BEDA Day 30: It's Over!

Well, this is it. BEDA is officially over with this post, #30.

It's been a fun ride, and, although it was a bit more than I'm able to do permanently, I like how engaged this processes has kept me with my own music, life, and readers.

Thanks to Oby for the most comments, and to Candy for helping me find out about BEDA.

As a final flourish, here is a list of every BEDA post topic I've covered, from insightful to insignificant: (They are linked for your convenience.)

Day 30: It's Over!

Day 29: BEDA Fizzling Out, but that's okay

Day 28: A short one

Day 27: Readings and Weather

Day 26: More of Me

Day 25: Recital Season

Day 24: Music Notation and Production Software

Day 23: Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns

Day 22: Free Public Domain Classical Sheet Music

Day 21: What Composers Talk About by Kyle Gann

Day 20: Reich's Double Sextet Awarded the Puliter Prize

Day 19: Death and Taxes

Day 18: Harmony II Review Materials, Now with Formal Analyses!

Day 17: New Music Bakesale

Day 16: Melodyhound

Day 15: Darwin Analysis

Day 14: Signed, Sealed & Delivered

Music Appetizer Week #7 and BEDA Day 13: Generations

Day 12: Recordings

Day 11: Darwin and Minimalism

Day 10: Pandora

Day 9: Sarah Watkins

Day 8: Jazz Analysis

Day 7: Jeff Pressing on the Application of Set Theory Analysis to Jazz

Day 6: Bartok Piano Music

Day 5: Bad Habit Ultimate

Day 4: Django Reinhardt

Day 3: Riley's in C

Day 2: Richard Mills and String Quartets

(Day 1): to atone for the past few weeks

BEDA Day 29: BEDA Fizzling Out, but that's okay.

Another day comes to an end, and I am finally (nearly) over my cold. But, illness or no, I will be teaching my Harmony II final class session tomorrow morning.

This illness came at a very poor time. I hope my classes (taking and teaching) turn out alright in the end. (They always have so far!)

Hmm... what's something interesting?

I had a great and unexpected conversation tonight. That's always great. And unexpected.

Want something more interesting? How about this?

BEDA Day 28: A short one

Sorry/You're welcome, readers. This will one will be very short.

I'm home from school today from illness. Sore throat, etc., nothing major but an impediment nonetheless.

One update: Last night's orchestral reading at CUA went very well, and I got some very nice comments on my work. I'll post the recording as soon as I get it.

BEDA Day 27: Readings and Weather

My string orchestra work honoring Charles Darwin (Generations) will be read tonight by the CUA Orchestra. As soon as the recording comes in, I'll show it off!

Monday, April 27, 2009
7-9pm
JPH Rehearsal Hall
CUA


In the meantime, I'm working on an exciting paper on guitarist Django Reinhardt's classical appropriations. He arranged Franz Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 and Edvard Grieg's Norwegian Dance No. 2 for jazz ensembles. It's very interesting to explore how Reinhardt used and changed these works, as an amazingly talented yet illiterate musician.

Also, I'm struggling with allergies and an early hot spell (over 90 degrees!). Yipes!

BEDA Day 26: More of Me

Just a quick note before I rush off to this concert...

The CUA Women's Chorus, which commissioned my carol Christmas on the Plains for their 2008 Winter concert, will again be performing one of my works tonight. They have worked up a two-part women's chorus version of the "Reflection Duet" from my music The Eden Diaries, with stage action and everything.

This is the same work that has, since its creation in 2007, been featured at venues such as Ward Hall (the premiere), the Kennedy Center (a concert reading), the John Duffy Composers Institute, and the 2009 CMS Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference.

I'm excited to hear (and especially see) it again this evening! The highlight of the evening is Mother Blood, a choral suite extracted from the 2005 opera The Furies by my teacher and advisor Andrew Simpson.

CUA Women's Chorus Spring Concert, Ward Hall
Sunday, April 26, 2009, at 7:30pm
(free admission)

BEDA Day 25: Recital Season

For lack of something better to post, here is an ode to Spring Recital Season at CUA:
(10 points to the first person who can name this recent yet obscure poetic form!)

'Midst singers most melodious
And instruments harmonious,
Forgetting all that's odious
In chambers most commodious,
Our solemn congregation
Surveys this celebration
Of plain procrastination
To preface graduation.
Their families amusing
And absent friends excusing
While faculty are snoozing -
All their pow'r exerting
For pleasures of diverting.
Everyone only comes for all the free food.

BEDA Day 24: Music Notation and Production Software

Here are some programs you might find useful, either for notating sheet music or producing audio. This list isn't particularly ground-breaking or complete, but I wish I had known about all of this software 10 years ago.

Music Notation - for creating printed music (MUS, PDF, etc.)

I use Finale 2007, about to upgrade to 2009. It's very powerful and complete, but pretty difficult to master.

Sibelius is the other main notation software. I hear it's more intuitive and easier to learn than Finale, yet has all the capabilities. They're both rather expensive.

Before college, I used NoteWorthy Composer, which is a cheap, simple alternative. This is okay for quick/smaller projects that don't require an excellent visual layout. (Don't use it for professional work or compositions, but maybe for small classroom examples.)

I have also heard that the open source (free) engraving software Lilypond creates beautiful music, but the input method using ASCII is something text-based with which I am unfamiliar.


Music Production - for creating and editing audio (WAV, MP3, etc.)

Garage Band (Mac only) is probably the easiest way to record and edit audio for home or semi-professional music production.

operationgadget.com has a 5-year old but pretty good article that lists a handful of alternatives.

You may also be interested in Audacity, which is a free, open source audio editing and recording program. It's easy to use and quick; I like it a lot.

For serious audio editing, you can get a digital audio interface such as ProTools, Logic, Cubase, or Reason. These programs are expensive and complicated, but they can do everything: record, edit, and synthesize sounds, use MIDI data, and more.

There are other crazy programs like MAX/MSP that fascinate me, and about which I know nothing.

BEDA Day 22: Free Public Domain Classical Sheet Music

When I'm looking for a score online, I usually turn to Classical Scores Library, which contains 12,366 scores in 213,332 pages. This service, like Naxos Music Library, is available only by paid individual subscription or through university music libraries (including CUA).

But what if you're neither a student nor willing to pay for your public domain music needs? Here are a few free and legal solutions:

1.) IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library

2.) Mutopia

3.) MuseData


- - -

1.) The IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library claims 14,898 works and 28,244 individual scores. Their selection looks quite impressive and useful, and the "Random Page" link on the top left provides a promising selection.

This should be your first stop. But be warned: as an online site based in Canada, IMSLP does offer some scores that are still under copyright in the US, while out of copyright elsewhere. This means that it's NOT legal for someone in the US to download these.

2.) Mutopia hosts 1,541 scores. Their site is noticeably harder to navigate, yet they do offer some benefits. These include downloadable PDF scores typeset using the beautiful, open source Lilypond engraving tool, as well as preview score snippets and (usually) MIDI files.

3.) MuseData, sponsored by Stanford University's Center for Computer-Assisted Research in the Humanities, focuses on "music composed in Europe roughly between 1700 and 1825." They have PDF scores by Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Vivaldi only, as well as MIDI files of a handful of others.

Note: This site requires registration and acceptance of a user agreement, making it that much less useful. But hey, who can complain about free, legal sheet music?

I hope this post was good for you. It was good for me. :)

BEDA Day 21: What Composers Talk About by Kyle Gann

Here is an interesting blog post by composer and prolific writer-in-various-capacities Kyle Gann. He provides an interesting essay on the dilemma of self-identifying and speaking about one's own work, vision, and life as a composer. Many of his questions really resonated with me.

Gann came to CUA for a composition master class and discussion as part of the Composition Division's Visiting Composers Series in late 2007. I'll admit that I hadn't heard of him before and didn't yet realize his importance as a composer and music critic. Because of this, I listened to him politely evangelize for microtonal tuning and the "Downtown scene" for nearly an hour, feeling alternatingly intrigued, skeptical, fascinated, and unsure. Would I have put more stock in what he said had I known that he was a widely-published and respected author and composer, and not just my advisor's artsy theatre colleague's slightly eccentic artsy new-music friend?

In some regards, this is similar to approaching any new composer's body of works. Because I was supposed to like William Bolcom's music before I heard it, I fell absolutely in love with his opera A View from the Bridge when I saw it in DC. Would I have felt the same if I had instead heard his Violin Concerto without the name attached?

Similarly in undergrad, I had absolutely no interest in the music of Arnold Schoenberg, let alone his more austere adherent Anton Webern, because of a smattering of offhand comments by professors and fellow clueless students that their music was "kind of hard to listen to." Now that I possess the tools to begin understanding their works, I regret allowing those inherited aesthetic barriers (which we all share to some degree) to become my first experience of certain composers' work, even before hearing the music itself.

I'm not yet ready to move on over to the microtonalist camp, possibly because I haven't experienced enough of the repertoire to get a handle on it or form an opinion about it. But I'm at least more open to the concept, having learned a little about Kyle Gann and passively followed his blog for over a year now. When I consider my own limitations in enjoying and appreciating contemporary music, despite my fairly catholic (lowercase) acceptance of various styles and artistic aims, it's no wonder that contemporary composers often feel the need to fight for loyalty or attention in the average concert-goer.

But I can't tell which way the New Music Public Opinion pendulum is swinging.

BEDA Day 20: Reich's Double Sextet Awarded the Pulitzer Prize

Just over two hours ago, Double Sextet by Steve Reich was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The work premiered March 26, 2008, in Richmond, VA, and was commissioned by eighth blackbird.

Here is a Nonesuch article on the April 17 New York premiere at Carnegie Hall that includes links to many other reviews. I especially like the writing of exacting yet eminently articulate Washington Post reviewer Anne Midgette.

You can also visit Reich's Wiki and Boosey & Hawkes pages.


Other finalists were Don Byron's 7 Etudes for Solo Piano (see his Wiki) and Harold Meltzer's Brion (and his Wiki).

BEDA Day 19: Death and Taxes

Again something not musical, but very interesting nonetheless:

Death and Taxes gives an estimated, proportional graphic representation of where our federal tax dollars go. This of course includes only discretionary spending. Now, I'm by no means anti-government, but I do try to live sort of frugally and, like many people, would like the government to attempt to follow suit.

It's interesting to note that, of $1,182 billion of discretionary spending (wow!), nearly $705 billion of that is going to the Department of Defense or the "Global War on Terror" (not including Dept. of Homeland Security, etc.), leaving $477 billion for the rest of the budget.

The Departments of Health & Human Services ($68 bil), Transportation ($63 bil), Education ($59 bil) form the next largest portions.

Wow. And the NEA gets $128 million this year. Nice...

BEDA Day 18: Harmony II Materials, Now with Formal Analyses!

Here's what I've done today. All day.

Visit my website for some downloadable materials I've created to prepare my Harmony II students for their second Midterm exam.

Here's the URL:
http://www.kylegullings.com/harmony-ii-resources.php

Enjoy!

BEDA Day 17: New Music Bakesale

Well, it's BEDA Day #17, and April 17th. That means I'm on par, so far!

I know, I know, it's supposed to be New Music Appetizer Friday, but 1.) I have Ultimate in 20 minutes, 2.) the weather is too nice outside to spend too much time on this, and 3.) this is awesome:

Courtesy of the boundless connections of music critic and blogger Alex Ross, check out the New Music Bakesale happening this evening in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of NYC. A $15 cover charge buys access to more than ten ensembles playing four hours of contemporary classical music, two drinks, and a whole host of baked goods for sale.

What a great idea for a new music event! Maybe SCI at CUA can organize a smaller version of this next year. Maybe in conjunction with someone's thesis or degree recital. Maybe someone is reading my blog right now who has ideas about that and/or a recital on the horizon. Hmmm...


(P.S. - See? Wasn't that cooler than the Harmony class sample chorales I was going to slap up here to meet my quota? Enjoy.)

BEDA Day 16: Melodyhound

A brief post after a long night:

When you get a chance, spend a few minutes at this charming site. Melodyhound.com offers the ability to search for music by melody. You can enter notes on their Flash keyboard, by MIDI keyboard, or even humming/singing it!

Searches return notated examples of melodies with titles and authors, or, if you search the web, a dazzling array of links to MIDI files found scattered online of the very piece you've sought!

They cover folk, popular, classical, national anthems, etc., and are getting more comprehensive by the day. They are a branch of Musipedia, the Open Music Encyclopedia (inspired by Wikipedia), so much of the content is user-created.

Also, the music engraving font is from Lilypond, an open source engraving tool used by many, including some working on Musopen's promising but fledgling Public Domain Music Theory Textbook (mentioned on my website). Be on the lookout for a future BEDA post about this great project.

Check it out!

Beda Day 15: Darwin Analysis

Here is an informal but lengthy analysis of my work Generations, which will be read Monday, April 27 by the CUA Orchestra. Two days ago I posted links to the MP3 audio and the PDF score of the work, which you may find useful.

I intend for this analysis to be interesting and useful to theorists, general musicians, and non-musicians alike. Any successful analysis aims to afford the reader a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the work being experienced.


Generations (2009)
a 5-minute work for string orchestra
by Kyle Gullings

Introduction

This composition, written in three days, is a tribute to the life and work of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist credited with developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Seeking to represent the idea of evolution musically, I explored two seemingly unrelated techniques - minimalism and twelve-tone music (dodecaphony) - in three distinct sections. The form is likely ABC but could also be seen as an ABA' form.


Section One ("Joyous, exacting") [0:00, page 1]

The opening motive is simple, consisting of a descending C Major triad in quarter notes presented in the violas. There is some ambiguity already, though, as this three-beat pattern plays over the notated 4/4 meter. The second violins join the violas in unison, followed by a gradual accumulation of instruments in other registers and metrical placements, leading to a simple layering of the original motive.

Soon, deviations (mutations?) appear in which certain notes are sustained for many beats before returning to the quarter-note rhythm. Then on page 4-5 the motive is heard in augmentation and diminution (twice as slow and twice as fast). Further rhythmic deviations appear, including triplets and dotted eighth/sixteenth figures, creating an active, complex texture of cross-rhythms.

The entire first section consists of only three chords: C Major, e minor, and G Major. Just like the rhythms discussed earlier, the harmonies shift gradually from one to the next. By measure 32 (page 6/Letter B), each instrument has shifted from C Major to an e minor chord (by replacing the C with a B).

This shift really begins, however, back in measure 24 (page 4) in the Violin II-A part, where C becomes B, creating a CM7 chord. Other instruments gradually follow suit until e minor prevails at page 6. A similar process is then followed to proceed to G Major, beginning at measure 41 (page 7) in the Violin I-B part, and finally taking over at measure 47 (page 9/Letter C).


Section Two ("Molto rubato, with intensity") [1:41, page 13]

My self-imposed challenges in the middle section were two-fold: 1) hold the listener's interest using only a single rhythmic value, and 2) create a twelve-tone section that sounds as traditionally beautiful as possible.

Because I was writing for the string section alone and had no limitations of breath support or note duration, I chose to use only whole notes (and tied notes), making this movement quite slow (as middle sections often are). It also features exactly four voices in a chorale-like texture.

I then created my twelve-tone row. (This "row" is a presentation of all twelve chromatic pitches of the octave, in a fixed order in time. Essentially, I used every note name on the piano - C, C#, etc. - without repeating any.) I started with my initial motive: G-E-C (the C Major triad from the opening). I made these three pitches the first, fifth, and ninth notes in my row - or, they are each the first note of a four-note group. I then chose three other notes for each group that could combine to form a relatively pleasing-sounding seventh chord.

After these three chords were determined, I decided that, rather than move directly to the new chord, I would to move only one voice at a time until the following chord was reached. I then chose the order in which voices would move based on the most pleasing sound.

Whenever I came upon a particularly consonant or pleasing chord, I chose to extend its value to two full measures and add a brief crescendo to it for contrast. (Alas, these crescendi do not play a larger structural role in the row.)

After all three chords had been presented, I felt I still had more to say with this material. I then repeated this process with the same chords but different voice-leading (a different order of which voices move when), creating what sounds like a different approach to essentially the same musical idea.

The final chord presented is a fully-diminished leading-tone seventh chord (see measure 87/end of page 15), a dissonant or unstable chord that very much wants to lead somewhere else. I used this tension to propel the piece into the final section.


Section Three ("Spirited, metronomic") [3:20, page 16]

Beginning with the original-tempo viola motive at measure 88 (page 16), a steady eighth note pulse drives through the end of the work alongside a few longer and shorter rhythmic values added for contrast. Perhaps surprisingly, these closing 90 seconds present only a single iteration of a new twelve-tone row: [C D E F G Bb Ab Gb A B C# D#].

Like the harmonies from the first section, this tone row unfolds very gradually, adding one new pitch only every four to five measures. The clearest examples of this additive process are the motoric trading-off figures of the Violin I's (A & B), the Violas (1 & 2), and the Cellos (1 & 2).

As the section progresses and new pitches are added, the rhythmic content becomes more active and syncopated, again calling to mind the opening section. Pizzicato and tremolo techniques help bring the piece to its climax before the final phrase.

The final note of the row, D#, is heard only once - as the final pitch of the work. By reserving this one note until the last moment, I aimed to provide a measure of completion to the section and the work as a whole.


Conclusion

Despite its length, I hope the above discussion was neither boring nor confusing. Above all, I hope that this analysis - or portions of it - can provide you with another angle into listening to my work and (hopefully) coming to appreciate it by understanding its inner workings and musical goals. I don't know if Darwin would appreciate it as much as today's audience, but maybe he could accept that musical tastes and techniques have continued to evolve as well.

Once more, here is the link to my original post on Generations, as well as the MP3 audio and the PDF score. Thank you for your time!

BEDA Day 14: Signed, Sealed & Delivered

DC-area Composers: If you need scores bound and/or copied, consider this:

Today I was going to blog a brief analysis of my Darwin tribute piece, Generations (see BEDA Day 13). Instead, I'd like to give a brief review of a business.

While on my way to FedEx Office downtown (formerly FedEx/Kinko's) to have my 11"x17" full score for Generations spiral bound, I walked by a small and relatively new shop two blocks from my house.

Signed, Sealed & Delivered is a sign and copy center located at 3746 10th Street NE in Washington, DC. For the locals, this is right next door to the Cardinal's Nest, about 3 blocks from campus.

I had an oversized score spiral bound, which cost $4.50 - comparable to FedEx Office, but a lot closer to CUA. Also, the staff was very helpful and friendly, and they even stayed 10 minutes past closing to help me. I will definitely visit them again.

As a bonus, I discovered that Signed, Sealed & Delivered is operated by The Arc of DC, an organization that aids mentally challenged individuals and their families by providing them with jobs and other support. So not only is this a great place to bring your business, it's also good for the community.

If you have any sign/copying/binding/trophy/etc. needs in the Brookland area, I hope you'll look them up and see what they have to offer. Thanks!

New Music Appetizer Week #7 and BEDA Day 13: Generations

Generations (score link working now)
MP3
PDF

Can you believe it? I've been so busy with BEDA (among other non-blog tasks, of course) that this is only Week #7 of my New Music Appetizer!

Hopefully this morsel will be worth the wait.

Here, finally, is my MIDI mock-up of Generations, a 5-minute string orchestra piece written in honor of Charles Darwin, born February 12, 1809 - that's 200 years ago this past February!

Perhaps I'll self-analyze the piece in some detail in tomorrow's post. Suffice it to say that the work combined minimalism and a 12-pitch tone row, though not subjected to any row permutations. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! It's sort of a stylistic detour for me.

Note: Thanks to the wonders of MIDI, some dynamics and articulations are naturally not represented, but this does the trick... for an Appetizer at least.

BEDA Day 12: Recordings

I've noticed in the past few months that, although my compositional tools have certainly become more numerous and well-defined since my undergraduate study, I have very few audio recordings of my own music of which I am truly proud.

There are the two John Duffy Composers Institute piano-vocal scenes, and the CUA orchestral reading of my re-orchestrated "Scene 6: The Fall" from The Eden Diaries. Then there are of course one or two MIDI-generated works that don't require well-placed microphones, but I'm still a newbie at the electronica game.

That's not to say that I haven't had some fantastic performances of works, because I have. In the past three years I've been blessed to have others perform for me numerous songs, a smattering of chamber pieces, and an entire one-act musical. These performers have done very good work, yet some factor or another - brick walls, empty space, distant mics, hot snare drums, etc. - has always tainted the recording quality.

I have made it a goal to actively generate more high-quality recordings of my compositions in the next one or two years, so I have actually have something to show potential hiring committees in the not-too-distant future. Who knows, I may even be kind enough to post them on my website for the public to experience! :)

Tomorrow, expect a MIDI rendition of that Darwin string orchestra work, Generations. For now, bedtime.

BEDA Day 11: Darwin and Minimalism

Well, this brief string orchestra piece is coming along nicely. It's the first time I've attempted a minimalist work, which combines the freedom of producing not-bad sounding music at four times my normal pace with the nagging feeling that maybe I didn't put enough thought into this one.

Well, you be the judge... when I post the bad MIDI version in a couple of days.

The work is called Generations, and it is in honor of Charles Darwin, who celebrated his 200th birthday this past February (the same exact day as Abraham Lincoln, if you can believe it!). The work's goal is to take a very basic motive (an arpeggiated C major chord) and gradually shape it into a complex, messy, beautiful multi-layered texture. Kind of like evolution, but less cool. There are actually three sections to the work now, each unique and interesting for very different reasons.

While you're waiting for this masterpiece, you can also visit Candy's blog, Thoughts of Candy, or her website (which also has a blog!). She is the person responsible for my recent outpouring of BEDA posts, which I joined on a whim to be in solidarity with Candy, and to use as another reason to avoid the little bit of homework I have this Easter break.

BEDA Day 10: Pandora

I was really hoping to have an excerpt of my latest project prepared for today's post, but alas, Darwin proves elusive. I'll have something by Monday or earlier.

In the meantime...

Most everyone by now has at least heard of if not enjoyed the awesomeness that is Pandora, the free online radio service that finds you music you like based on your preferences. What not everyone seems to know is that, in addition to its impressive breadth and quality of popular music of seemingly infinite genres and subgenres, Pandora also has a killer selection of classical music from Bach right up to Bolcom and more.

I haven't yet had the chance to check it's pre-Baroque selection. Anyone familiar?

Definitely check out the classical section when you get a chance. You may find that you like Boulez and his aesthetic cohorts more than you thought.