Get a Recording Education Online

I'm impressed by how often Wikipedia has an article on any topic I want to know about. I was looking for information on microphone techniques and the topic Microphone Practice even had diagrams. I also discovered WikiRecording, which had really helpful articles. Check out their category page Microphone Techniques. They have manuals for a lot of equipment, too.

I was trying to make a budget for a future Guild project - recording sessions for Body and Soul songs, with singer and chamber ensemble. I was trying to decide if I should go to someone else's studio or if my live concert recording methods would give me a compelling CD-quality result. I don't have the equipment for individual micing of more that 2 players. I only have four channels and I would use 2 channels for a stereo overview of the ensemble, then an individual mic for the singer, at least. Would I need to mic the three instrumentalists too? Another drawback is that I don't have a monitoring and playback setup so the musicians can listen either, just headphones for me.

So I think I should find the right studio, and learn from what happens in the session.

Rebirth of Spindrift Commissioning Guild

I don’t seem to be able to write blog entries regularly. Either I’m hard at work at something else, or I’ve finished that something, which I could write about, but I’ve moved on. I’m going to try harder to capture some of what’s going on in my composing life more often. I've got improv classes to write about, and some exciting projects with my Spindrift Commissioning Guild.

The Guild has gotten a boost, because it is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, making Guild donations tax-deductible. I’ve been hard at work on my web site, Spindrift Music Company, to describe the Guild and to help people discover the projects. Good web site design with clear navigation paths is hard! Take a look and let me know what you think.

Improv with Audio Files and Computers

I heard an interesting concert last Friday. The New England Phonographers Union appeared in the Art Without Borders concert series at the Democracy Center in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. They each make their own audio recordings of “found sound”, whatever is going on in the world around them. Then, without further editing, maybe just a little EQ, they improvise a group composition with these audio files.

Each performer came with their own laptop and amplification system, so there were 8 speakers around the edges of the small hall. The small audience for this under-publicized, off-the-radar event sat mesmerized watching and listening. I could see the intense concentration on each performer’s face as they selected sounds and shaped them via volume and panning to fit with the other’s sounds. The first piece was a slowly evolving soundscape of road noise and industrial sounds, interrupted briefly by a very close-up door latch. It was hypnotic and calming, very meditative - not a usual characteristic of industrial. As I listened, I felt contradictory impulses: to identify the sound and to appreciate the sound out-of-context as a purely musical entity. The second piece was more animated, with more of activity generally and manipulations and repetititions of particular sounds.

At the break, there were lots of questions about their performing process. They each have different levels of comfort with editing their files. One thought a little EQ was OK to enhance the target sound, another said no editing at all. They each used different software to organize and launch their sounds. Before each piece, they make a quick plan. As they worked, it was clear that each performer had “solo” segments in turn.

It would be fun to perform with them (I’d need the right hardware - laptop and portable speakers). My palette of available sound files, mostly from nature, would contribute to a very different soundscape. Last Friday, their palette of sounds was mainly urban-industrial. They joked that their last concert had too much bird song.

Improv classes and composition lessons

I've talked to various teachers who tell me that there's a lot of attrition in their private teaching studios. Parents have lost jobs or are moving or are just cutting back. So it's a bad time to launch myself into teaching. But that's what I'm doing!

I'll be offering an improv class - Free Improv for Classical Musicians. Free means open structure, rather than more structured jazz improv. Check out these class descriptions at Spindrift.com. My textbook is "Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians" by Jeffrey Agrell. These classes are for intermediate to advanced students of any instrument or voice, as well as adult musicians who are beyond the beginner level.

Come to an introductory session - free of cost - on September 24, Thursday, 5:30pm. Lexington School of Music, Munroe Center for the Arts, 1403 Mass Ave., Lexington, MA.

Contact me to register for the open improv session or the class, or to sign up for composition lessons - contact info.

Review of FTM 10 concert

Sabrina Pena Young has written a review of Feminist Theory and Music 10 Concert 1 in North Carolina in May. The concert included my Body and Soul Vol. 2, sung by soprano Jodi Hitzhusen, with an art exhibition by Sirarpi Heghinian Walzer, my collaborator in the project along with poet Elizabeth Kirschner.

Read it here...
Feminist Theory and Music Conference UNC Greensboro: Concert 1 Music Review
New music concert review of Concert I at the Feminist Theory and Music Conference 2009 held at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, May 27, 2009.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1919176/feminist_theory_and_music_conference.html

Stockhausen's Kontakte at SICPP in Boston

This week is SICPP at New England Conservatory (Summer Institute in Contemporary Performance Practice, also known as Sick Puppy, I didn't make that up. They call it that!). Along with the seminar activities during the day (I participated in 2007), there is a fabulous week of free evening concerts -- the big, hard-to-program, fascinating works of the 20th-21st century avant garde.

Last night's program included Stockhausen's Kontakte with Stephen Drury, SICPP director, on piano and Mathias Reumert on percussion. It was another world, an alternate universe, a whirl of sound, a rich, immersive sound-world in the quad tape part, accented by a multitude of instruments on stage: gongs, drums, antique cymbals, marimba. Small gongs were on a rack bridging the piano and a tam-tam and a large gong were in the center. The players went to them for crashingly loud sounds as well as edge scrapes and taps with many beaters. It was among the most riveting performances I've ever heard, of anything.

The first half of the program was great too, with Jo Kondo's Dandelion-clock-work for 2 pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart, with interludes for bass flute, cello and percussion. Two Italian guest performers, Francesco Dillon, cello, and Emanuele Torquati, piano, performed works by Scelsi, Sciarrino, and Solbiati. The first two I especially liked, with minimal, slowly developing materials and a beautiful control of sound and silence.

I'm in awe of Stephen's organizing energy. He has put together a whole week of concerts that are just as exciting as this one. And he performs in most of them too, along with many guests. Stephen Drury believes music should be an experience. It was an experience I'm glad I heard and saw. And a friend commented that for hearing this repertoire, Stephen's SICPP seminar and his ensemble, the Callithumpian Consort, are the only game in town (the town being Boston, MA).

Storing Old Vellum - Why?

Why do I still have a pile of vellum for music copying? I’ve got sheets with layouts for quintets, quartets, parts, chorus.

It’s such old technology. I never want to go back to copying music by hand with pens on transparent vellum, which are then copied using a diazo machine. For those of you who haven’t heard of these, it’s like a blueprint, but diazo copies had black lines. The resulting copies stank of ammonia. It was part of the process. Did blueprints use ammonia too?

At Eastman School of Music in the ‘70s, composers stayed up late using clogging technical pens to write on vellum. The music staves were on the back so when you had to erase, you wouldn’t erase the staff lines. Erasing was really hard to do neatly, far too easy to make a hole in the paper. When the score was finished, we went to a tiny room on the 9th or 11th floor of the Annex where composers could make copies of their carefully written scores. I don’t remember if the room itself smelled of ammonia, but the copies sure did. They kept a characteristic smell for years.

I’m glad that technology has dropped into the past. The magic of editing on the computer and reprinting corrections may waste paper, but it beats hunching over vellum trying to erase a blotch of ink.

So, now that I’m cleaning out my overcrowded little house, what should I do with my small stack of like-new vellum that I’ve saved for almost 30 years?