well-weathered music

I wonder what it is that the thousand-named-oneness (aka God, the Fates, etc.) seems to frequently take masterful musicians of contrasting genres off this planet within just a few days of one another. Last year Stockhausen and Ike Turner died on either end of the same week. Now two other music treasures have moved on; and their musics could not have been expressed in more disparate forms, while still sharing a uniquely 20th century vision. On the one hand, we mourn the passing of Henry Brant, orchestrator extraordinaire and inventor of “spatial” instrumental music. While on the other hand the jazz world will never again have anyone quite like composer/clarinetist Jimmy Guiffre, whose music was structurally so scaled back it was almost invisible, yet amazingly soulful. Mr. Brant eloquently showed us that we exist in a multi-planed dimension where front and back is just as important as high-pitched and low. Mr. Guiffre eloquently showed us that we are our own multi-planed dimension where internal and external are practically non-existent. We are lucky they have left so many auditory impressions for us to visit again and again.

A recent posting of mine here was about the sound of our Earth, sped up 10,000 times. The actual largest terrestrial sound possible. Well, this is a posting about the smallest terrestrial sound possible; the “sound” made by molecules. This post writes about this post from World Science magazine, which starts off by saying:

Phys­i­cists say they’ve rec­orded ti­ny vibra­t­ions of in­di­vid­ual mol­e­cules, that could be called sounds—de­pend­ing on how you de­fine sound—and put them in au­di­ble form.

You can hear the sound, here. But I doubt it actually “sounds” like that.

Okay. Now I’ve heard everything. Literally.

Our planet Earth is our “everything.” Every thing comes from it and every thing returns to it. Now, thanks to MIT seismologist John Bullitt, we can hear our home planet.

This is the sound of seismic waves traveling through the Earth’s crust from distant earthquakes over a three week period. Bullitt sped it up 10,000 times to bring it into the human auditory and temporal range.

And there’s more where that came from. Earth as the ultimate resonator. Hear more here, and buy his CD here.

There is a wonderful post by Daniel Wolf over at his excellent weblog, Renewable Music, about the joys of private music-making. It made me realize how much I miss having a piano. Playing Satie at the end of a long day always cleared my head. Particularly the Gnossienne, especially #4. I can feel my body relaxing just thinking about it. Thanks Daniel.

To all my readers (yeah, all 3 of you),
Have a great 2008!

Karlheinz and Ike entering into heaven.

Source material:
“Rocket 88″ (1951), Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm
& “Etude” (1952), Karlheinz Stockhausen.

I was just speaking to a friend who was saying how she finds everything interesting in that everything is an expression of the infinite combination of things. (Yes, she’s a poet.) I found that thought to be very refreshing.

To that end, here is what I found particularly interesting today, the 3rd to last day of 2007.

Over on his weblog, composer Daniel Wolf wonders what if…

We all wake up one morning having forgotten music, what music is, and what music does to us. Three things can happen: (1) we re-invent music, more or less as it was before, or (2) we re-invent music, but it differs in substantial ways from what it had been, or (3) we get about with our lives but without any music. What have we lost and what have we gained in each scenario? What does this suggest about the nature and value of music? To what degree do these three possibilities reflect the working methods of a composer?

I lean towards #2. If fact, that is my modus operandi as a composer. I try to re-invent music with every new piece and every new improvisation. A daunting task, certainly, but there are, after all, infinite possibilities to be explored. Earlier this year I performed with John Duykers in a song festival at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (hear it here). At the post concert reception I found myself talking with 3 other composers. We were discussing how there is no longer any defined “school” to be a part of. It seems at one point you could either follow Schoenberg or Stravinsky, then Cage or Babbitt, but now it’s “every man for himself.” One fellow (a very academic composer) said his solution is to compose music similar to the music he likes to listen to. Being a bit of a rebel (and thinking of Xenakis), I said “Well, I prefer writing music that I can not imagine listening to.” The unimaginable is where I’m most comfortable.

Mr. Wolf’s premise can also be explored when a musical instrument that has been developed for a specific music tradition becomes part of a drastically different music tradition. Like the use of the western violin in Indian Carnatic music. Or, most strikingly, the use of the piano in traditional Burmese music. Just as it is fascinating to imagine what sort of new music human beings would come up with upon losing all known music, it’s amazing to hear how western instruments are played by folks who have zero knowledge of western music. Here is the incomparable U Ko Ko, Burmese pianist.

Oh, man! Where have I been??
Well let’s see. First Apple came out with a major upgrade to Logic Pro, my main composing tool. So I submerged myself in that for a while (and am still). Ya know when you are in a long term relationship with someone, there are things that just drive you crazy about that person but you accept them because you are devoted to the relationship? Well now imagine that one day this person comes home and everything that bugged you about them has miraculously disappeared. That is how I feel about this Logic upgrade. There were ways of doing things in the old Logic that just did not make sense (maybe because it was first built for an Amiga computer). But now that Apple finally got around to making it their own, everything just feels right. It feels much more like a very deep, very intuitive musical instrument. I think they were trying to make it a bit more like Ableton Live in that respect, and they succeeded. Although the two programs are still very different, I now find myself reaching for Logic for basic audio-brain things while before the upgrade I’d go for Live. This does seem to be upgrade season, with Live 7 out now and Max/MSP 5 around the corner (and Sibelius 5 a few months ago). One of these days I’ll actually compose something. (Just kidding. I am quite busy with actual music.)

Speaking of audio-brain things, I went to the AES audio gear show at the Javits Center last weekend. Probably the most interesting thing there was being able to listen to all these different, very expensive microphones at various booths. Sennheiser, Neuman, Telefunken, Royer, Blue, AEA. All my favorites that I will never be able to own. (Well, most of them; I’m still saving up for a AEA or Royer ribbon mic. I can only imagine how “silky” they will make percussive glass sound. “Silky glass.” Nice image, eh?) All these mic manufacturers had setups where you could listen to their mics on headphones. You could listen to your voice or to the general din of the hall. It was really amazing how different they all sounded. Not even an issue of good or bad; all amazingly detailed in very different ways. It’s a real art to know which mic will make the sound source shine. I have only three different kind of mics in my arsenal and I’m still getting to know their subtleties.

And again, speaking of audio-brains, I was fortunate enough to run into Charlie Morrow at the SoundField surround mic booth (he has one). It was good to see a friendly, familiar face in amongst all the pasty-faced kids and straight-laced businessmen. Of course he was as dazed out as I was by all the florescent lights and intent lack of focus. So we talked about bird calls and other real sounds and went on our respective ways.

There are two Ne(x)tworks related gigs coming up the second week of October. A trio concert with Cornelius Dufallo, violin; Joan LaBarbara, voice; and me, glass & electronics, at The Stone, Sunday October 7, at 8pm. Then the full ensemble at The Kitchen, Wednesday October 10, at 8pm. Each show will be very different, so come to both. The trio will be exploring some very new territory. The ensemble will be playing works by composers in the graphic score exhibit at The Kitchen, including Earl Brown, Wadada Leo Smith, Cardew, LaBarbara, and Schumacher.

Here is an excerpt from the piece I wrote for Ne(x)tworks earlier this year, premiered at The Stone in June. It was a music theater piece called Tasks & Objects. (You haven’t lived ’til you’ve seen Joan LaBarbara totally wrapped in paper, singing her favorite aria.) Unfortunately I didn’t videotape it (doh!) but did get a good recording. Here is a 3 minute excerpt.

As Cage knew well, time is the commonality in sound & silence. Taken a step further, it’s easy to see that temporal structure is the commonality in all music, no matter from which culture or even from which species. Generally speaking, it could be said that the ways of organizing pitch is what distinguishes each music tradition, while the ways of organizing time is what unifies them. All sound/silence exists in time and what turns it into “music” or “sound art” is the acknowledgment of some sort of temporal landmark. Mozart’s cadences, Indian music’s “sam,” gamelan’s gong structure are all ways of saying, “we have arrived here and now we’re off again.”

I’m thinking of this these days because I have a job transcribing some of Gerry Mulligan’s solos and have been struck not only by the beauty of his playing, but by the beauty of his compositional structures. One’s not really aware of these structures unless you sit there counting out the beats and the measures. That’s one of the reasons I love Indian music concerts; most of the audience is following the rhythmic cycle with hand gestures. But in most temporal art, structure is much more subliminal. A friend of mine once sped up The Rite of Spring to where the entire piece lasted about 5 minutes. You no longer heard pitches, rhythms and orchestration. You were able to listen to the structure of the piece as a you would a melody. Jim Tenney writes about these sort of perceptual “gestalts” in his Meta-Hodos.

As I wrote out the structure of Mulligan’s K-4 Pacific in numbers of measures (8,1 // 8,4,1 // 8,4,8,4, etc), it reminded me of some of Cage’s pre-1950 rhythmic structures as well as that of some flute music from Borneo I analyzed years ago. Perhaps this says more about my analytic process than it does about these musics. But I do believe that if we expand our perceptual gestalt and eliminate those pesky (and subjective) issues like “emotion” and “content,” we are left with some fundamental truths about perception and communication.

Am I being too simplistic here? What do you think? (You can write comments if you’d like.)

Last night I went to the opening of the graphic score exhibition at The Kitchen. There’s nothing like starting the season with a gathering of one’s clan. I was there only for the last half hour but it definitely felt like a NY new music “everyone who’s anyone” kind of thing. I won’t mention everyone I talked to (you know who you are), but I do wish I had more than just a brief greeting with Alison Knowles. I find her work and history fascinating. She has recently been making these wonderful handmade-paper musical instruments that sound great and look beautiful. I first met her years ago during one of Phil Corner’s all too infrequent visits to NY and I tagged along for dinner at her place. I must add Alison to my “must call” list. I’d love to find a way to work with her sometime. Paper & glass would be a great combination.

At any rate, The Kitchen exhibit is wonderful! Check it out if you can. It’s difficult to pick out any specific work to write about; everything there is very cool. Although the two video works (by Michael J. Schumacher and Marina Rosenfeld, respectively) stand out, if only for their built in temporal aspects. Scores on paper can certainly represent time in some very exact ways, but now with video, time can not only be shared by sound & silence but also by graphics. And speaking of sound & silence, I was surprised there wasn’t even a page of any Cage scores. It would have been nice to have seen an actual manuscript page of his. But there were some other older pieces I was unaware of; the Lucier and Ashley for example. And there were a few pages from Cardew’s Treatise. Overall, a very well curated show.

I’m very much looking forward to playing many of these pieces (including Michael’s video work) in the upcoming Ne(x)tworks concert. We’ll be playing select scores from this exhibit on October 10th at The Kitchen. Part of the concert series associated with this exhibition.

Speaking of graphic scores. I just rediscovered the 2 copies of the old Source Magazine I picked up on eBay last year. Amazing. One has the entire score to Cardew’s The Great Learning and the other an actual page from Dick Higgin’s The Thousand Symphonies. More on these later.