Surfeit

In the end, composers want to be appreciated. Money's nice but applause is better. I'm lucky to have found a classical music performance vehicle in a group of classical and opera lovers that meet monthly to performances.

At these peformances I've been cycling through what I call a Hexatone. This is a st of 6 capriccios progressing from through the keys of C,D,E,F,G, and A. I've written and performed all but the last of these. Four have been for solo piano; two have been duets for piano and violin.

A cappriccio by definition is lively and not hide-bound to structure. At the same time, I am a great devotee to harmonic and metrical structure. I like my passages to have 4, 8, 16 bars. I think our minds like this. Once in a while I appreciate doubling the last bar to create extended tension. Simple, huh?

Having a place to play live classical music is a treat because I get to test out ideas and listen to the audience response. They, too, seem to respond better to the clarity and predictability that comes from a structured pattern. And, at a compositional level, the voice of a piece is the melody. The more structured the underlying chord progression, the easier it is to craft a compelling and novel melody.

Not everyone puts their emphasis here. Composers who concentrate on harmonics and timbres don't seem to prioritize melody, tension and resolutions. They may be gifted at their pursuits. It just doesn't hold the same appeal for me. Prokofiev is a master of texture. Mozart was not such a master. But I'm more likely to be whistling Mozart half an hour later than anything I hear by Prokofiev (whom I am analyzing at the moment) .

Growth, however, requires a push. Sometimes we have to crawl out of a cozy valley and climb up the ridge to see the surrounding horizon. So as I explore expanded measure patterns I am also exploring expanded scale runs. There is a passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Sonata (the 15th?) that always tickled me. it was the inclusion of a non scale note, perhaps a flatted 5th. Now, tickling is a great experience in music because you know something is happening. Someone is violating our expectations, but not enough to break our interest. That is art. That is effect.

So the idea is that if you want to craft a run from High C to middle C that instead of it taking 7 notes, it might take 8 or 9. This is not surfeit; its not too many notes. It ornaments the tonality in an applicable way. But which note do you insert? The flatted 5th is nice and customary to my ears as it evokes the blues scale. But for a classic feel, adding the extra 7th has a melodic flavor; this is the major 7th if the flatted 7th was expected or vice versa.

So now I have two paths to explore: Extended bar patterns and extended scales. How rich! I've been getting a lot of mileage out of my vast experiments with diminished chord structures. I'm not sure anything will prove as liberating as that handy tool. After finding a hundred uses for it you feel idiotic that you hadn't been using it before. It makes some of your previous compositions seem monochromatic. It would be a delight if my experiments with denser scales should prove so enabling.

So there.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer

One of the fortunes we have that were not afforded to Haydn, Bach and Mozart is that we can turn on the radio any time we like and here outstanding music-- for free. Our exposure can be as high as we like. We must appreciate that.

Hold on just a moment... I'm appreciating that....

OK that's good.


Nothing inspires confidence more than hearing something you don't like. You can tell yourself "I can do better than that." Really? "Yeah, I think so." Listening to the radio or CDs exposes you to fantastic music as well as some that you just don't like.

What I've found is what I don't like is music without structure. Especially structure at the bar level. I'm OK with pieces that lack large structure. I don't care if a symphony is in 2,3,4 or 5 movements. But I get irritated when there is no apparent structural organization. I like Mozart's tidy 4 or 8 bar motifs. I like, (perhaps because I'm simple) tension and resolution. I like a good old fashion V7 chord resolving to the tonic. Structure is my friend. Lack of structure is harder to grab onto. It's less inviting and less compelling. It feels dissolute.

So, naturally, it becomes time for me to explore what I despise. And the truth is, even my favorite composers stretch the structure out of recognition. My quest is to understand why and in what ways. What is the order behind their chaos.

The first way I experiment with is simply extending a tension by another bar before the resolution. That's fine. Not too big of a stretch. Not too glaring. Doesn't really detach the audience from the end of your tether.

Then I began experimenting with vaster selections of non predictable structure. Some is acceptable as a graceful pasture for the mind to wander in. Any more than that, exceeds my patience and leads to the worst of all musical sins: boring the audience. I teeter back from the edge and decide that this is as far as I can go at this time.

So there.

No Man is an Island

Yes he is! He totally is. Every man is an island. Composers are on the tiniest island in the biggest sea. The better they develop their craft the further out they paddle. In some ways, this weblog is a message in a bottle. Thanks for the uncorking.

I've taken some time off for a few months because of good news. Here, in San Diego I put out a call for classical composers to get together to talk and drink beer or do what classical composers do. I got very few responses scattered over a broad swath of a broad county. Not quite critical mass. Too bad.

Then, one day I see a Craigslist post for a classical music group that gets together to perform on a monthly basis. "Wow, that's paydirt!" It was contact for the caswtaways. I had to check it out.

The group meeting is well attended: 25 or so zealots of classical and opera at a church venue just a few miles from my home. The acoustics are stunning. The meeting, cleverly labeled Operatifs, was better than I expected it to be. Outstanding performances and better yet-- appreciative ears.

So I have had the pleasure of unveiling 2 compositions that surprised me at their positive reception. The first a sonatina for Piano and violin, that utilized the gifts of my comrade Matthias von Herrath on violin. And the second a cappriccio in Dm. There is wine and comraderie. Its nice when people go out of there way to communicate their appreciation. At the last meeting there was even someone who understood what a diminished chord was. I devoutly wish anyone reading this will experience similar validation. Divinity!

So I've been working on my newest Cappriccio, the third of a 6 part series I am calling a hexachrome. This one is in Em. I addressed it in the last weblog. It has liberal use of diminished chords as both transition chords and as tension builders.

Narrative Composition

Every piece is a story. They have moments of tension and moments of release. I am working on a Narrative approach to composition where, much like a story, there is a conflict or obstacle that is introduced and it is only through the climax that the conflict is finally and fully resolved. Much as in any story, there are moments of partial resolution, but in some way, each early resolution is somewhat incomplete and simply facilitates the move toward a greater crisis towards the end.

This is a little abstract, and its a little ambitious, because in my world, music has to please. That is, it needs to have enough diversity, tension and predictability to satisfy. It must stimulate the audience and not annoy. It must challenge the listener and not up-end them. Finding the right balance is the challenge. And ultimately it can't make Mozart spill his cookies.

So there.

Ignorance is Bliss

I keep a notebook of chord progressions that "work". They all sound good and have a classical feel. They are also easy. They are 4 or 8 measures upon which I can build pieces in a flash. They are like floor-plans for a building. They are not compositions because until you string them up with the appropriate furnishings you can't abide in them. Furthermore, each represents just a segment of a piece. But upon any given segment, I can compose a theme that sets the direction of the piece.

What's surprising is how little I use the notebook. It's just not stimulating if I am not discovering or rediscovering. So it's more engaging to sit at the piano and craft new progressions (that ultimately, I know are old progressions). In essence, I veer away from progressions that are "perfected" to create those that are imperfect.

My notebook includes dozens of major progressions and dozens of minor progressions, all in the key of C. I needed a fixed anchor point so I don't recreate a progression, just transposed, and think it was new. This is the crux of my observation today. It is when we diverge from the known and the comfortable that we grow.

So I'm working on a sonata in E minor. Not a big stretch, this key. Em traditionally has one sharp if your scale uses a dominant 7th. So it would seem to fit under the hands well. Or does it? Not my hands. And really, since I have begun stringing everything together with diminished chords the idea of just a few flats and sharps goes out the window. But there is a bigger issue. Namely competence.

Every key has its strengths and weaknesses for the piano player. As we modulate through a piece we may go from comfort to discomfort. Sometimes this is a positive vex. It troubles us but we like the trouble. It becomes a challenge and an opportunity to witness our increasing dexterity as we practice the akward passage or run. As a composer, though, I am creating not performing. I am looking to get ideas out in as fluid a way as possible. When I encounter a hurdle of my own incompetence it shuts the process down.

In the Sound of Music, the mother superior tells the young novice, Maria: "whenever God closes a door he opens a window." This is true also of composing. When we encounter a block, our attempts to cope with it can sometimes make for creative solutions we would not have thought of had we not been so incompetent.

The Key of Em (which is oh so nice on my guitar), has this silly little B major as the V chord. Sure, probably comfortable for many, but not for me. The chord is easy enough, but when I want to arpeggiate down through the 3 inversions of the chord I have to stop and think. That is my shut down. I am no longer fluid, and my composing tempo has been dealt a blow.

So what window opens as this door shuts? Picture this: You are reaching a traditional I V I turn around. Here, that would be a E minor, B major, E minor. Not inventive, but comfortably traditional. So I am arppegiatting the turn around and finding that I can easily run through the inversions of the E minor chord as arppeggiated, but the B major-- a little more troublesome. So I freeze a bit and just arppeggiate on a single position of the B. Ultimately, I find this quite satisfying in its diversity. Two inversions working downward on the E minor and a single position on the B. The accident of my incompetence makes for richer complexity.























MP3 Sample

So in the end my incompetence is working for me. Rather than a more predictable arppeggio down 2 positions of Em and 2 positions of B, I get 2 of Em and 1 of B for each octave the arppeggio descends.

Stupidity rules!

Under my nails

There is only so much romanticising we can do about our music. When we compose we are, indeed, in that same space of mind as our 18th century predecessors. We may be staring at the keys of a 150 year old piano. We are solving the same problems they were working on. We may be experiencing a great deal of the thrill and frustration they experienced, but 5 minutes later, we are back in the real world. Our world. Modernity.

Everything we write is composed against a backdrop of our own moment in time. And I caution to add that for virtually all of us, that includes some degree of finacial struggle. It is always a bit disgraceful to me to come in from the yard where I may have been working on my car and sit right down at the piano, or guitar. There are traces of black grease under my nails. My piano hasn't earned this. Music should be vaunted and heavenly. I'm carrying the mudane over into the sublime.

But that is our backdrop. And consider this. If the world outside were already heavenly, music would provide little lift.

So I'm turning this bolt under the hood of my car. I'm using a wrench. And I realize that the wrench does not really lend a hand. It doesn't input any energy into the system. It just redirects energy and concentrates the force I put into turning the bolt. Really. You can try it for yourself. Set down a wrench on the fender of your car and see if it does anything without you. No it doesn't. It just sits there in its happy stupidity.

All the work done is done by us, but the wrench allows us to do so much more because it redistributes our energies.

So I'm jumping around through music structures and I find a nice surprise. This is one of those surprises that you've had before but they have escaped you because you haven't engrained them into your composing repertoire. I'm writing in Cm here. I Go from Cm to Ab then rather than jump to a new triad, I revamp the ab into a diminshed chord for its own measure. Right, so there's nothing at all about wrenches in their yet. I resolve the progression to the root (Cm) and foray off to the second half of this 8 bar romp.

In the second half of the passage the wrench comes in. We begin with an Fm in place of the Cm. We return to our Ab and Ab dim. But here we can torque more richness out of the Abdim by cramming a G augmented in with it each occupying only half a measure. The pattern more triumphantly resolves to the root of Cm.

So the pattern looks like this:

Cm | Ab | Abdim | Cm | Fm | Ab | Abdim Gaug | Cm

By the way, augnmented chords for me are like a cellphone in the hands of a monkey. I am clearly not so deft with them. I bang'em around and every now and then something comes out of it that sounds interesting. Thus, whenever I find a way to use one that actually works, I'm probably going to write about it. Perhaps some logic will emerge once I see a pattern in my observations.

So there.

The Forest for the Tree

Stephen Jay Gould was the emeritus professor at Harvard who pioneered the concept of "punctuated equilibrium". This idea postulates that evolution is not a steady progress of growth, but is actually a pattern of lengthy stability and punctuated only momentarily by brief periods of change. These plateaus of stability are lengthy and are the predominant pattern. It may be environmental changes or changes in food or predation that facilitate species diversification. It may be, although I'm not aware that he ever said this, that genetic mutations take a fixed period until they affect key parts of the gene code that would allow for viable transformation. It may be other factors we have not even considered. But at some point a species changes.

So a few weeks ago I upgraded my computer system. In the process of this evolution, I lost the address to this blog. I also finished my 4th Jazz CD (Sandcastles, on Red Raven Records, San Diego, CA) so I listened to virtually no classical music for a month. Well, today I found the address to this blog again and here we go!

Gould doesn't look at evolution as a line that runs from a lower life form to a more complex life form. He and Darwin reporyt evolution to be a branches and bushes. Thus, early hominids branched into co-occurring species, each with its own unique adaptations. Eventually, based on environmental challenges (and maybe social challenges) one species would seem to outlast the others.

Ultimately, it is our ears that decide which branch of our harmonic tree best fits a given composition. We have sections that are stable and essentially tell us what must come next. Then we reach nodes where we can branch into any of several directions. We try out different possibilities and allow survival of the fittest to prune off the less fruitful branches.

I exemplify with the venerable circle of 5ths. It's hard to find many classical compositions that don't at some point in the piece include a step through the circle of 5ths. It simply means we go from the root and then jump a 5th higher and we keep selectin chords by stepping up a 5th higher. In the key of C, the pattern is C G Dm A Em B.... Composers also know that the circle of 5ths is the converse of the circle of 4ths. We can use the same circle and run backwards through it by jumping by 4ths: C F Dm G Em A....

Once the pattern begins we are at a point on a branch that is unchanging. It is a straight run with no diversity. The predictability of the run is comforting to the ears of the listener and that allows them to recollect their wits before darting off in a new direction. But when we reach the end of this sprout we come to a decision node. To carry the circle of 4ths too far begins to create a transition in tonality that creates excessive ambiguity. This is a new branch point. It is my job as a composer to figure out which of the new branches is most fitting for the song at the moment.

Composition is in the branches. So I'm exploring some of these branches. Part of what separates us from the preceding hominids has been our capacity to communicate not just from person to person, but across the generations. We can pass information down. We don't always do so, however. I saw a show on Concrete 2 days ago. The recipe for the finest concrete was lost when the Roman Empire collapased and was not recreated for over 1000 years. Had it been recorded successfully or put into play without interruption the world would be a far different place. This special recipe allowed concrete to harden underwater allowing for bridges, canals and far more enduring and capable structures.

To maintain progress it makes sense to record our steps, so we don't need to recreate concrete again down the road. So here are some of the choices at the branching end of a circle pattern:

Stem.............................Branches

C F Dm G Em A :
.......................................F G
.......................................F Em Dm Bdim
.......................................Dm G
.......................................Dm Em F Abdim
.......................................F G Em Am Dm G G7

Examples of these are in the accompanying mp3file: trees

Most of these branches will resolve back to the tonic of C. Each, however, takes a different path and conveys a different feel.

Note that even while the core branch is unchanging in its chord pattern, there are a thousand choices in the way each is melodized or arpeggiated. This log seems to be mainly about song structure, because that's what I am working on at the moment. Song structure is what I think about; melodies I produce based on feel. In the end, the character of each composition derives from the melodic fabric draped over the structure. No matter how graceful your sofa's frame is, it is the upholstering that is the actual contact point for the eye and the body.

So there!

The Nautilus

A nautilus shell is an elegant image-- all polished up and halved for photographic depiction. Its uniformity of curvature is instantly comprehendable and mathematically pristine. It's been compared to the golden mean: that ancient aesthetician's concept of asymetrical balance. It's not a perfect circle, but it's a prefectly diminishing circle.

In my exploration I am trying to understand classical song structure, especially visualized as chord progressions. I don't take them from classical work. I just try out different patterns on the piano and write down those that sound classical. (When exploring I always work in the key of C. I can later transpose the progression, but by working within 1 key I avoid duplication.) My notebook of chord progressions is regularly expanding. I have sections for main themes, for turn-arounds, and for endings. I also have a section called: nexts. But I consider them all from a fixed system of beats. Each chord gets 1 measure; Or each chord gets half a measure. It makes for nice uniform music. It makes for music that is somewhat pedictable. Oops.

I think music must always strike the optimum balance between predictable and unpredictable. It should have comfort and diversity. If it is holding one variable constant, another should be transforming. The same is true of all art. It should form a span from the aesthetic to the progressive. It should push at the edges. If it is too far out it will be dismissed as scribble; If it is too far in it will be dismissed as prosaic. When it completes an arc from the expected to the unexpected, the audience can stand on a familiar shore and be provided a glimpse out into the intriguing mist.

I compose upon a chord substrate. I generate a chordal pattern that conveys a feeling that suits the current point. Upon that I can build the melodic phrases that further articulate the point. But the chords are commonly one measure per chord.

Time to change.

Taking a hint from the nautilus shell opens up a multitude of pages in my notebook. More progressions defined by more rapidly changing patterns. For now they are blank pages. Rather than use a full measure of a chord structure, moments of curvature may be useful. So I am exploring shifting from 4 beats of a chord to 2 beats each of 2 chords, and on to 1 beat each of 4 more chords. How often should this be done? I must experiment to answer. Certainly, not too often. It must sound right. Perhaps I will uncover a few reliable approaches that expand my choices and fill in some blank pages.

Morning Composition Jan 2006

Friday. I'm waiting for the Sudafed and Advil to kick in and rid me of this headache.
Don't want to think. Just want to compose.
No techniques in mind.
Just starting in Dm and writing what the piece seems to call for next.
It's about 4 minutes long.

String Rhapsody