Welcome to my blog

I have created this site in order to provide performers, listeners and composers with a description of a composer's experiences with the creative process. The posts will provide discussions of the inspirations, challenges, and successes of a composer from the inception of the piece to the culmination in performance. I will provide a link to where you can see and hear the works in progress. Comments and questions are always welcomed. They will not posted unless you grant me permission.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Funtasies Movement 4

I have completed the last movement of Funtasies and I am pleased with the results. As my previous post indicated, it was not always smooth sailing.  I began to realize part way through the movement that what I was thinking was writer's block, was just the nature of composing some of the time. I have written some compositions that seem to come very easily and other times, composing comes very slowly, bit by bit until the composition begins to take shape. I realized I just needed to be patient and let the ideas come at their own pace. There were days when I would compose for an hour and get only two to four measures written. But those measures were good and they suggested where to go next and gradually the movement was completed.

The movement is called "Teasing" and is in a modified Rondo form ABACBA. The teasing occurs in many different ways. The first appearance is the way the movement seems to stop and start as if promising a longer line, but not delivering. Measures 14-18 deliver the longer line, however the syncopation still interrupts its flow. Measure 19-32 is a transition section that is filled with imitation, syncopation and chromaticism that keeps the teasing going.

M. 33 begins the B section. The left hand of the piano plays a syncopated idea consisting of wide intervals and frequent rests. The right hand inserts a jeering four note motive. The saxophone plays a melodic idea centered around a descending minor third, the universal teasing chant interval. Some of the roles are reversed at m. 41. From M 47 to 60, the ideas develop and introduce a triplet figure that represents laughing. M 61-75 is a return of the A Section. From M 75-88, the transition section occurs once more but this time with more of the laughing triplets.

M 88 begins the C section in 7/8. I feel this as a chase scene, as if a game of tag is being played. It builds in intensity all the way to M 115 before subsiding into a return of the B section at M 118. M 146 brings back the final A section which morphs into a coda at a faster tempo. The ending continues the teasing by avoiding a strong cadence with deceptive chords and melodic lines of vague tonality/modality.

A lot of the programmatic aspects of the movement must have been happening subconsciously while I was composing the piece, but it wasn't until I was nearing completion, that I was aware of how perfectly the musical ideas present different kinds of teasing.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/funtasies_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Writer's Block

Hi everyone. I wrote this for my Writing for Fun" group that meets at the Cottonwood Library and thought I'd post it on my blog as others might find something of value in it.

Dr. B

Writer's Block


Most of us have experienced it. I am experiencing it now in both my music composition and in trying to come up with a topic to write about for this week’s writing group. I experience it every time I sit down to write a new composition. With over three hundred and fifty compositions to my credit, I wonder how I am ever going to write something new.
            New! That seems to be the key word. Here is a definition I found at dictionary.com regarding creativity:
Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
How does a creative artist constantly transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.? It seems like an impossible task.
            I think that “new” is overrated. All the arts went through a period during the second half of the twentieth century where newness was exalted just because it was new, rather than for a work of art’s quality. As Robert Ehle states in his article From Sound To Silence: The Classical Tradition and the Avant-Garde published in the March 1979 Music Educators Journal, “the quest for new ideas without old associations has led to the abandonment of music as sound and the emphasis on music as pure idea.”
An example of music as pure idea would be John Cage’s “4:33” where a pianist comes on stage and sits at a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and does nothing. The idea of the composition is that the sounds in the room are the music.
In the world of theatre, consider Samuel Beckett’s play Breath. Breath is an unusually terse work. Its length can be estimated from Beckett's detailed instructions in the script to be about 25 seconds. It consists of the sound of “an instant of recorded vagitus” (a birth-cry), followed by an amplified recording of somebody slowly inhaling and exhaling accompanied by an increase and decrease in the intensity of the light. There is then a second identical cry, and the piece ends. No people are seen on stage, but Beckett states that it should be "littered with miscellaneous rubbish." He did specify however that there were to be “no verticals”, the rubbish was to be “all scattered and lying.”
The visual arts were not exempt for the newness craze. There are many examples of abstract art that consists of a line or two on a white canvas. I think I’ll create a painting with nothing but a white canvas and call it a painting of a polar bear sitting on an iceberg during a blizzard.
So what is it that creative artists really do? Many years ago, I attended a lecture on jazz trombone playing at the Eastern Trombone Conference. The lecturer described trombone styles as falling into three categories, preservers, innovators, and refiners.
 Preservers are those people who create by copying and already existing style. For example, if I wrote a composition of my own using the tonal language and contrapuntal techniques that Bach used in the early eighteenth century, I would be considered a preserver of a bygone era.
Innovators are those people that try to do something that was never done before. I believe that innovators are very necessary, otherwise we would never move in a forward direction. However, not all innovation is good and only time will be able to separate the good from the bad.
Refiners are my favorite creative people. Refiners take what has come before them and what is new and put those two together in a manner that incorporates the artist’s own personal vision. They take what has stood the test of time, combine it with fresh ideas, and come up with a personal statement that is modern. They do not reward newness just because it is new. Rather, they discriminately filter the new to see if it has practical applications.
With my musical compositions, I feel that I am a refiner. So when I sit down to compose, I’m using my favorite techniques and sounds that have stood the test of time and try to put them together in a new and fresh way. Sometimes I consciously use music I have written before and give it a new setting; new instrumentation, add a section and/or take away a section. Sometimes I borrow from myself without even knowing it.
For example, I am currently writing a composition for tenor saxophone and piano. After working on a part of it, my wife said to me, what are you doing with “Pinocchio”, a composition that I wrote in 2001 and that will be choreographed and performed at the Festival at Sandpoint in Idaho in August. I replied, “That is my tenor saxophone composition, not Pinocchio.” But there is a section in the saxophone piece that sounds like a section of Pinocchio! I must have had Pinocchio on my mind and borrowed subconsciously from myself.
In conclusion, I believe that to be creative doesn’t mean that one always needs to do something totally new, something that has never been done before. Creativity means taking one's craft and putting things together in a manner that is unique to the artist. Many different things can inspire the artist to create, but if one sets out each time to create something totally new in the artist’s field, one can easily experience a block. I guess I solved my “writer’s block” for this week’s writing group as I wrote this essay. I hope that this creativity will carry over into my musical compositions.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Funtasies Movement 3 and Revision to 1 & 2

The purpose of the blog is not only to describe what I'm doing with each composition, but also to provide insights to the compositional process and that often means sharing what does not work as well as what does. Often, when I am working on a multi-movement composition, what seems to work when I create the movement needs some minor revisions to work within the context of the entire composition. Such is the case with the first two movements of Funtasies.

First of all, I revised the title of the composition to reflect the fact that the composition will be used on a CD of Sonatas for Saxophone and Piano. As I mentioned in my first post on this composition, it is in a loose sonata form, but I wanted the title to contain the word "sonata"so it is now called Sonata "Funtasies" for Tenor Saxophone and Piano. The other thing I did was to take all the altissimo register saxophone parts down an octive and put optional 8va on them. I still would like the altissimo register in those spots, but in case a saxophonist has not yet mastered the altissimo register, the person can still play the piece. My indications preserve the musical line by taking phrases down an octave instead of just the high notes. I made these changes in my final version so they do not appear in the individual movements that are posted.

When listening to the first movement in the context of the other three movements, I realized that the left hand of the piano was too repetitious at M. 54 - 65. I changed some of the rhythms and pitches to create more interest.

I was planning a slow movement as part of Funtasies, and worked on that quite a bit, however, it did seem to fit into the spirit of the composition. It is difficult to make a slow movement sound like fun as the tempo seems to suggest a more serious emotion. I thought of calling in "Reveries" where one can conceive of reflecting on fun times, but I was still not satisfied with that. Instead, I took the 2nd movement, that was already very legato, and slowed the tempo from quarter = 200 to quarter = 176. This actually made the movement more whimsical and provided the needed contrast.

Both of these revised movements are posted along with the originals, so that you can compare the two versions.

Movement 3 "Witty" is in a scherzo style. The melody and harmony are based on thirds but are not in any clear key because the thirds will freely vary between major and minor creating an atonal quality. Sometimes the thirds outline an augmented triad (all major thirds) or a diminished 7th chord (all minor thirds). There is also chromatic passages that sound almost 12 tone because of the lack of repetition of pitch. With this being said, there are frequent places where tonality is briefly established to contain the atonality. Contrast between staccato and legato is another way the movement is witty.

The last movement "Teasing" will be in a rondo form to close out the Sonata.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/funtasies_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Funtasies Movement 2

The second movement is now called "Whimsical" instead of "Innocent" as originally planned.  The use of the 5/4 meter and the playfulness of the lines makes the movement more whimsical than innocent.

This movement was almost complete when I was writing "Funtasies" for clarinet and piano so the transition to tenor saxophone and piano was not difficult. The form of the movement is ABA'. I added a eight measures to the B section as I felt it climaxed too soon, otherwise it is similar in form to the Kaleidoscope duet for flute and clarinet. The A sections are more complex than its flute and clarinet cousin due to the addition of another line in the left hand of the piano and for harmony. Parts of the B section also have added lines and harmony.

Measure 36 ushers in the B section. I particularly like how the phrases start diatonic and end up chromatic. Each phrase adds tension as they lead up to the climax at measures 65 and 66 where the instruments burst out into uncontrolled laughter.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/funtasies_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Monday, June 4, 2012

Funtasies

I am commissioned to compose a piece for Jeffrey Kyle Hutchins, saxophone and EunHye Grace Choi, piano and because I have been writing a lot lately for alto saxophone, I decided to write for tenor saxophone this time. Another reason I chose this instrumentation is because of the scarcity of solos for tenor saxophone and piano.  This composition will be used on a CD titled "American Saxophone Sonatas". After communicating with Jeffrey about the piece, he mentioned that he prefers programmatic pieces over compositions that are just called Sonata. This led me to a composition I started a few years ago for clarinet and piano that I never completed. In this composition, I was taking a four movement duet I wrote for flute and clarinet called "Kaleidoscope" and was converting some of the ideas for a clarinet and piano composition. I thought I'd see if this would work for tenor saxophone and piano.

If you have been following my blog, you are aware that I occasionally recycle my music. When I come up with something I really like that has had limited performances, I like to see if I can transform it into another composition. While the basic ideas may be the same, the new instrumentation often suggests new ideas and ways of treating the material. That is what happened when I began to work with the first movement and this version has more harmonic material, a few new rhythmic variants, and more counterpoint than its flute and clarinet cousin. I also extended the second theme in this version.

The movement, as well as the entire piece, is not in the classical sonata form, however, it does reflect sonata-like qualities with contrasting themes and movements. I also incorporated programmatic titles into the title and the names of each movement. The composition is called "Funtasies", a play on the word fantasy. Each movement will represent a different way of having fun. My titles for each movement are as follows: I. Boisterous II. Innocent III. Pleasant IV. Witty V. Teasing

Boisterous came from transforming the "Kaleidoscope" movement Quadrangles, therefore much of the melodic, harmonic, and meter is based on four. After a two-measure rhythmic introduction by the piano, the saxophone states the first phrase of the main theme. The phrases of the theme are frequently interrupted my a rhythmic vamp. The flavor of the main theme is loud, energetic, and staccato. There is a lot of interplay of lines among the saxophone and the two hands of the piano as the material develops.

Measures 37 & 38 provide a transition to the quieter, more lyrical second theme that begins in the piano at measure 39. The saxophone takes over the theme at measure 45 with the piano answering the sustained notes with the rhythmic idea of the introduction. The secondary theme is then treated contrapuntally at measure 54.

There is no development section. Instead, the recapitulation that begins at M 69 transforms the two themes slightly as the movement gains momentum.  A coda, beginning at measure 104, that uses the main theme ideas in a faster tempo, brings the movement to a boisterous close.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/funtasies_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B