(You can also listen on SoundCloud)
It's a BEAUTIFUL day today in Portland - sunny, warm, and just happy. Curiously, this is the music that emerged from my soul. It's a reflective piano piece that uses the concept of quintal harmony (chords built on the interval of a 5th). Enjoy! (You can also listen on SoundCloud)
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My friend Brynn Baron is a very talented writer and actor. We work together in Playback Theater. She recently posted on her Facebook page: An engaging conversation followed this comment, including comments like "keep writing, and edit it later" and "cliches are part of the process." One person even noted that her metaphor about the soccer fans was completely original, not cliche at all! I can TOTALLY relate to Brynn's comment. That's part of the reason I created 52 Ideas. Any time I would compose before this year, I would get frustrated that what came out sounded so much like someone else's music, or like something I had written before. Or sometimes the work would evolve to the point that I would just start playing and singing the song I already knew....thus ending any originality for the day. My thought this year while I've been composing goes like this: if it sounds cliche, go ahead and write it. If it's showing up in my head, it clearly needs to come out, so let it. And there's always next week! I've got 52 chances to write something original! So I'd like to take this moment to honor my favorite cliches! NONE of us can escape our influences and musical history. As much as I wish some of these influences weren't here, they are part of me. So I'd like to show them some love. Influence: Chris Rice Chris Rice is a very established Christian Contemporary singer-songwriter. He is here to represent the years and years and years of time I have spent sitting in church singing. Church was where I began singing when I was a toddler. Probably more than half of the time spent singing in my life has been in church as a church member, choir member, soloist, and finally years and years of being a worship leader. Chris Rice is my cliche fall guy for all other Christian Contemporary and Praise and Worship music that is rolling around in my head, including Michael W. Smith, Chris Tomlin, Amy Grant, Bebo Norman, etc. Influence: Opera Yes, this one is obvious. I went to college and grad school to learn opera, and it stuck. I have performed for years as an opera singer, and at some point along the way my brain (falsely) learned that this was the "best" way to sing. Of course, I love opera and continue to sing it all the time. But I want to use my voice in other ways, too. If you listen closely to any original song I've written, you'll notice it starts out in a kind of medium vocal range, then in time my voice just starts to ascend higher and higher. I LOVE the epic and dramatic nature of operatic singing. Influence: Choral Music In my professional singing career, I've spent a lot of time singing classical choral music. Subsequently, I've begun to really enjoy the sound of people singing together. I love the blend of human voices and the way each voice is unique, yet we combine into a unified whole. This is, of course, in spite of years in school being told that choral music was bad for my voice and that I should focus on being a solo singer. Well - sorry college professors! - I sing choral music! And I like it. :) That brings us to this guy: Influence: Eric Whitacre I don't know why Eric Whitacre's music feels like a guilty pleasure. He's one of the most successful classical composers today, and he's written so much music. He also created the Virtual Choir, which is a really beautiful concept where people from all over the world sing together via Youtube. But "serious" classical musicians are afraid of commercial success, I think. Alas, I love the sound, and it wants to creep into everything I write. His music is crunchy and harmonically dense. Eric also represents a few other composers of similar ilk in my mind, like Morten Lauridsen and Rene Clausen. So those are probably some of the biggest "friends" that keep showing up in my writing time. When I think of being a COMPOSER, the picture that comes to my head is this: Mad Scientist Composer This is an image that really freaks me out. I don't want to be some sort of mad scientist alone in a room working on my "masterpiece". People would say, "He's so brilliant! But he just gets in that room and forgets to eat and bathe and becomes so antisocial. What a savant!" LOL! I am social by nature and interactive. And I'm much better on my feet and moving than sitting still. Perhaps in some ways I'm less of a composer and more of an improvisor. I need to DO IT, not just think it. The other image I'm haunted with is this: Struggling Singer-Songwriter This is the classic struggling singer-songwriter, spending his life recording his own music and attempting to hawk it off to people at bars, coffeeshops, and anywhere people will listen. Without major support from a label or a killer online presence, this just feels like a labor of love, without a lot of return. And I'm pretty sure the music I write is "bigger" than this - musically speaking. I'm not one to create intimate, living room music. My nature is more epic. So I'm ready to create a new definition of what "composer" means to me. I am ready to claim a new identity for myself. These are some of the identities that want to emerge. Emerging Identity: Recording Artist As a classical musician, I sort of feel like an accomplished film photographer who never learned to use a digital camera. I know my music theory inside and out, I can make microscopic adjustments musically in a performance situation, and I hear really nuanced details in music. (All of this comes in handy as a music teacher, of course!) But when it comes to recording technology, I'm such a novice. Did you say condensor mic...Phantom power...Signal chain...Huh? I'm attempting to learn more from this vast field. I'm also trying to let go of being perfect, and just using the skills and technology I have available to me. In a related category: Emerging Identity: Electronic Musician I love electronic music. Digital media brings endless possibilities of sound. I could spend hours just tinkering around with the drum loops and sounds I can use in Garage Band. I have hesitancy around this identity, too, because it seems reserved for the "cool kids". Also, I can see the price tag adding up on the equipment and software and education required to get good at this. Emerging Identity: Producer I am a little hesitant to even include this one, because it seems like such a pipe dream. I have this dream of producing large scale performance events, epic and grand in nature. These performances would incorporate a good number of the influences I've just written about. But...how? When? Where? I know it's there inside me, but it's hard to see the steps to get there. Emerging Identity: Ringleader As I mentioned above, I'm a social creature. I'm not always a fan of the musical environment that divides the "creators" from the "observers." We are all creators and we are all innately musical. I want to create and write and express myself, but I also long to be a space-holder for others to be creative. I want an environment where I can create, and others can immediately respond with their own expressive ideas, right in the moment.
For now, I'll just keep writing new music every week. Onward and upward! Isn't beatboxing really cool? I've always loved watching really talented people do it. It is so entertaining and virtuosic. But I've always felt like it was a skill reserved for hip-hop musicians, drummers, or really cool people! (Or maybe a combination of all three!) And it's certainly not something that is part of operatic training. Idea 12 of 52 Ideas is a real stretch. Since it was such a new discovery, I thought it would be interesting to archive the process on video and share that. You have to know, before making this recording and video I had NEVER attempted to beatbox. You can watch the video, which includes the final product at the end. Or I've also included the music itself below as it is uploaded to SoundCloud. Enjoy! Well, this may be the most "experimental" or "conceptual" thing I've written so far. It's just a single note that I recorded with my voice, dubbed over a number of times (5 times, to be exact). I was noticing in my recording so far that it's actually really difficult to sing with yourself. I am really used to singing with other singers in a choral context, and when I do that, I am constantly making microscopic adjustments. I'm changing the pitch, the vowel, and rhythmic pulse. My fellow singers are also making these adjustments (ideally). It's all happening in real time. In in end, we work together to create a unified and corporate sound - sort of like a democracy. But when you sing multiple parts yourself, none of that adjustment can happen in real time. So even though I think I'm singing a perfect interval, the reality is that my previous recording can't adjust to my current singing. It's static - not interacting with me at all. Agreements in tuning, vowel, and rhythm only work if everyone is willing to adjust and work together! (N.B. choral singers and conductors!) So this experiment today is to see what happens when I attempt to share a pitch and vowel with myself, knowing that I will automatically fail. What, then, is the aesthetic and musical result of this failure? Well, you can hear it below. I am curious to know your thoughts! Conspirare has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, culminating in a special event this month called "Wondernight." This beautiful video was featured at that event, and it captures the spirit of this awesome group. I feel so grateful to sing with Conspirare. My commitment in the 52 Ideas project is to post something new every week, and my deadline is before I go to bed on Saturday night. So I'm getting in right under the wire this week! It's been kind of crazy this week. But here is my new work: My friend Andrea Rosselle suggested (as it relates to visual art) that when you are "onto something" in your art, that you should "go make 25 more of those." So I'm starting to think it might be good at some point to go back to some of the pieces I've written so far and "rewrite" them. In other words, take the initial inspiration and try again. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I'm considering the idea.
Wow, this is beautiful and thought-provoking.
Well, my wife Abby is now off on her trip. She left yesterday and will be gone for a whole month. Generally I'm feeling sad already and gonna miss her terribly. But I am hoping I will use some of my extra free time to write more. Each project I've done for 52 Ideas so far has gotten me excited, but then I feel like I don't have enough time to really develop it. Or also sometimes I don't really have time to record it as well as I would like. I was feeling SO excited for Abby doing this experience in Nepal, learning new things, exploring a new culture, and volunteering her time for people in need. We were talking about how it was like she was being lifted up like a bird to follow a dream she has. And then she played me a piece from Dharohar Project (which is amazing, by the way...you should check it out.) So then I was also feeling connection to the Snow Patrol song "Run," which seemed to capture how I feel about Abby doing this. Then lastly, going on the bird theme, I remembered a great song by the Wailin' Jennys called "Bird Song." Thus, a mashup was born! This is the first time in the project that the music isn't completely original. I used the three tunes and imagined what it would be like to have them all happen at relatively the same time. So here's the result. In other news, I'm really excited that Esteli Gomez is going to be in Portland next week. We have been singing together in Conspirare for a couple years now. While she was in town, I asked her to teach a workshop at Resound NW. She said yes, and "Your Voice, Your Song" was born! It's going to be cool, and it's happening next Wednesday, March 6. |
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