Conscripted into the German army, he was captured in Italy by the Americans in 1945 and spent almost two years as a POW; while there, he gave recitals of Schubert songs. Once the Nazis were defeated, Fischer-Dieskau returned to Berlin and began singing professionally.
In a gesture suffused with symbolism, it was Fischer-Dieskau whom English composer and conductor Benjamin Britten requested to sing in the premiere of Britten's War Requiem in 1962 at the shattered and then rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. Britten's choice of wording speaks volumes about Fischer-Dieskau's immense reputation among fellow artists: "With great temerity," Britten wrote in his letter, "I am asking you whether you would sing the baritone."
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"fullattribution">Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Commande Opéra-Comique,Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Ensemble intercontemporain, Françoise et Jean-Philippe Billarant
Création
Marco STROPPA, musique
Livret d'après Arrigo Boito
Catherine Ailloud-Nicolas et Giordano Ferrari, adaptation du livret
Richard Brunel, mise en scène
Bruno de Lavenère, décors et costumes
Laurent Castaingt, lumières
Thierry Thieû Niang, collaborateur aux mouvements
Gilles Rico, assistant mise en scène
Rodrigo Ferreira, Re Orso
Monica Bacelli, Ver
Marisol Montalvo, Oliba, une courtisane
Alexander Kravets, le Trouvère, un courtisan
Geoffrey Carey, Papiol
Piera Formenti, Daniel Carraz, Cyril Anrep, courtisans
Ensemble intercontemporain
Susanna Mälkki, direction
Carlo Laurenzi, réalisation informatique musicale Ircam
Arshia Cont, conseiller scientifique Ircam
Production Opéra-Comique
Coproduction Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Ircam-Centre pompidou, Ensemble intercontemporain
Représentations le 19, 21 et 22 mai 2012 à l'Opéra comique-Paris
A monumental, vastly influential figure is gone. I can't help feeling shock at the news — a world without Fischer-Dieskau seems foreign and unnerving. As it happens, I had been listening to his recordings constantly in recent days, as I worked on a column on Christian Gerhaher and Florian Boesch, two of his most distinguished younger successors. I will say more in The New Yorker a week from Monday.
Sadly, there’s not much video of the instrument in action, but seeing it is a highlight of the live show. Yann’s performance has its own theatricality, rocking out on these extended strings around the “pig pen” like a boxer swinging against the ropes of a ring. First, Yann shares some notes on the show itself:
The album is an elegy to a life lived for the benefit of humans and raises complex questions about our relationship to these often-maligned and misunderstood creatures.
The album is made entirely out of sounds from the pig and its surroundings – the first squeals, the sound of it being alone for the first time, and the dripping of its blood after being butchered. The result is a delicate, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying musical composition with a profundity rarely heard in electronic music.
The live show debuted at the Royal Opera House, London, in September 2011 and has since toured the world, performing at Berghain Berlin, STRP Eindhoven, Club Silencio Paris, Liquid Room Tokyo, Ancienne Belgique Brussels, and more. Future dates include headlining at Future Everything in Manchester, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The show explores and questions the life, death, and consumption of the pig. A chef cooking onstage brings the sound and smell of cooking pig, and the performance features a brand new custom instrument – the “Sty Harp”, built and performed by Edinburgh-based artist Yann Seznec. This representation of the pig’s home is used to trigger and control elements of music, forming an integral part of the 5 piece band. The rest of the band is comprised of Sam Beste on keyboards, Tom Skinner on SPDS, Hugh Jones on samplers, and Matthew on various keyboards and samples and things.
Yann explains how the instrument itself is constructed:
Above: As “One Pig” dissects the life and being of a pig, here, we see inside the mechanical innards of the Sty Harp. Photos courtesy Yann Seznec.
In terms of the Sty Harp, the instrument is built using hacked Gametraks, which were a failed proto-motion controller from around 2003. They were sold only in the UK, and worked by using two joysticks with strings attached that you clipped onto your hands. These could then sense the distance and vague location of your hands …a few terrible games were released on PS2, Xbox, and PC for the Gametrak before they were pulled from the market.
In any case, I took apart a whole load of these (I probably have owned more gametraks than anyone in the world, ever) and used their innards for the string/joystick controllers, which are totally great! I built a whole system with Jon (from Lucky Frame) to hook up twelve of these controllers into my computer at once. I’m using an Arduino with a mux shield to handle the 36 analog inputs (x/y/string for 12 controllers) at once, converting them into MIDI and sending them over to Ableton.
In Ableton the controllers are doing a number of different things, slightly different for each song. In the Max patch I made I can send out 5 individual MIDI notes from each string, one for general movement above a threshold, and one each for a push, pull, up, or down movement. These movements are also sending out CC values, as is the pulling of the string. So each string controller is sending a whole pile of MIDI data at all times, and I pick and choose for each song which gestures to use. So in some cases I’m just triggering individual sounds using the strings, but in others I am using some strings to trigger clips, others to control effects on those clips, and still other effects to do master play/stop/effects/etc.
The climax of the Sty Harp happens about 2/3rds of the way through the show, when the whole band joins me in the sty for the symbolic butchering of the pig. For that song each band member controls different strings, building a huge sound wall.
Let’s play a word association game. If I say, “prepared piano,” many of you might think “John Cage.” Yes, John Cage was a pioneer for prepared piano, and yes, Sonatas and Interludes becomes an almost inevitable comparison when discussing any prepared piano composition, but I only mention Cage because I don’t want you to think about him. (I realize, of course, that’s like saying, “Don’t think of a honey badger.”)
The problem with comparing Eleven Short Stories to Cage is that while the basic instrument is the same(ish), the end results are anything but. If you listen to this album with Cage as your expectation, you will be confused at best and incorrectly disappointed at worst. Cage’s prepared piano is exotic, percussive, and somewhat esoteric. It is high art in the best sense. Erdem Helvacioğlu’s prepared piano is electronic, quasi-minimalistic, and highly accessible. This is more a pop album, also in the best sense.
Erdem Helvacıoğlu
Eleven Short Stories is inspired by the works of film directors Kim Ki-Duk, David Lynch, Krzysztof Kieslowsi, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Jane Campion, Anthony Minghella, Ang Lee, Atom Egoyan, Darren Aronofsky, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Steven Soderbergh. As to which director is paired with each piece, that is deliberately left unstated. Each is given a title suggesting a scene, such as “Jittery Chase” and “Shrine in Ruins,” and since each track is more about its title than anything else, Helvacioğlu seems wise to avoid any specific associations.
As a whole, it is abundantly clear that Helvacıoğlu has a remarkable ear, and he makes it easy to forget that all these sounds are generated from a piano. Every sound, every nuance serves the music, and nothing ever feels forced or hollow; his background in electroacoustic music most likely contributed to these highly successful preparations. The means of recording are also an important part of this album. Helvacioğlu used five microphones, two extremely close to the strings with the other three serving to capture broader perspectives. He also isn’t afraid to use multi-track recording to get all the sounds he needs, which brings me back to this being a pop album.
The influence of popular music is evident in several tracks, even to the extent that there seems to be a backbeat and claps on occasion.1 More than that, though, is that this CD feels like a pop album. Most ‘classical’ CDs are about taking music that was originally meant to be heard live and attempting to archive it. They are recordings, if you will. In this case, the music seems to be written for the CD, and would be rather difficult to reproduce live—each piece has a unique preparation and the multi-track recording would require that some sounds be played over speakers in a live setting. The tracks are also relatively short (4:21 on average), adding to the pop feel. This isn’t a recording. It’s an album, and a very good album, at that.2
Helvacioğlu does a wonderful job evoking each of these eleven scenes. Two standouts for me were Blood Drops by the Pool and Six Clocks in a Dim Room. The former is decidedly the most experimental on the CD, but also one of the most evocative. The scraping sounds would be perfectly at home in any thriller, and the gradual accretion of the “blood drops,” which crescendo into chaos in the middle of the track is just fantastic. Were I alone in a dark alley in a strange city, this is not the music I’d want to hear. Safe at home, I love it. Six Clocks on the other hand has an entirely different feel. There is a driving beat that fades in and out, which might be heard as either rhythm guitar or bass, and a simple melody produced by plucked strings hangs over this foundation as other ambient sounds fill out the track.
There is a fair amount of variety across the CD, both in sounds and styles, and I imagine that nearly everyone will have their own favorite tracks. Still, there remains a cohesiveness to this album that works extremely well, thanks in large part to the single underlying source of sound production. I was not familiar with Erdem Helvacioğlu before this CD, but I am now anxious to hear what else his discography has to offer. Eleven Short Stories is an excellent CD, and I would highly recommend it.
Just don’t think about Cage.
Erdem Helvacioğlu. Eleven Short Stories (Innova Recordings, #245) March 2012 – Buy it on Amazon
1Every time I hear claps in a song, I inevitably think of this. I just couldn’t think of any possible way to mention this in the review without, well, utterly confusing most people who clicked the link while simultaneously tarnishing my reputation as an academic. Enjoy.
2There are two CDs that spring immediately two my mind that share the same album “feel,” both of which are on heavy rotation at home: Leah Kardos’Feather Hammer, and Jean-Philippe Goude’sAux Solitudes. I would highly recommend both.
A lone bugler stands at attention in the rain at Wilmington National Cemetery in North Carolina, in 2009.
rday, 200 buglers will assemble at Arlington National Cemetery to begin playing "Taps," a call written 150 years ago this year.
Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Jari Villanueva, a bugle player, says he started out as a Boy Scout bugler at about age 12. He went on to study trumpet at the Peabody Conservatory before being accepted into the United States Air Force Band — where one of his duties over the next 23 years was to sound that call at Arlington National Cemetery.
Villanueva says "Taps" has taken him on a wonderful journey. "During the Civil War," he says, "in late June and July of 1862, the Union Army is camped all along the James River, and especially at a place called Harrison's Landing. Within that big army is a brigade commanded by Gen. Daniel Butterfield. Butterfield doesn't like the regulation call for 'lights out' — that call, like most calls in the Army manual at that time, was derived from the French.
"So Butterfield calls his brigade bugler," continues Villanueva, "a 22-year-old private by the name of Oliver Wilcox Norton. Butterfield gives him music to a new call, and asks him to play it that night. The next morning, Norton is approached by different buglers from other brigades who asked, 'What was that you played last night?' He then furnishes copies of the music to the other buglers, and pretty soon everyone is now sounding this new call" — the 24 notes of "Taps."
It might seem amazing that parts of the Confederate army also picked up "Taps." However, Villanueva points out, "both armies shared the same manuals, so bugle calls on both sides were the same. The Confederates were close enough to the Union camps that they probably heard 'Taps' being sounded, and pretty soon they were using it."
In today's military, "Taps" is used in two ways: the first, as the regulation call for extinguished lights at the end of the day; the second and certainly more important is its use at military funerals, wreath-laying ceremonies and memorial services. At Arlington National Cemetery, "Taps" is heard about 30 times every day.
Playing "Taps," Villanueva says, is "an awesome responsibility. It is the one piece of music that the people coming to Arlington would hear and that they would go away with. I was striving to make it as perfect as possible."
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Army Band's principal bugler, Keith Clark, knew that he might be called soon to perform this duty. "When he heard the news," Villanueva says, "the first thing he thought of was to go get a haircut, because he thought he might be the bugler called to sound 'Taps.' He got the call, went into his spot and stood for about three hours in the cold, waiting for the procession to arrive."
Finally, without much of a chance to warm up, Clark sounded the call — and cracked on the sixth note. "People would talk about that, about how he perhaps had missed it on purpose as a tribute — the nation sobbing for their lost president," Villanueva says, "and Clark remarked that for weeks afterward in the Arlington cemetery, buglers kept missing the same note. It must have been a psychological thing."
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Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
The latest item to come across my desktop is INScore, an augmented and interactive program. "Augmented" means it allows all sorts of objects — among them score notation, graphics, text, signals or triggers or sensors of various sorts — to share space (and music-notational space-time) on page or screen and "interactive" means that it can be used in real time to generate and respond to objects and events and scores can even be designed in real time. The utility of a program like this — for live animated scores for players, triggering electronics, re-arrangeable in realtime — is obvious. It looks to me to be in an early but very much usable stage of development and is multi-platform and open source. If anyone reading this gives INScore a spin, please let me know what you think of it. _____ * AFAIC the one thing worse than a music school or department requiring student to purchase a particular notation program — however good they may be (I use Finale and Sibelius myself, with a half dozen other notation programs as well) and however convenient it may be for classroom management — is giving credit courses for learning to operate one of these programs.
That is the view of the Pic du Canigou, the Catalan holy mountain, seen this morning from where we are staying at Le Racou in Languedoc. At the foot of Canigou is Prades where Pablo Casals lived in exile from the Spanish fascists, and in previous years I have followed the path of the refugees who fled from Spain only to be interned in French concentration camps in the last months of the Spanish Civil War. But such is humanity's propensity to do evil to its fellows that just a few years later the flow of refugees was reversed as Jews and other 'undesirables' fled from the fascist powers in Germany and Vichy France into Spain. Their number included Alma Mahler and her third husband the Jewish Austrian-Bohemian author Franz Werfel. Rendered stateless by the Nazis and without exit visas, Werfel and his wife were forced to cross the French/Spanish border by climbing high into the Aspres range, which is an extension of the Pyrénées, to avoid French gardes mobiles who were stooges of the Gestapo. Among the Werfel's baggage were Mahler manuscripts and the autograph score of Bruckner's Third Symphony, which Alma had kept out of the hands of another passionate Brucknerian, Adolf Hitler. This year our travels have been informed by that little-known east to west flow of refugees which was facilitated by the enigmatic American journalist Varian Fry and included a number of prominent intellectuals. The photo below was taken by my wife as we literally followed the path of the Werfels and the Bruckner manuscript over the mountains to safety in Spain. More to follow on this story, meanwhile there is a lighter take on Alma Mahler here.
Also on Facebook and Twitter. Photos are (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Once this syncopation is in your head and body, it's there for good — particularly if you go in without expectations of where the beats "should" fall. (And as for unraveling Stravinsky's incredible tonalities in this section, that's another matter.)
In any case, don't worry if you don't get it on the first go-around. You've got a whole year until the 100th anniversary of the Rite's premiere.
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Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
There is some prehistory to this in that the ancient and exotic was a frequent and early theme in opera, but it took some time before the ancient and/or exotic actually was distinguished musically. Rameau's Les Indes galantes, presented four tableau representing non-European cultures, but these were supposed to be contemporary, fictional stories within real worlds, and the music was not strongly distinguished (if at all) from Rameau's usual style. The tradition of imitating Ottoman military music is more familiar, particularly in Viennese classicism, and even when a composer's contact with actual Janissary music was relatively close (think of the Austro-Turkish War of 1787) this is again in the context of fictions told about real cultures. Haydn's Il mondo della luna arguably attempts some fictional world (well, okay, satellite) building in the form of the faked moon landing, which is distinguished largely by reserving the key of Eb for the pseudo-lunar scenes.
A useful case for the potential advantages of world building as a compositional project may be found by considering Roger Session's opera Montezuma as a counter-example. Sessions made no attempt to synthesize distinctive musical styles for the two clashing cultures portrayed and I suspect that this lack of characterization contributed to the opera's failure.
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Prism Saxophone Quartet gave a solid performance of new works by Curtis Institute students and faculty in NYC at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church on May 10th. The church seemed the ideal setting to display the quartet’s sound, with gorgeous sonorities, jarring dissonances, and stratospheric intensities filling the room. Prism Quartet is one of those rare groups that can flawlessly perform new pieces one after the other with a tremendous sense of ensemble cohesion.
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Just over one hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic. The tragedy was immortalized with emotional intensity and delicate musical sensitivity in The Sinking of the Titanic, written by British composer Gavin Bryars, and performed by him and his Ensemble at the Barbican on April 15. Bryars is recognised as a diverse musician and composer, his roots as a jazz bassist never far from the surface of this Titanic work. The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) was originally released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975 and is the composer’s first major work. Along with Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), this work sold over a quarter of a million copies when re-released in more recent performances. The Gavin Bryars Ensemble was founded in 1981 and continues to perform across the world.
