Did some more songwriting tonight... well maybe piece-writing would be more appropriate (where as the piano thing I wrote recently is a full song concept that I worked out a basic arrangement for, these were just ideas or sections... probably of separate songs)
It ended on a good note, and I really liked some of he stuff I was doing... I often get into this creative block w/ piano and improvisation, where I keep going doing/playing the same pattern or patterns...
Doing it on a keyboard (as opposed to a piano ) really helped... I'm very encouraged by it & I ended feeling good... I want to write more but I need to chill...
Still burnt out on this whole music thing... my cello teacher said that was natural (cuz I had the competition last week) .. maybe he's right...
Anyway, we did Beethoven & Irish Folk Music in the lesson today... it was a good break... in the meantime, I have all this non-music stuff I need to catch up with, but all I want to do is make (write/create) music...
Got asked about being in a band and might have another cello student... excited about both of those... also concerned... though depending on what lessons pay, maybe I'll finally be able to quit Barnes & Nobles??
Sometimes we just need to step away and breathe... I'm considering the possibility of maybe staying an extra semester so that I don't have to keep credit overloading myself... if I did that, I'd be able to drop a class now & not take as full of a schedule next semester... I don't know if that makes sense or not though... I'll think about it, then bring it up w/ my advisor...
Edit: Terry, thanks for your response on my other post... I'm probably gonna answer it up with a follow-up post (as opposed to just a comment) soon.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Concerto Competition, followed by Amahl & the Night Visitors
2 Very awesome experiences. First, the concerto competition, it was great to get to work on the Elgar Concerto w/ Dr. B & Dr. Kuan. I feel like I'd be able to play that movement with anyone at this point, and playing it with piano really expanded my conception of it. It had a really interesting result, which is that it was declared that none of us won ... the official reason for that was that the judges & the orchestra conductor felt that none of the pieces would be ready for a public performance... it's very strange to say the least... We still do get to read through it with the orchestra though, so that's cool. Personally, I don't really care that I didn't win per se... as cool as it would have been, I've got so much stuff going on anyway that it's just Dust in the Wind...
Amahl... let me start off with the bad, and get it out of the way. I missed a show!!! Um, holy fuck. Can we talk about my worst nightmare?? I've only missed a gig once before and I utterly hate doing it. It's only been in the last 6 months too... never before has this kinda thing been a problem... there used to be a time where I was always early for anything I was doing... that's changed here at Manhattanville. I'm working on changing it back...
Now for the cool stuff:
1. I got the Oboe player the gig, she was a friend of mine (Caitlin Walters) from the Mville Orchestra & it was great to have her in the pit... turns out that she new David Jutt's (the pianist) sister and that they had been out of touch for a while... nice to know that I helped facilitate that exchange of info.
2. I got to play with a mix of students & pros & semi-pros. Playing with pros is great, b/c they of course are at a whole different level than you are. The Bass player's daughter apparently does Electric Cello stuff... was cool to discover, she said she's gonna send me a cd. The Harpist has an ensemble that does celtic music (how cool is that??).
3. David Toby is a really cool guy. He started off freelancing and has done a ton of really interesting stuff. It was great to get some stories & perspective of someone who has done all that stuff. But much cooler than that, he apparently plays with Von Cello (Aaron Minsky) from time to time!! How amazing... he's hopefully gonna put me in touch with him, next time they're in touch. That would be so cool.
4. I ran into Ms. Garnett!! (an old art teacher who I was out of touch with because she retired). I got to talk to her a bit & it was so exciting, she gave me her number so that I can give her a call. She was such an awesome teacher & person. Looking back, I just think of the amount of creativity & achievement that came out of her students. There were some really talented kids under her wing (some of them were/are friends of mine too!)
5. I've now played an Operetta, it was a fun gig all in all, even though I was exhausted and burnt out for most of it...
Anyway, on to the next post...
Amahl... let me start off with the bad, and get it out of the way. I missed a show!!! Um, holy fuck. Can we talk about my worst nightmare?? I've only missed a gig once before and I utterly hate doing it. It's only been in the last 6 months too... never before has this kinda thing been a problem... there used to be a time where I was always early for anything I was doing... that's changed here at Manhattanville. I'm working on changing it back...
Now for the cool stuff:
1. I got the Oboe player the gig, she was a friend of mine (Caitlin Walters) from the Mville Orchestra & it was great to have her in the pit... turns out that she new David Jutt's (the pianist) sister and that they had been out of touch for a while... nice to know that I helped facilitate that exchange of info.
2. I got to play with a mix of students & pros & semi-pros. Playing with pros is great, b/c they of course are at a whole different level than you are. The Bass player's daughter apparently does Electric Cello stuff... was cool to discover, she said she's gonna send me a cd. The Harpist has an ensemble that does celtic music (how cool is that??).
3. David Toby is a really cool guy. He started off freelancing and has done a ton of really interesting stuff. It was great to get some stories & perspective of someone who has done all that stuff. But much cooler than that, he apparently plays with Von Cello (Aaron Minsky) from time to time!! How amazing... he's hopefully gonna put me in touch with him, next time they're in touch. That would be so cool.
4. I ran into Ms. Garnett!! (an old art teacher who I was out of touch with because she retired). I got to talk to her a bit & it was so exciting, she gave me her number so that I can give her a call. She was such an awesome teacher & person. Looking back, I just think of the amount of creativity & achievement that came out of her students. There were some really talented kids under her wing (some of them were/are friends of mine too!)
5. I've now played an Operetta, it was a fun gig all in all, even though I was exhausted and burnt out for most of it...
Anyway, on to the next post...
Sometimes it's really hard to remember why I do this in the first place..
I just need to write... to get it all out. It keeps penting up inside of me, no matter what I do. I'm trying to stay on top of things, to time manage to work on all my classes & projects, but it's just so ridiculously overwhelming... well maybe not overwhelming, but it's so unsatisfying. I'm really getting sick and tired of classical music. It's uninspiring and anachronistic... there's so many different ways to make music & I want to create & experiment. Classical music just doesn't have any outlet to do that with (sure there's classical composition, but that's so limiting, because like I said, it's anachronistic, and more importantly, it's not what excites me)
Stuff that has been going well and fun are the following: Working with Reason. Just finished an audio recording project... now there's making music the way I like to... create different textures, layering things. writing & improving over... etc.. basically, recording & editing... The next thing that's been going well has been writing, though I haven't made as much progress as I'd like... I have this piano part & really want to write out a vocal melody for it, since I've got some lyrics... then I've got more to write... that stuff's really flowing thankfully, and all my work with improv. is really helping. I'm returning to Jordan Rudess' stuff finally (from his online conservatory - http://www.jroc.us) & now that I'm musically and technically more mature, it makes a lot more sense/means a lot more than it did the first time I explored it (damn am I glad it's a lifetime membership!)...
I guess that's part of the good thing about being in school for music & constantly doing all this classical stuff, it's given me a foundation & a method... but I just find myself constantly wondering how much more I can actually benefit from this ... even though it's inherently helpful, it's just so far from what I want to do...
One of my teachers passed on a mailing she got for an Artist in Residency Program w/ a community symphony orchestra... requirements were I think 3 concertos a yr. & sitting principal cello with a stipend of $30,000 ... now, even if I was at that level, my immediate reaction was "I'd never want to do this, I'd be unhappy and miserable" & I passed it on to the other cellist, who also wasn't interested. To clarify, $30,000 seems like a tremendous amount of money to me right now, but I think I'd be so unhappy in an orchestral setting, I'd rather not go for something like that at all (It's also in Alabama, but that's in the details...).
I was thinking more about this as the day went on, and particularly in the last few hours, and I realized, the symphony orchestra is extremely boring. It is one of the only ensembles where you will have 10 instruments playing the exact same thing!! Not 10 different instruments w/ different timbres, but 10 instruments that are pretty much exactly the same playing the exact same thing... what about tonal variety anyone??? I've pointed this out before, that an orchestra's size could be reduced through the use of amplifiers (and then we'd be able to do much more complex music, not to mention be able to hear the damn group), but the classical people always have reservations about the sound, and the fact that it "just wouldn't be the same" ... it's so fucking frustrating... there's no experimentation... everything has to be exact and fit in to a little stupid preconceived notion of how things should go... performing shouldn't be about exact replication. It should be about expanding, about arranging. That's why I like the jazz classes I take, there's that element of doing something more... even still though, it always seems to be following a formula (a lot of the time anyway) ... seems to be fitting itself into a box... guess that's where MIDI Band comes in... it's an entity to its own... it doesn't have much of a tradition (electronic music is in my opinion one of the most non-traditional styles out there)
So I sit here frustrated.. I've just played guitar for an hour messing around with my Multi-FX pedal (which, now that I have the instruction manual, actually makes sense to me) & I got a lot of this out & experimented & found some cool tonalities & patterns, and I'm just thinking to myself that making music that way, or improvising over loops in reason, or fooling around with layering & panning & audio engineering is what I really want to do. It's always been the stuff I've connected with & been excited by and all that... it always will be...
Someone asked me what I wanted to do with music... well people ask me that all the time ... my answer is that I want to be in a rock band. I mean that seriously, that's what I want to do professionally. Writing rock music, and collaborating is where I get the most fulfillment from. I realize that it's not pretty & glamorous all the time, and I certainly wouldn't be in it for the fame or any of that bull shit. I also realize that it's extremely hard to make it as a band, and that finances will almost always be tough. But the other thing that I really want to do, that I can see myself being happy in is I want to freelance, and that's got basically the same set of problems... I think realistically I'll do both. I need to be doing a lot of things at once. I have so many different musical impulses & by not exploring all these different areas, I feel stifled...
So in that context, with a year left of school, and a (year in between) ... I raise the question (almost daily ... particularly every time I think of giving Julia Lichten a call)... Is Grad. School worth it?? Does it make any sense?? If so, do I really want to do a performance program, what about a composition or audio engineering program...
If anyone has any thoughts, they're greatly appreciated... if not, thanks for taking the time to read... I'm gonna have a few more posts following this, focusing on Amahl, recent purchases & inspirations, the concerto competition, Emily Wright, Greg Sandow, my brother & anything else that might cross my thoughts...
P.S. Just to clarify, there are plenty of things in classical music that inspire me, plenty of people, both alive and dead, as well as works. I don't mean to diminish those. I want to give special thanks to Emily Wright, Greg Sandow & Eric Edberg, Steven Isserlis, Hillary (my student), Mike Meade (my teacher) & all the musicians and teachers I've worked with and really had a great time with. There's something fulfilling about this classical music stuff, definitely... just not when I'm confined to it...
Stuff that has been going well and fun are the following: Working with Reason. Just finished an audio recording project... now there's making music the way I like to... create different textures, layering things. writing & improving over... etc.. basically, recording & editing... The next thing that's been going well has been writing, though I haven't made as much progress as I'd like... I have this piano part & really want to write out a vocal melody for it, since I've got some lyrics... then I've got more to write... that stuff's really flowing thankfully, and all my work with improv. is really helping. I'm returning to Jordan Rudess' stuff finally (from his online conservatory - http://www.jroc.us) & now that I'm musically and technically more mature, it makes a lot more sense/means a lot more than it did the first time I explored it (damn am I glad it's a lifetime membership!)...
I guess that's part of the good thing about being in school for music & constantly doing all this classical stuff, it's given me a foundation & a method... but I just find myself constantly wondering how much more I can actually benefit from this ... even though it's inherently helpful, it's just so far from what I want to do...
One of my teachers passed on a mailing she got for an Artist in Residency Program w/ a community symphony orchestra... requirements were I think 3 concertos a yr. & sitting principal cello with a stipend of $30,000 ... now, even if I was at that level, my immediate reaction was "I'd never want to do this, I'd be unhappy and miserable" & I passed it on to the other cellist, who also wasn't interested. To clarify, $30,000 seems like a tremendous amount of money to me right now, but I think I'd be so unhappy in an orchestral setting, I'd rather not go for something like that at all (It's also in Alabama, but that's in the details...).
I was thinking more about this as the day went on, and particularly in the last few hours, and I realized, the symphony orchestra is extremely boring. It is one of the only ensembles where you will have 10 instruments playing the exact same thing!! Not 10 different instruments w/ different timbres, but 10 instruments that are pretty much exactly the same playing the exact same thing... what about tonal variety anyone??? I've pointed this out before, that an orchestra's size could be reduced through the use of amplifiers (and then we'd be able to do much more complex music, not to mention be able to hear the damn group), but the classical people always have reservations about the sound, and the fact that it "just wouldn't be the same" ... it's so fucking frustrating... there's no experimentation... everything has to be exact and fit in to a little stupid preconceived notion of how things should go... performing shouldn't be about exact replication. It should be about expanding, about arranging. That's why I like the jazz classes I take, there's that element of doing something more... even still though, it always seems to be following a formula (a lot of the time anyway) ... seems to be fitting itself into a box... guess that's where MIDI Band comes in... it's an entity to its own... it doesn't have much of a tradition (electronic music is in my opinion one of the most non-traditional styles out there)
So I sit here frustrated.. I've just played guitar for an hour messing around with my Multi-FX pedal (which, now that I have the instruction manual, actually makes sense to me) & I got a lot of this out & experimented & found some cool tonalities & patterns, and I'm just thinking to myself that making music that way, or improvising over loops in reason, or fooling around with layering & panning & audio engineering is what I really want to do. It's always been the stuff I've connected with & been excited by and all that... it always will be...
Someone asked me what I wanted to do with music... well people ask me that all the time ... my answer is that I want to be in a rock band. I mean that seriously, that's what I want to do professionally. Writing rock music, and collaborating is where I get the most fulfillment from. I realize that it's not pretty & glamorous all the time, and I certainly wouldn't be in it for the fame or any of that bull shit. I also realize that it's extremely hard to make it as a band, and that finances will almost always be tough. But the other thing that I really want to do, that I can see myself being happy in is I want to freelance, and that's got basically the same set of problems... I think realistically I'll do both. I need to be doing a lot of things at once. I have so many different musical impulses & by not exploring all these different areas, I feel stifled...
So in that context, with a year left of school, and a (year in between) ... I raise the question (almost daily ... particularly every time I think of giving Julia Lichten a call)... Is Grad. School worth it?? Does it make any sense?? If so, do I really want to do a performance program, what about a composition or audio engineering program...
If anyone has any thoughts, they're greatly appreciated... if not, thanks for taking the time to read... I'm gonna have a few more posts following this, focusing on Amahl, recent purchases & inspirations, the concerto competition, Emily Wright, Greg Sandow, my brother & anything else that might cross my thoughts...
P.S. Just to clarify, there are plenty of things in classical music that inspire me, plenty of people, both alive and dead, as well as works. I don't mean to diminish those. I want to give special thanks to Emily Wright, Greg Sandow & Eric Edberg, Steven Isserlis, Hillary (my student), Mike Meade (my teacher) & all the musicians and teachers I've worked with and really had a great time with. There's something fulfilling about this classical music stuff, definitely... just not when I'm confined to it...
Saturday, February 2, 2008
A step away
So much has been going on since last week. For one thing, I bought a *ton* of cd's (Which I will be blogging about) because borders went out of business (Edit: to clarify, this is Borders in White Plains, NY). Lots of new inspiration there. On top of that, I rediscovered some Stabbing Westward videos & finally gave Bass Communion (one of Steven Wilson's side projects) a listen. I'm very impressed with it - very ambient, electronica-ish kinda ... I'll be picking it up next weekend).
Outside of that, I've started some songwriting (and no, this isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've actually written up some music & lyrics - that need to be revised - and had a vocal line in my head - will be writing out & then recording a demo very soon). It's for piano & voice & was very inspired both by Blackfield & Tori Amos (If you haven't already, go check out her video of the song Muhammad w/ Maynard James Keenan From Tool: )... also my discovery of Sus chords (well I knew about them before, but had never really used them...)
On top
of that, I've worked with Dr. B on the Elgar Concert, which is absolutely thrilling. For one thing, it's tremendously exciting to see the progression I've made mentally and musically & the level I can work on the concerto . For another, it's so amazing how the cello part comes alive with the piano accompaniment, and how much more meaningful it is... I saw a DVD of Jacueline DuPre, but I had already grabbed too many cds to justify grabbin' (only have so much money...).
In other news, I've been writing a lot & trying to keep myself as stimulated as possible - I almost forgot that that's really the way to be creative & successful... to always work on something, well on a lot of things, and bounce back from one to the other... I might start up another blog for poetry/song lyrics/ideas/essays/rants... that sort of thing... the sort of thing I used to do in high school, when I was more myself (I've really spent a lot of the last year redefining myself by incorporating all the best elements of who I used to be)
I've also started exercising, which has helped my playing tremendously (especially since, I've barely been able to practice in the last week...). Speaking of, I've decided from now on, that if I'm in my room relaxing & or being idle in front of my computer, I'm aways going to pull out my bass & metronome & improvise or practice scales o figure tunes out... whatever it is, as long as I'm musically stimulating myself in some way (whatever it is... as long as I'm doing something & not wasting my time...)
I'm really hearing music more and more fully lately, it's tremendously inspiring...
In other news, I'm probably going to be cowriting (adding a cello part to) a piece with Melanie Lamoreaux (a pianist/vocalist that I'm in MIDI Band with). I'm absolutely thrilled about it... can't wait. It's exactly that collaborative kind of thing that I find fun...
Speaking of collaborative & fun... small Jazz band is beyond amazing & we're doing some really cool stuff with that... also, MIDI Band is pretty interesting... we're experimenting w/ doing a Bach Invention with loops and improvisation using the Live Ableton software... very interesting stuff... I can't wait to see what the full results of that are...
Also, one of my teachers & I exchanged blogs (http://richardthetenor.blogspot.com/)
I'm gong to include an inspiration section at the end of all my posts (at least where it's appropriate/I'm inspired) from now on, linking to any bands/songs/literature/vids/anything else that inspires me... so, here goes...
Inspired By:
1. Stabbing Westward - So Far Away: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mG5bqKSv5-8
2. Stabbing Westward - Nothing: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EMfkFwRmn44
3. Stabbing Westward - Lies: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3zXZFZBJI0g
4. Stabbing Westward - What Do I Have To Do: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ajVLfxD58Is
5. Stabbing Westward - Shame: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6xkUhaeY4qY
6. Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oE5JjQuabB8
7. Intro to the Home Studio of Jordan Rudess: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2q7tIOAoIZw
8. Dream Theater - Constant Motion: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ2RENhejPk
9. Steven Wilson & Aviv Geffen - Thank You: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X4MAvwwhiPE
10. Steven Wilson Interview: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VLkQkrk6DDk
11. Steven Wilson: http://www.swhq.co.uk/
12. Blackfield: http://www.blackfield.org
13. Bass Communion: http://www.myspace.com/basscommunion
14. Tori Amos & Maynard James Keenan - Muhammad My Friend: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-SxHJBMrVhI
15. Dream Theater - Forsaken: http://mville.facebook.com/share_redirect.php?h=f5ebe68f6fc78fd5ea15641def39ab0c&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuk.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2k4WjoQA1bg&sid=8130298441
Outside of that, I've started some songwriting (and no, this isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've actually written up some music & lyrics - that need to be revised - and had a vocal line in my head - will be writing out & then recording a demo very soon). It's for piano & voice & was very inspired both by Blackfield & Tori Amos (If you haven't already, go check out her video of the song Muhammad w/ Maynard James Keenan From Tool: )... also my discovery of Sus chords (well I knew about them before, but had never really used them...)
On top
of that, I've worked with Dr. B on the Elgar Concert, which is absolutely thrilling. For one thing, it's tremendously exciting to see the progression I've made mentally and musically & the level I can work on the concerto . For another, it's so amazing how the cello part comes alive with the piano accompaniment, and how much more meaningful it is... I saw a DVD of Jacueline DuPre, but I had already grabbed too many cds to justify grabbin' (only have so much money...).
In other news, I've been writing a lot & trying to keep myself as stimulated as possible - I almost forgot that that's really the way to be creative & successful... to always work on something, well on a lot of things, and bounce back from one to the other... I might start up another blog for poetry/song lyrics/ideas/essays/rants... that sort of thing... the sort of thing I used to do in high school, when I was more myself (I've really spent a lot of the last year redefining myself by incorporating all the best elements of who I used to be)
I've also started exercising, which has helped my playing tremendously (especially since, I've barely been able to practice in the last week...). Speaking of, I've decided from now on, that if I'm in my room relaxing & or being idle in front of my computer, I'm aways going to pull out my bass & metronome & improvise or practice scales o figure tunes out... whatever it is, as long as I'm musically stimulating myself in some way (whatever it is... as long as I'm doing something & not wasting my time...)
I'm really hearing music more and more fully lately, it's tremendously inspiring...
In other news, I'm probably going to be cowriting (adding a cello part to) a piece with Melanie Lamoreaux (a pianist/vocalist that I'm in MIDI Band with). I'm absolutely thrilled about it... can't wait. It's exactly that collaborative kind of thing that I find fun...
Speaking of collaborative & fun... small Jazz band is beyond amazing & we're doing some really cool stuff with that... also, MIDI Band is pretty interesting... we're experimenting w/ doing a Bach Invention with loops and improvisation using the Live Ableton software... very interesting stuff... I can't wait to see what the full results of that are...
Also, one of my teachers & I exchanged blogs (http://richardthetenor.blogspot.com/)
I'm gong to include an inspiration section at the end of all my posts (at least where it's appropriate/I'm inspired) from now on, linking to any bands/songs/literature/vids/anything else that inspires me... so, here goes...
Inspired By:
1. Stabbing Westward - So Far Away: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mG5bqKSv5-8
2. Stabbing Westward - Nothing: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EMfkFwRmn44
3. Stabbing Westward - Lies: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3zXZFZBJI0g
4. Stabbing Westward - What Do I Have To Do: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ajVLfxD58Is
5. Stabbing Westward - Shame: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6xkUhaeY4qY
6. Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oE5JjQuabB8
7. Intro to the Home Studio of Jordan Rudess: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2q7tIOAoIZw
8. Dream Theater - Constant Motion: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ2RENhejPk
9. Steven Wilson & Aviv Geffen - Thank You: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X4MAvwwhiPE
10. Steven Wilson Interview: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VLkQkrk6DDk
11. Steven Wilson: http://www.swhq.co.uk/
12. Blackfield: http://www.blackfield.org
13. Bass Communion: http://www.myspace.com/basscommunion
14. Tori Amos & Maynard James Keenan - Muhammad My Friend: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-SxHJBMrVhI
15. Dream Theater - Forsaken: http://mville.facebook.com/share_redirect.php?h=f5ebe68f6fc78fd5ea15641def39ab0c&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuk.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2k4WjoQA1bg&sid=8130298441
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)