8/28 - Learning from other instruments

I play a whole lot of drums in my school week. I play concert stuff in Brass Band and Percussion Group, big ol' surdo in Brazilian, set in South Indian, lessons on mallets and set, practicing mallets and set, and playing with Senor Fin. Almost all of my technical musical adventures are focused on one "instrument," and I believe that can be a detriment to my musicality.

Sometimes, when it's late at night and Ronan and Jesse and Jesse and I are getting ready for bed (or I am, at least), we hang out in Ronan's room for a little bit and someone puts on some tunes. Today, we listened to Bon Iver, one of Jesse Miller and Ronan's favorite songwriter type musicians:



He does some neat electronic stuff and a lot of good old folky guitar and voice singer/songwriter stuff, and I like it a lot.

One of my favorite things about living in a house full of musicians is that my music and everyone's else music is enjoyed by everyone else, especially in this house. Ronan listens to a lot of jazz that I should be listening to, and Jesse Miller knows a lot of great lyricists and folk songsmiths, and Jesse B. knows where the funk lives and who makes the beats. And everything they play, I always feel like I should listen to that artist more, even though I don't have the time to. I never have the time to.

Not only do we share the things we listen to, but every once in a while we share the things we read or experience, and it's becoming more common with social networking. I can post an article that I liked and 100 of my friends could see it, and it would affect at least a few of them; in the same thought, I'll click on almost a dozen links people have recommended every time I'm online, and I've come to know who to trust for good things and what kind of things certain people will put up. It's kinda cool.

I have a book checked out from the library, "Confronting Silence," by Toru Takemitsu. None of the others have had a chance to read it, but I like his ideas a lot. I'll force it on Ronan some time.

Ronan has a bunch of guitar books, kinda like how I have a bunch of drum books. He steals mine every once in a while just because it's good to know what the drummer's doing in a jazz set; it's good to know what a drummer's doing in every setting, and it's good to know what everyone is doing in every setting. But he uses one of my styles books to see what the drummer plays in a samba, or what the bassist plays in a merengue, and what he should try to add or when he should back off. He's a smart dude.

So, in return, I stole one of his guitar books. I haven't figured out what a bunch of scales and chord progressions to solo over will do for me as a set player (sure, I'll use them for other mediums), but the back section of this book, "The Advancing Guitarist" by Mick Goodrick, has good blurbs of information and thoughts about music, similar to Takemitsu's book. He has a list of "short subjects," and I'd like to share a few with you:

Control usually involves slowing down
No single approach seems to work all the time
To keep learning: aim at always being a beginner
Students often ask me, "Should I do A or B?" Most of the time, I ask them, "Why not do both?"
Remember, music is (basically) a communal sport
No one is better at exactly what your'e doing than you. Also, no one is worse at it.
Don't try to make a study of your own individuality. Make studies of everyone else's.
Notes are clever ways of getting from one silence to another
Music is like life on a small scale, Life is like music on a large scale.

All of those things can pertain to any musician, playing any instrument in any genre anywhere in the world, and even though there are a few strict guitar things in this section, most of it could be useful to every musician. You know when someone is beyond a "drummer" or a "guitarist" when they know the universal laws that pertain to everyone singing or playing, that's when you know they're a musician.

That's what I hope to be.

9/27 - Denton

There are some cool groups or people coming out of Denton, and just in case anyone with some power ever reads this, these people are who I would recommend for whatever you can throw at them.

http://www.facebook.com/SundressNation

We played a show on Thursday with Sundress, a poppy psychedelic band from UNT. They're on tour right now, making their way from here to New York and back down through Denton all the the way up to Seattle, and hopefully they'll be playing for some pretty good crowds. They've played at plenty of music festivals and are only getting bigger.

http://www.facebook.com/royrobertsonmusic

At that same show, we played with a trio that goes under the name of their lead singer, Roy Robertson. They've put out one record already and are working on another one, and have been written up in a couple of places and have been featured in "A Small, Good Thing," which Senor Fin is hoping to be a part of soon. Here's a cool video:

http://www.facebook.com/SmallGoodThing

A Small, Good Thing is one of my favorite things going on here in Denton. A few friends host a band, and the band plays in a house show setting, and then they have a conversation and interview over dinner, freshly prepared. They record the whole thing and make a mini-series out of the collection of bands they host. I'm looking forward to going to their next event, and I love this idea.

I'm friends with a couple other bands, and the Jesses and Ronan know lots of people, so I'll put their links here, in case you want to check them out.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Young-and-Brave/123002405920
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Retro-Run/190480367630113
http://www.facebook.com/twoknights?sk=info
http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpoOky-Folk/109370762642

M

9/22

This is a piece called "It Is Time," written by Steve Mackey. So Percussion, the performers in this video, played it when they came to UNT as well, and it was awesome.

Today won't really have a theme, I don't think, I'll probably just show and tell about a bunch of cool stuff I learned... which is the theme for this blog anyways, I guess.

Did you know that there are 6 unidentified, unexplained sounds recorded in the waters of the ocean? One of them was recorded at the exact same time with the exact same frequencies in two places over 5,000 miles apart, which means that no animal (that we know of...) could have produced it, and it's probably even too large of a sound to be caused by anything we have made. Weird stuff.

In my Acoustics class, we were assigned a group project, in which we were to record 5 objects producing sounds, and produce "musique concrete," which, to my understanding, is electronic music made with acoustic samples and sounds. So I made this:

TTV (concrete remix) by mason-lynass

Which is based off of this:



I'm playing two shows with Senor Fin, one tonight and one tomorrow, both at J&J's. We're playing with Sundress, a pretty legit Denton band, tonight before they go on tour to the East and West Coasts... all over the place, really. And then Friday we're headlining with some of our friends. Should be awesome.

http://www.strandbeest.com/index.php One of the coolest ideas I've seen in a long time.

I've been all over craigslist recently trying to find cheap cymbals or cool things to hit, but I guess it's all for naught since I don't have any income. I'm trying to get a job delivering food on my bike, but so far, no dice.

This week, I wrote some electro music, and some drumline cadences, and part-wrote for theory, and wrote a tune, and arranged Debussy. Pretty composition heavy, which is a little abnormal, but great in phases.

I don't have much to say, I just feel kinda bad for not saying anything recently.

M

9/16 - Ed Soph Lecture

This happened at Departmental today:



M

9/15 - Tension and Release

Have you ever sat in a left turn lane and noticed that your turn signal doesn't match the turn signal of the person in front of you? I guess I might be a little OCD, but doesn't it kind of make you feel good whenever they line up, even if it's fleeting?

Well, that video is like that feeling, but how I would guess taking a psychedelic drug feels like, and then turning it into music. It's quite a trip.

That piece was written by Conlon Nancarrow, a young jazz trumpeter turned composer whose ideas were beyond the performance level of any human being that ever existed and will probably ever exist. His works were originally attempted by performers, but their inability to meet the technical demands forced him to switch to player piano and some other, more mechanical mediums.

Both voices play a cycle of 54 notes, and once they reach the end, they start over again. The first voice starts at a rate of 37 notes a second, while the second starts at a mere 3.5 per second. As the piece develops, each voice slows down or speeds up until the two line up for a split second, and then the second voice careens off into mind-blowing oblivion.

The best part, for me at least, is when it all finally lines up, and you can see it; there's a little tick mark on the edges of the scroll about halfway through the piece. That moment is when all of the tension, which is built up through the fury of notes in the upper range, slowing down over time and meeting the lower voice in one, or maybe two unison notes, that moment is when the tension releases. That release and that feeling is one of my favorite things about music.

Hopefully I don't always start with the most extreme example in these posts. But this is what attracted my attention. All of his player piano studies sound like noise at first listen, and it takes quite a bit of analysis to understand what is going on.

This feeling of tension and release happens all the time in music, whether you realize it or not. Certain chords lead to other chords because of the notes that make up the chords, and some chords fit better with others because they have a better resolution. Symphonies usually have a long cadence of tonic and dominant chords back to back to back in succession because they indicate finality; after all of the development, something so straightforward signals the end of the tension, the release. And diminished chords work so well because they are composed of minor 3rds, and those minor 3rds can not only lead to many different chords, but any resolution from a cluster of minor 3rds will sound easier on the classically trained ears, since, under common practice, it can't get any worse.

Since I'm a percussionist, though, I'm a little more comfortable with the idea of rhythmic tension and release, and that's not something that a lot of musicians are accustomed to. The ethnic ensembles I've been a part of have been big on this idea, too, and I think those ensembles have been what have really caught my interest.

In South Indian Ensemble, and in Indian music in general, the main goals of the percussionist are to accompany the soloist while proving your mental and physical ability by playing complex patterns, seemingly ignoring metrical structure, but always landing on the downbeat, like a game. If you'll recall some posts from last year, these patterns are called tihai, and extended tihai are called korwai, and patterns to finish an extended musical phrase are called mora. Indian percussionists use tihai, korwai and mora in their accompaniment similar to a harmonic cadence in Western classical music; to show the end of a small phrase, to start a new musical idea or, with a larger pattern, to show the end of a movement or improvisatory period. I'm just starting to dip my toes into the ocean of patterns that have appeared over the centuries of Indian music, and it's already a quite confusing at times.

Since there was a larger percussion section in African Ensemble, the rhythmic tension and release had to be less complicated, but it was definitely still there. African music is full of polyrhythms, and a few of the pieces we did had one section playing a pattern in 4 over a different section's pattern in 3, while the drums played splits around both of those ideas, and Gideon was soloing (in rhythms that have meaning in the Ewe culture, remember) on top of that. Sometimes it was easy to get lost in the middle of a measure, but everything would line up on the downbeat, and if you could find that, you could get back in time.

Here's an example:
    

4s:        1          2          3         4          5         6
3s:        1       2       3      4       5      6       7       8
bell:      x    x    x         x    x    x         x    x x    x         ||
Shaker: x       x       x      x       x      x       x       x       o||
kagan:     x x     xx    xx    x x    x x   x x     x x            ||
kidi:      x x x x            x x x x            x x x x             o||
Sogo:               x x x x            x x x x             x x x x   ||

The bell pattern consists of 4 sixteenth notes, while the shaker pattern is made up of 3. The kagan plays offbeats of the shaker pattern, while the kidi and sogo trade beats of the 4 pattern. They line up after 6 fours, or 8 threes, or 24 sixteenth notes.

Some of the other pieces were in 4/4, but the bell pattern wouldn't always fall on the beat; instead it would work it's way around it, creating tension, and when it did land on the beat, on 1, of course, the tension would release.

That idea was carried over to Cuba and Puerto Rico as a result of the slave trade. When the Spanish brought African slaves, they also brought African music. The bossa nova pattern (x--x--x---x--x--), the samba (x-x--x-x-x--x-x-), the cascara (x-x-xx-xx-xx-x-x), and plenty of other patterns came about as a way of creating tension and release. To sound "Latin," you could get away with playing mostly on the beat for a measure, playing mostly off the beat for a measure, and ending the two bar phrase back on the beat. I know, that's pretty basic, but I'm just trying to illustrate a concept.

One of the biggest things that impresses me about the world of music is how cultures from completely different areas of the world can come up with the same musical concepts and apply them in completely different ways. And I've only just hit the tip of the iceberg.

M

9/12 - Not Composing

As a percussion performance major in today's world, it's kind of hard not to like percussionist and composer Steve Reich; he's written works for So Percussion, the Kronos Quartet, Amadinda (I think?), has had his pieces performed all over the world and really is one of the keystones of recent percussion literature.

I'm usually a fan of his work, but on NPR music the other day, the article on his piece "WTC 9/11" and on the "First Listen" segment of the same piece, I started questioning his composition, which is something you should always do. Never take anyone's work as immediately good and valid, because it well might not be; just because it's published and one person or group of people could come together to perform it doesn't mean that you as a listener shouldn't question its musicality, it's merit as a work of art, or the opinions of the performers. I had done that with Mr. Reich like I had done with everyone else at the start, and I guess he passed a 'test' in my mind, whenever I hear enough good, out of habit I take for granted that everything else is good. I shouldn't do that. Plenty of people are in the music scene for the business much less than they are the music, and it isn't rare to see a good, honest album followed by a couple of half-baked ones.

And I'm not calling this piece half-baked, it certainly isn't. There are some interesting new compositional ideas that I liked, and it took him quite a while and I actually didn't even mind the music.

What felt off to me was, should any or every event be composed for, whether it's very good, very bad, or somewhere in the middle?

I don't know that I am the most valid person to sum up the emotions of 9/11, not only because there are so many but because, well, when it happened, I was 8, and I had just woken up when my mom called me in to her room to watch tv, which was certainly unusual on a school day. It seems a little weird to think about now, but I probably wasn't shocked or disturbed to the magnitude that you would think a kid would be, because I didn't really understand the situation. I was probably still curious about why I wasn't at school yet, and why I got to watch tv early in the morning.

To me, though, the nation, especially those personally affected, feel grieved, lost, defenseless, heartbroken and even angry, and that's a cocktail of emotions that I haven't felt yet and hopefully don't ever have to. There are pieces written to speak out against powerful dictators and mighty kings, war cries and uplifting songs of national pride, and tragedies that tell of lost love, but I don't think this situation quite falls into any of those categories. We were attacked by a handful of people, and it is absurd to say that that handful, though lethal and powerful in their own right, could have or ever had the upper hand in this fight. Any works written would not be to speak out against an oppressor, or to unite a nation against some seemingly unconquerable foe; no, we are not oppressed, and they are not unconquerable, just tragically and sporadically chaotic, at least to us, and a little difficult to track down.

The music itself sounds to me like the soundtrack to a news article, and not a grandiose or passionate symphony that used to portray the emotions of Shostakovich or Mahler. There are voices, describing the events, saying things they remembered, what they were doing or how the helped, and there are Reich-esque, minimalist string parts. This, to me at least, didn't capture the sentiments of anyone, not any of the people speaking, not even Mr. Reich himself, not that I can ever know for sure.

What do you think? Are some events, like 9/11, the Russian hockey team plane crash, or, on the flip side, the end of a long war, a great sporting triumph, or the fall of an evil dictator, able to be composed for without being programmatic and quirky instead of the art that they're supposed to be?

I'm still not sure on this subject yet. I do love thinking about music though.

M

9/9

Well, I had an eventful week. By the time Friday rolls around, I'm pretty worn out, with early classes every day and such. But I made it, and took a pretty sweet nap, so here I am to tell you about what I did.

Tuesday was pretty easy. My classes were fine. In Ethno, we watched a documentary called "Genghis Blues." Basically, a blues singer, Paul Pena, heard throat singing on his radio and took seven years to get pretty great at it, and then went to Kyzyl and participated in the International Throat Singing Contest and Festival, and sang some blues with his awesome kargyraa. I can't really find any good videos or links really quickly, but you should check him (and the film) out. It was pretty cool.

I learned that Paul Pena was the man who wrote and originally performed "Jet Airliner," that Steve Miller Band tune. Mom, tell Dad for me.

Then I had my first drumset lesson with Mike Drake, and he seems to be a little strict, but that's probably for the better. I have three books to work out of, and another little packet Ed Soph wrote, and I have to play a transcription of a standard for my solo on my jury. If you have any ideas of cool tunes to transcribe, let me know.

Since I didn't want to miss my first drumset lesson, I missed a physics lab that I signed up for before I knew what time my lesson was, and I couldn't change it. So I'll have to make it up some time.

It felt like Wednesday took forever. I love Dworak, our theory professor, especially compared to past professors, but his tone of voice and the material almost put me to sleep every single 8 am class. Okay, sometimes it's not even almost. It just does.

I wasn't feeling so hot that day, so I skipped physics. Don't tell anyone. I didn't miss anything, he doesn't take attendance and I read the stuff online to catch me up. I did go to Singers though, which is going a little rough right now, but it always turns out fine. Sectionals on Tuesday will be interesting.

Then I went to Percussion Group, and we ran through our quartet piece, "The Doomsday Machine," on practice pads to make sure we were getting rhythms. Here's a pretty good recording:



I'm playing the timpani, cans, log drum and china cymbal part. I'm looking forward to it.

Then I went straight to Brass Band, and sight-read for two hours. The percussion is better this semester, but that means everyone feels less obligated to play easy parts. So we nose goes a lot.

Then I took all the equipment back downstairs and played surdo and tambourim in Brazilian. It's a little shaky right now, like singers, but I have faith that we'll find a groove sooner or later.

Later that night was the first South Indian rehearsal, and I was pretty intimidated. I had to hurry and set up a cymbal, a bass drum and a snare, and then play all sorts of crazy rhythms on my improvised kit. It was a whole different world of playing, and I'm pretty excited to see what this will do for the rest of my playing. It seems to be a little more chops oriented, and I'm not very choppy, so it'll be a great workout, at least.

Thursday was kinda the same as Tuesday. We started Native American music, and even though Native American and Tuvan people are pretty similar, I can't really say the same for their music. Their songs used a lot of vocal pulsing, and somehow the vocals were at a different tempo than the drums? I don't really understand it yet, maybe I will in the future.

And then I practiced a lot, and took a nap, and practiced some more. I went to Sukhothai with Ronan, and ate some lo mein, and it was delicious. Thinking about it makes me wish I had the money to go get some.

Today I took a Theory quiz, which may or may not have gone well, and did very little in Physics (again). We only sang for a half an hour in Singers today so that Emily could talk to the rhythm section. The grad students played in Departmental today, and I may have finally found a marimba solo that I like. I took two videos, and they'll be up either tonight or tomorrow. We'll see.

After Departmenal, I rocked my Early Barrier, and came home and celebrated with some ice cream and a nap. I'm exhausted by Friday, remember? And I've played some drums and jammed with my roommates and blogged a little bit. Something might happen tonight, I have no idea.

I have a couple of shows coming up, and I'll try to find out when all of my UNT concerts are. I will post them here:
mklmusic.weebly.com

Thanks for caring about what I do and reading what I have to say, even if I don't know who you are.

M

9/5 - Glenn Kotche

Glenn Kotche is a beast.



I think I'll transcribe this this semester, and possibly play it on my senior recital.

That would be ridiculous.

M

9/4

It's hard to believe that we are already two thirds of the way through this year. It's kind of scary.

Usually my posts try to have some continuity to them or even have a title, but a lot of things have happened this week and I'm in no state of mind to try to organize them... ha.

I had my first lesson on Friday, and I thought it went pretty well. I'm studying mallets with John O'Neal, a Doctoral candidate. He studied at the University of Kansas and Florida State University for his Bachelor's and Master's, and then took 5 years off to practice and take orchestra auditions. But now he's here at UNT and, so far, I'm glad I'm studying with him. From what I can tell, he has lots of experience and some different, useful ways of thinking about technique (which I could really use some help with, not gonna lie).

I guess that's really one of my favorite things about the University. We have excellent faculty, and excellent TAs and TFs, and if you don't like the way one person teaches or how they play, then you'll probably find five or six other cats that have new methods and ideas that you haven't come across yet. And I'm pretty sure it's that way in every department, maybe not with the faculty, but there are enough good players here with diverse influences and wide areas of expertise that, if you really try, you won't walk away wishing you could have gotten more.

My drumset lessons are with Mike Drake, and I don't know too much about him. I know that he gigs a whole lot in the jazz scene and wherever he can find work, I guess. I'm excited to have a drumset lesson, and I know it'll be a good experience because I don't think Ed Soph would bring anything but a good influence here to UNT.

I've been searching around the internet in my free time for new music, and I've been tracing artists I already really enjoy and following them around to see who they like to play with. I found that two of my favorite people, Bela Fleck and Chris Thile, not only played together, but covered Radiohead:




I also really like this. There won't be anything new from TTA, but this was some of the last of what was released, and I must say I wish this wasn't the end of it.




Love it when things like that happen.

My performance opportunities will be the most stressful thing about this semester, and I think that's the way it's supposed to be. Hopefully I'll have enough time to work on my solo stuff, my Singers parts, Percussion group chops, Brass Band literature, and Brazilian beats and still keep up with my school work. I'll make it work, somehow.

Hope everyone's having a good Labor Day, and I hope everyone had an awesome summer, because I sure did.

M