A photo depicting part of a piano, for illustrative purposes.
I’ve returned for the moment to the piano-obsession that ate up about everything from, say, 2nd grade to my early 20s. Nice feeling on friendlier terms with the keys, my old — sometimes estranged — pals. Puts me in much jazzier, more syncopated territory.
Below is some of my sculpture work from the 90s, including Birthday, Cloverleaf Interchange, Hate Tank, Projector, Seeing/Peeing, and Chartered Chicken.
… an unbelievably huge project. Took some time out to work on some short pieces, mess about with new plugins, transcribe a John Williams score by ear, work on a couple of commercial things, convert some sample libraries to Kontakt, and really organize my computer world with redundant backups, etc. But the symphony is parked where I left it, ready to delve back in. All those little black dots.
It’s been interesting to rub up against the classical music world, where the bias against symphonic mockups is strong and seemingly nearly implacable — which I think is an entirely valid position for a serious classical musician to take, but one that ironically runs completely counter to the situation of the composer, who, though worshipful and very solicitous of these amazing musicians with all their training and capacity for rich, beautiful tone and beautiful expression, must also view them as a means to an end, the medium through which his/her music is or may one day be played. And it’s not the only possible way anymore, at least to a certain extent. So while the composer would like musicians to be interested in his/her piece from the mockup, s/he’s also obliged to accept the fact that to many musicians, music in the form of a mockup recording is almost not music at all … even if the mockup may be so good that if the musician weren’t tipped off that samples were used, s/he might not realize it. (Not that anyone would mistake a mockup for the NY Phil.)
So in a sense, many musicians aren’t able to see past themselves, but hear music produced without live musicians as something like a book full of blank pages, which of course it isn’t. It’s in the musician’s nature to define music as something requiring a live musician’s participation. Which traditionally is true.
Nor by the same token can composers who rely on mockups see past themselves and their own need simply to hear their music performed, by hook or by crook. It’s in the composer’s interest to think of his/her music as something that exists the moment they write it down, play it on a piano, hum it, or mock it up using samples. Which is literally true. But if a composer wants people to hear his/her mockup, s/he finds a much more receptive audience with non-musicians than with the musicians who’ve actually committed themselves and their careers to the genre of music the piece represents. And you can’t blame them.
It’s all in the interrelationship.
It’s amazing to see how much more excited musicians get when the see the notes on the page. Suddenly it’s become music, as if emerging from the outer fog. And so it goes, this huge process of getting it all down on paper. Seemngly endless, but completely necessary, and the first big step toward getting the piece played. Quite a thing. And that’s the big goal, because I know it’s going to sound amazing when a conductor and real musicians get involved with it. I honestly can’t imagine anything more exciting. And at that point, facing facts, it’ll be like the piece has suddenly emerged from the outer fog for me as well. Full circle.
A short little prelude track I put together as a recreation in different instruments of an electronica piece I made a couple of days previous. Vienna Solo Strings and Orchestral Strings, EWQL Symphonic Orchestral Gold Pro XP, EWQL StormDrum.
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The novel is The Sheriff of Yrnameer, by my friend Michael Rubens, and published by Pantheon/Random House. It’s a wonderful book, sharp, inventive, funny, and entertaining throughout — available here. I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t become a film.
You’ll find “me” on p. 181 measuring the hero for a coffin.
Spent about a week in LA where I met some great — nay, fantastic — people in and out of the film biz. Being around that total commitment is really refreshing and energizing.
