Year: 2017

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Composition: Chamber

Greetings friends!  It has been about two months since I have posted something and much of that has to do with life, the universe, and not getting a good a proper recording done.  It is also coupled with that I am trying to get a recording from another organ and space as I have been becoming increasingly frustrated with the instrument in the Monastery Church.  I have attempted to be as kind as possible about it, but the Möller is a Möller and has limited potential, one that I feel has been realized by the Evening Improvisations.

And now for something completely different…  Earlier this year I ran an improvisation session with a bunch of young students.  It was a blast!  I think there are some fine tuning elements that I will include next time I do it, but the real success of the night was one particular piece I titled, “To be determined…”  It was modeled after modern pop ballads (as I see and hear them), but it was template in which the students would be able to improvise upon.

Well, it was enough of a hit that my violinist friend who sponsored the event wanted the students to have something to take home.  Another friend of mine from CCAC, needed people to record for his Audio Recording course.  I saw this as the perfect opportunity to help both of my friends get things done!  I am happy to announce the result: a fully realized version of the song “To be determined…”  Here is a link to the score:

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Here I will note that I have titled this a “composition.”  For me, creating a template for improvisation falls far on the side of composition and less improvisation.  Knowing that improvisation will happen is only a part of the compositional process, not an actual realization of the result.  Writing, planning, and realizing the backing track was truly fun; though the sound of the song is of a pop kind, the process for me was as much like any other composition that I have written, with decidedly different results.

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Improvisation: Evening

This evening I recorded my fourth recording in the second Evening Improvisation series.  I have had a busy couple of weeks, so I have been planning this for some time.  One thing I can say, no improvisation is ever truly improvised, and in this case, I had a lot of planning time.  Perhaps, that is why I really like it!  Usually I might do three or four takes before I am satisfied.  And I wouldn’t post a video if I didn’t like it, but this was one improvisation I knew was good the moment I lifted by arms off the keys.  (Spoiler!)

This particular stop, the 8′ Trumpet on the swell, is quite noisy and nasally.  I had a different stop in mind originally, but upon reflection of my intentions, I realized that it would work rather ideally for this stop.  If Evening Improv II: III was an aria, that I would call this a fanfare.  A little on the nose for a trumpet stop, but why not!  What I was going for was a buzzing sort of accompaniment, one where pitch is indecipherable.  Then, as you listen, a theme emerges.

For me, when there are strong non-tonal elements, it’s important to simplify other things.  The form of the improvisation is A-B-A1.  There is only one theme and at most it is inverted and presented in no more than two voices.  The improvisation is also short.  I knew that I had had enough of what I was doing and couldn’t sustain itself any longer.  Whereas the idea, the buzzing, was planned, it is those other elements that reveal themselves to me as the improvisation happens.

 

 

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Improvisation: Evening

The 8′ Gedackt on the Choir is the chiffiest stop on the whole instrument, like so much of the Moller organ at the Monastery.  And when given an overripe banana, throw it in the freezer and make banana bread.  By that I mean, it is up to me to make it work.  This particularly stop is a horrible ensemble stop and I rarely use it liturgically.  But I thought it would be an interesting stop for my latest set of improvisations.

In my mind, I consider this an aria/recitative.  After two fairly more energetic improvisations, I thought this particular stop could function in a speaking manner.  And much like the two previous stops, the Bourdon and Waldflote, the Gedackt has several different sounds within the various octaves.  Though, that chiff sure is consistent.  Sheesh.

PS: I just read the Wikipedia article on gadeckt and I had to quote it, saying the gadeckt is a “moderately soft, bland, flute-like tone, invaluable for basic ensemble sound in the pipe organ.”  Too funny.

 

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Improvisation: Evening

Today’s improvisation continues my thoughts about exploring individual stops and the possibilities a single sound might contain.  Something I feel is not always taught well is how to register an instrument well.  That’s a broad statement for a different discussion, but something that needs close attention, especially in instruments of lesser quality like the one I play on, is the quality of the various octaves.  The wind system on the Monastery organ usually under blows the lower third of the keyboard and over blows the top third.

The 4′ Waldflote is an excellent example of this ‘problem.’  The bottom third has a rich, thick texture that one might expect from such a stop, the middle is a bland flute, and the top is shrill.  As an improvisor, it is my job to manipulate this rather than simply with the instrument was better.  Well, I do wish the instrument had better stops, but acoustic is great!

One last note, this improv has two techniques explicitly stolen.  The first is minimalist, which can be found in a composition I wrote for piano.  And the other is directly lifted from one of my favorite William Albright compositions from his Organbook III, Nocturne (with an excellent performance the inimitable Jens Korndörfer).  The waldflote handles Albright’s “wobble” texture with good effect.

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Composition: Piano

This is the final piece in the Interludes for piano – a series of works devised for my music theory teaching.  The last movement contains one of my earliest ideas – during the B section.  Somewhere in my old files is a bunch of scherzo sketches that never amounted to a work.  The B section in this piece uses exactly one of those concepts from the scherzo sketches.  It is something I have always liked and it fit this particular piece very well, even as an old idea and super secret introduction to the octatonic scale.

And here is where I admit that I didn’t know what the octatonic scale was until much after I had invented this idea.  Or perhaps I didn’t pay enough attention to my theory classes as an undergrad but absorbed particular ideas.  It does’t matter.  It fits the piece and if you want my original idea, pull an 8′ and 2′ flute, play the beginning of the B section quickly, and you’ll hear my original plan.

Always write down every musical thought.  Every idea can have a place: discard or future use. This piece is an excellent example.  Download here!  Here’s me performing the work:

 

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Improvisation: Evening

And I have begun another series of evening improvisations.  This series will focus on one particular idea: the timbre of an individual stop.  The original Evening Improvisations, a series of (hopefully) avant-garde experimentations on my part, was trying to explore instruments in interesting ways.  What it lacks, in my opinion, is a more precise and exacting exploration.

There was one improv that I posted that used particular stops for their timbral qualities.  I really liked this as an experiment and I thought it would be interesting to explore it further.  So here is my second series of Evening Improvisations and I have taken it to the next level: each improv coming in this series will only involve one stop.

The only thing I think I want to explain about the improv is that it centers around the pitch E flat. There are some really excellent moments throughout and it being under 4 minutes makes it listenable.

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Composition: Piano

The fifth piece in these (free!) piano interludes is perhaps the most obvious in its form: namely, ternary.  I never had the chance to use this in a classroom setting but I am really happy with the B middle section, which is a two voice fugue.  I wrote this fugue for this piece because I had attempted to write an easy fugue for another work (TBA) and I eventually scrapped it.  But I love fugal writing and I find two voices in particular to be challenging as much has to be filled in by the listener.

That being said, I love the contrast between a more aesthetically driven section and something contrapuntal.  Franck, Beethoven, my favorite of the romantics often used counterpoint as an element of contrast.  There is even an interview with Philip Glass where he admits the study of Bach helped him understand voicing.  Maybe the next set of free works I write will be a variety of fugues or some other forms of counterpoint.

Download the score here.

Enjoy!

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Composition: Piano

This particular Interlude, one I would call a valiant attempt, is supposed to be in rondo form.  As I have stated in previous posts, these Interludes were composed with the a teaching element in mind.  The problem with rondo form is that it is usually a larger scale form, one that cannot simply be put on a single page.  From this point on, this and the next two interludes were never presented to any class I taught.  I like these pieces, but didn’t feel they did what I wanted for teaching purposes.

Interestingly, this was my second attempt at writing a single page rondo.  I’m not sure it is entirely successful, but here it is in any case.  Each line in this rondo form has it’s own form marking, ABACACoda (A-B-A1-C-A2-A-coda in reality).  But expressing this form as found in a single page is quite trite.  Most classical rondo forms are lengthier than this particular piece.  Download it here.

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Composition: Piano

The third Interlude in this series is the earliest written.  Just as the other Interludes incorporated elements taught in a theory curriculum for both written and aural theory 3, this one too does as well.  The element prominently used is of course the metric modulation.  There are some harmonic elements typical of later 19th century music too.  It’s also written in a rounded binary form which was a part of the assignment.  That’s all well and good as far as the assignment goes, but what I enjoyed about writing was using the romantic harmonies.  I hadn’t done anything quite deliberate like this before, one were I was explicit in form and harmony.

I also like E Major.  Fits nice in my hands.  Download the score for free here!

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Composition: Piano

This second interlude was more recently written and is a demonstration of rounded binary form.  I also used this for my aural theory class by erasing a number of notes out and having the students fill it in.  Hence, there are no accidentals in the work, making it slightly easier as an aural theory assignment.

That last statement presented me a challenge: how do I get the piece to fit into two different assignments at the same time?  Part of the answer is making the piece somewhat modal.  I also inverted the theme in the return of the A section, leading to a cadence in the key.  That part, I think, tripped up a few people in the assignment.  I’ll discuss the style of these works in the next post, but I was trying to allude a certain style coming in typical written theory 3 curriculums.