CURRENTS: 06/01/2000
Time for some reportage, helpful hints and recovering from the stunning news that it is fucking JUNE already·· what happened? I just turned the May page up yesterday! Ah well, at the rate we are spoiling this often lovely place, 70 seems the right age. Just think, I won't be around for Ray Anderson's 70th birthday party! All is not lost
The arranging/composing thread on Speakeasy had some honest, well thought out questions (and answers) with only 1 idiot subbing for Damen. Graypencil is a welcome voice. SO... here we go ---
The question seems always to be "what next?" and it has more or less proven to be that "next" is just that ... NEXT note please. The idea that we always get music in big rushes of inspiration is fine, but in practice it often resembles a magazine add for Champagne more than the reality of us VS blank paper. I teach a "modular" approach to the organization of musical material – NOT a system, please – and this seems to separate us in the pre-compositional stages from becoming enamored of the material or falling into the songwriters trap. Being a "composer" means leaving finite measures of time (32 bars over and over) and accepting the fact that music is "time in space" and must be treated as POTENTIAL, not finite. We first organize small groups of pitches, determine their intervallic relationships and these relationships (5ths, 3rds, etc) give us the "intervallic logic" of the beginning material. Music and numbers being inseparable, once we have numbers (however they may be organized) we have rhythm cells, phrase duration, formal planning – all sorts of possibilities (some OK, some not) that DID NOT EXIST BEFORE we began this procedure. So, a "line" beginning with 3 pitches can be carried on with logic (or freely for variety) infinitely. This means that you commence composing from a CENTRAL GENERATIVE SOURCE and that source remains as a reality, a reason and a shadow over the entire piece. The correct hierarchy in music is:
1. PITCH
2. RHYTHM and
3. COLOR/HARMONY
Often the reverse of jazz theory – "what are the changes, man?" – and the importance of these vary from work to work. Some music is more rhythmic, some more colorful, but throughout all of this THE LINE remains paramount. The line is compromised of pitch relationships (the distance from one note to another) and these relationships equate to words in our language. We use these relationships to express thought The RHYTHMIC STRUCTURE is the "carrier" of pitch and is equally important. Without it, we would be unable to express ourselves fully, much as speech is punctuated to give meaning and interest to word streams. COLOR can be the arrangement of pitch collections, vertically organized. Giving them names (C7 +5,-9) only serves to VERTICALIZE the line – line = motion and motion=music – so ANY interruption of the line is not a good idea. Color is just that – a collection of vertically organized pitch collections that give us what is known as a harmonic progression. Spending undue time on "chords" is largely a waste – nobody really cares if you have constructed the "chord that ate New York"- they only get a "feel" for the totality of the piece.
In organizing early stage pre-comp work, the list might be – duration, forces (size of band), material (pitch, rhythm, color) and THEN the emotive elements seem to take shape, which in turn begins to give us theatrical elements – the latter widely ignored at great peril – and formal structure (partially decided by duration) can be approached. Form and rhythm seems to be the two most difficult areas to pin down. A Danish student once gave me the phrase "form as consequence” – I am still chewing on that. Since we have, as composers, abandoned the song-form, we face the dilemma that all creative efforts must deal with – what will give us unity, meaning and express our wishes?
Some things to think about. For me too, always! I now must leave for a bit – Metropole Orchestra piece successful (WHEW!!) and "birthday" CD mixed and ready for Challenge release in fall. I write until August (New Art CD) then to California and like that. I have a few irritations but nothing worth getting a fracas started about. I do think that if the queries were musical, the rest of the many gifted folks here would participate in the Speakeasy section. Bile, guile and meanness don't get it. We are total green here, hilltop chalet surrounded by trees and it is a lovely day – only 10:30, so I am out of here. More anon – reasonable questions attended to, but multipart quizzes take too much time. Vote!!! It ain't a great choice but the son of a liar and a war criminal is not the ideal leader – smirk aside.
BB