4/28 - Absence

My biggest problem recently is recognizing that something is important, sometimes critical, before it slips away or becomes unavailable.

I have been blessed by being born into a pretty well-off family. But there is nothing I hate more than asking for money. Today, I sold some cds and books to buy a snare drum head, and spent my monthly 50 bucks on a bass drum head. They were important, and I thought about my decision; it wasn't like I bought them on impulse. But I will have to make some sacrifices, not do laundry and eat cafeteria food until I'm done with the semester, and it will be tough for me. In this situation, I look back at the times where I spent my money on food, going to concerts, and buying music, and I wonder if I made the right decisions. Probably not.

Recently, I realized that losing a friend means more than finding someone else to pass time with. Sometimes, losing a friends means losing other friends, and I may have lost my place in a community. I lost a lot more than just a person when I lost my friend, and as I recollect, I wish I hadn't been such a fool and taken anyone for granted.

In other ways, absence can be a good thing. I burned another bridge, and though it may not have been the best thing to do for the both of us, it was the best thing to do for me, and it was the best thing to do for the other person. And in burning that bridge, a weight has been lifted, and I feel a little lighter.

Absence can be musical, or not musical. Just as sound is powerful, the absence of sound is also powerful, and neither is more important because they depend on each other for their worth. It would be terrible if everything made noise all the time, and it would be just as terrible if nothing made noise ever.

In another sense, just as intention is powerful, the absence of intention is also powerful. Sounds created intentionally are usually meant to mean specific things, and these things can be important and interesting. But some sounds are made unintentionally or unconsciously, and these sounds are also important and interesting, in a different sense. There is a difference between actions made consciously and actions made subconsciously, and, to me at least, it is intriguing, and I would like to understand why there is a difference.

In another sense, just as the desire to find meaning is powerful, the absence of the desire to find meaning is also powerful. Pieces can seem to mean more if it is understood that they were composed about a certain subject matter, or ambient noise is sometimes more comforting if whatever is producing the noise is known. But there are some things that are beautiful because they don't mean anything, and there are some events that happen just because they happen. It is beautiful for anything to be happening at all.

"If you listen to Beethoven or Mozart you see that they are always the same. But if you listen to traffic, you see that it is always different."



M

4/25 - Marimba Quartet

In the past few days I've taken charge and stared at this computer screen writing my final project for my composition class. It has surprised me in how simple (and somehow complex) something can be while still sounding... well, like all kinds of things.

Here's my piece:

Marimba Quartet (2011) - Mason Lynass

Marimba Quartet - Mason Lynass by mason-lynass

There are some secrets:

Marimba II:

The first section, which starts at measure 5, is an isorhythm with a 5-note color and a 2-note (3+2) talea. When the start of the color meets the start of the talea the first time, it doesn’t line up with the bar line; this phrase repeats 5 times to fill 25 bars evenly and end on a downbeat with the rest of the ensemble.

In the second section, Marimbas III and IV play 5 (3+2) and 7 (4+3) patterns, respectively. Marimbas I and II play the spaces where neither pattern plays a note, but Marimba II leaves out every second, fourth, sixth and seventh note, creating another 7 pattern, while Marimba one plays a 5 pattern. It’s confusing and doesn’t have a clear pattern like the first section does.

The third section utilizes the gap pattern from the second section and combines the rhythm with the color from the beginning isorhythm, but in smaller intervals over time. In the beginning and end of the section, this voice’s purpose is to carry the melody, and in the middle, it provides dissonance and pull to the closing tonal area.

Marimba III:

This voice, with Marimba IV, provides the melody in the opening and closing sections. Note the patterns in the opening:

(3-2) / (3-3-2) / (3-3-3-2) / (3-3-3-3-2)(3-3-3-2)(3-3-2)(3-2)

and the closing:

(2-3-3-3-3) / (2-2-3-3-3-3) / (2-2-2-3-3-3-3) / (2-2-2-2-3-3-3-3)

In the opening, these patterns repeat until Marimba IV catches up, and as soon as their connection is evident, they stop. In the closing, Marimbas III and IV start at the same time, but the pattern Marimba 4 plays forces it to wither away quicker. Since Marimbas III and IV are working together as a melody, notes do not change pitch unless both voices strike a note at the same time, and at such an occasion, the duration of the note struck determines the interval leaped.

            A 7 (4+3) pattern is played in the middle section, with pitches changing to create intended tonality (or lack thereof).

Marimba IV:

            This voice, with Marimba III, provides the melody in the opening and closing section. Only the first beat and third beat of every 3/4 bar Marimba III are performed by Marimba IV, creating varying dissonance and contrast, and allowing for a confluence in the opening and a digression in the closing. It may help to see the patterns of Marimba III above.

Since Marimbas III and IV are working together as a melody, notes do not change pitch unless both voices strike a note at the same time, and at such an occasion, the duration of the note struck determines the interval leaped.

A 5 (3+2) pattern is played in the middle section, with pitches changing to create intended tonality (or lack thereof).

That's from my liner notes. I can't tell you about any specifics, or someone might steal it.

This is so cool!

Let me know what you think, I would love to hear your opinion.

Thanks,

M

4/20 - Dorm Life

This isn't necessarily something that I learned today... it's a collection of things that I've learned all of this year.

Things you should know about dorm life:

- Bathe, wash your clothes, take out the trash and wash your dishes.
- Just because you don't have to have a clean room anymore, you shouldn't leave it a mess. Sometimes it's legitimately harder to deal with, especially my room.
- Eat dorm food whenever you can.
- You don't realize how weird it is to live on less cash until you have to.
- Go to all of the free shows, events, or places where food is present.
- Stay organized. Things get lost easily in a little room.
- Be courteous, not just to your roommate, but also to the people in your hall. Being loud at night or practicing early in the morning isn't cool, you wouldn't want someone else to keep you from sleep.
- Drink or smoke somewhere else.
- Meet the people that live in your hall. In my situation, we all like jazz, and since jazz has a strong sense of community, meeting hallmates is a pretty easy way to make connections. You never know when they'll come in handy.
- Don't get distracted. Whatever you went to college for, you probably didn't go to play pool, watch TV, or play ping pong all day.
- Wash your sheets. The ladies dig it.
- Try not to take extra-long showers, puke all over toilets or make a mess, especially on weekends.
- Try to keep yourself from hitting the snooze button a lot. If that happens and you're rooming with me, I'll just turn it off.
- Go to class.

That's about all I've got.

Oh. I bought a timpani solo today, Stanley Leonard's "Forms". If anyone can find a recording online, let me know, I haven't had any luck.

M

4/11

Momma called me out for not writing very much anymore, so I guess I can conjure something up.

Let's see...

I guess this will just be one of those posts where I fill you in on everything that's happening in my life, as much as I dislike those.

Senor Fin is slowly becoming a force here in Denton. We played at Hailey's, a cool joint where Snarky Puppy always plays when they come, on Wednesday, and we played a house party on Saturday. We're playing again this thursday and on Monday the 25th.

www.facebook.com/senorfin

I sang with Singers Friday Night, and that went really well. Our last concert is Sunday the 1st of May as a part of Denton Arts and Jazz Festival:

http://www.dentonjazzfest.com/

All of the lab bands, Latin Jazz, all of the Singers groups, Jazz Repertory, the two guitar ensembles, African and Steel Band are playing, and that's just on one stage. Brave Combo will be there, and so will Marvin Stamm, Fred Hamilton's group, and a whole ensemble made up of UNT Faculty. Every time I think about it I get more excited.

Unfortunately, Blue Knights camp is the same weekend, and since I wouldn't be in good standing in my classes if I missed this concert, I'm staying home.

Timpani lessons are good, mallet lessons are good. Here's the piece I'm learning for mallets:



It's a little fast, but still pretty darn good.

Hm.. we're learning about twelve-tone matrices in composition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-tone_technique

It's pretty complicated and I don't fully understand it yet.

I think that's all I've got. Have a good day.

M

4/1 - Kojiro Umezaki and Unity Through Music

I hope everyone's having a good April Fool's Day. I couldn't think of anything, but I've seen some pretty funny stuff, including Lone Star Percussion "Sight-Reading Mallets" (designed by Innovative, the mallets scan the music and play it back automatically), and Governor Hickenlooper appointing Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin Paper the new Paper Distribution Manager at the Colorado State Capitol.

On Wednesday, a shakuhachi player named Kojiro Umezaki gave a presentation at MusicNow, which is part of my composition class. He's probably most famous for playing in the Silk Road Ensemble, which is coordinated and led by the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He played some shakuhachi on Wednesday, but the focus of his presentation was interacting with the audience not only in a musical performance, but in the compositional process as well.

He started with a work called "In C," composed by Terry Riley. I'll put up the music here:

The idea is to start on number one, with whatever instrument you're playing, and to move on whenever you feel like moving on. Ideally, all of the musicians stay within three sections of the average so the piece doesn't drag on or blend themes that weren't intended to be mixed, since similar numbers share similar ideas.

He and some of his colleagues took this idea to a whole new level. They created an app for iPhone that plays "In C," with buttons to move on, slow down or speed up your tempo, change your instrument, jump octaves, even play with the timbre. This allows for multiple things that Terry Riley could have never done with his acoustic version:
     - Performances don't have to be planned, or even rehearsed.
     - Performers need not be musicians, just slightly knowledgeable with an iPhone.
     - Performers don't need to stay for the whole piece, or start with the rest of the ensemble.

They ran into a couple of dilemmas as they were writing the program:
     First of all, should performers be able to play every note, or just move onto the next loop? They decided that in order to maintain the integrity of the original piece and to avoid potential saboteurs who would play wrong notes on purpose, they made a button to move onto another loop.
     They also discovered that it was challenging to hear what you personally were contributing to the ensemble. The original app was configured with four speakers, so that you could adjust your sound to which speaker you were closest to and the speaker would act as a monitor; in the future they're toying with using headphones as an in-earmonitor.
     And the last problem, which changes the perspective of music for a lot of people, was: how do first-time users learn the system quickly enough to perform on their first go, and can people that don't have iPhones (Android and others coming soon) contribute? They included a simple set of instructions with the app, and put hints and a status feature into the app so you can monitor your own performance, and they brought additional devices with them to their premiere concert so that strangers curious and daring enough to want to perform can easily do so.

They premiered it in a little strip in between some busy streets in New York City as part of a festival called Make Music New York in June of last year:



This idea is pretty revolutionary for a few reasons. With this piece and this app, anyone can venture onto this performance, download the app and join in; all of a sudden it's easy to become an equally important part of a musical performance as anyone in the rest of the ensemble, even if you've never touched a musical instrument before. Anyone can do it, given you have a device compatible to the app, and if there are extra devices, then literally anyone could perform. They're also working on syncing it to wifi so that, potentially, you wouldn't even have to be in the same place as the other performers. One performance could feature people from all over the world, with varying musical backgrounds and from all walks of life. This app and this idea might be the start of something really big.

Umezaki's colleague at UC-Irvine, Chris Lavender, is developing an app to be used with a piece he's composing called "Fourth Wall," and it's meant to incorporate the audience in the performance not as the sole performer, but alongside trained musicians playing something composed. That sounds pretty darn cool as well.

I contacted Umezaki yesterday because I didn't take notes and I wanted to see his slideshow so I could learn more about it, and he was very courteous and let me access the document so I could sum it up for anyone who knows me. I hope he's okay with my own summary of the slideshow, and I hope I'm allowed to put it up here. I think it's one of the coolest ideas I've come across in a long time, and I'll be spreading the word to anyone who'll listen to me.

M