Yet another expedition into pissing off my University Composition lecturer. Each semester we got a list of ideas to select from and write a couple of pieces to conform to, or rather, "be inspired by".
We spent a while looking at pieces for instrument and "pre-recorded tape". To me this is an outdated idea. Something used in the early seventies by composers trying to be different to the norm and introduce an element of the booming world of popular music into their compositions. I argued that it's a dying or even dead form. My picture of a modern equivalent would be a live at-computer mixing event to go with a set instrumental performance. Or, at least, fuck the tape idea off and go to CD. Even that's getting too old now.
This is my way of saying fuck you, lady to the lecturer. For my "instrument and pre-recorded tape" piece I recorded two fantastically boring minutes of me having a shower. I overlaid it with various water sounds from my sink and produced the whole thing on CD, titled Don't Forget to Wash Your Armpits. The problem was that I had far too much fun doing the recording and put no thought whatsoever into the composition. My argument there was that it was meant to be inconsequential anyway.
Here we go:
Don't Forget to Wash Your Armpits for Piano and CD.
Piano performed by the crappy midi on my computer at the time, because I never got the piece performed in reality.
Showing posts with label comtempory classical music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comtempory classical music. Show all posts
Friday, May 8, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Bass Music from the Archives of Vic
Back to the exciting days of Composition studies once again. This is one I really should do over again, and multitrack it by myself. It's called Big Bottom in an obvious hommage to Spinal Tap, but also in an yet another attempt to piss off my composition lecturer with my assumed frivolity.
At the time I had to submit any sort of recording of one of my peices, so three of us got together in a room with a mic and pressed play. The balance between the basses terrible. One of the players was my girlfriend at the time, who I knew (even before I started to go out with her) was an overbearing player prone to making mistakes and not caring, and not having an iota how to listen and perform in a group dynamic. But she was a captive bass player who could read music. There weren't that many in town.
It's noisy, it's poor quality, but at least a recording exists, and that's what you're getting.
At the time I had to submit any sort of recording of one of my peices, so three of us got together in a room with a mic and pressed play. The balance between the basses terrible. One of the players was my girlfriend at the time, who I knew (even before I started to go out with her) was an overbearing player prone to making mistakes and not caring, and not having an iota how to listen and perform in a group dynamic. But she was a captive bass player who could read music. There weren't that many in town.
It's noisy, it's poor quality, but at least a recording exists, and that's what you're getting.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Get Your Listening Caps On
Yes, you read that right. Get your listening caps on! Time to delve into the archives of Vic's Composition years.
This is the first piece I wrote for University. It's one I'm pretty fiercely proud of, too. The lecturer was a completely uninteresting woman who would demand all pieces to be played in class so that we students could "get input". Yet, the only input she seemed to give was to ask what the title was and what it meant.
She was a very accomplished pianist. I can barely get past Three Blind Mice when it comes to playing, so I asked if she would perform this one for me. Well... I don't think the old cow liked being put on the spot with that, because rather than the usual nothingness response she would give, she absolutely tore this one apart. Thanks, it's my first effort. Ever hear of positive reinforcement?
Anyway, despite her comments I like it. And to spite her, when we (our class) toured to another city to perform a selection of our pieces, I scammed this one into the program.
So crank up the listening caps and tell me what you think:
Catastrophe for Piano performed by Georgena Cooper.
This is the first piece I wrote for University. It's one I'm pretty fiercely proud of, too. The lecturer was a completely uninteresting woman who would demand all pieces to be played in class so that we students could "get input". Yet, the only input she seemed to give was to ask what the title was and what it meant.
She was a very accomplished pianist. I can barely get past Three Blind Mice when it comes to playing, so I asked if she would perform this one for me. Well... I don't think the old cow liked being put on the spot with that, because rather than the usual nothingness response she would give, she absolutely tore this one apart. Thanks, it's my first effort. Ever hear of positive reinforcement?
Anyway, despite her comments I like it. And to spite her, when we (our class) toured to another city to perform a selection of our pieces, I scammed this one into the program.
So crank up the listening caps and tell me what you think:
Catastrophe for Piano performed by Georgena Cooper.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Making Music
Dear Dive,
I first started reading you back around the time when I had a solo date with my laptop and anything alcoholic I could lay my hands on for National Drunk Blogging Day. That's coming close to two years ago now.
What really sold me was almost wetting myself while reading a post you wrote on playing New Year's Eve gigs. In the ranty viciously humourous fashion I love to see from you, that piece hit all the right points. While trying to avoid urinal disaster and gasping for air, I just had to keeping saying Bugger it, you're so right! I was sold.
You're amazingly supportive. You comment all the time even if I seem to never answer. It was you who gave me the name Groover. From such a distance you would not believe how much of a positive impact that contact with you has made in my life.
It's important to step back occasionally and think of the positive. You have people who have never met you who love you to pieces - how cool is that?!
I've been meaning to join in your Let's Make a Racket Thursday series since you started it. Yes, it's been an embarrassingly long time, but I'm here now. Just like a drummer I've turned up for the gig eventually.
This is one of my pieces - not a racket as such, but it's here. It's a classical guitar trio written in my first year of Uni (there'll be a few of the Uni days posts coming up - brace yourself). Citrus Twist, performed by myself, Stephen Tafra and Stephen Thorneycroft [aka EphenStephen] in a loungeroom. For performance identification we were usually known as Totally Plucked.
Glad to see you couldn't keep away from Blogville for too long!
Cheers,
Vic
p.s. Eat plenty of curry. If life ever tries to bite you on the arse again at least you can fart back.
I first started reading you back around the time when I had a solo date with my laptop and anything alcoholic I could lay my hands on for National Drunk Blogging Day. That's coming close to two years ago now.
What really sold me was almost wetting myself while reading a post you wrote on playing New Year's Eve gigs. In the ranty viciously humourous fashion I love to see from you, that piece hit all the right points. While trying to avoid urinal disaster and gasping for air, I just had to keeping saying Bugger it, you're so right! I was sold.
You're amazingly supportive. You comment all the time even if I seem to never answer. It was you who gave me the name Groover. From such a distance you would not believe how much of a positive impact that contact with you has made in my life.
It's important to step back occasionally and think of the positive. You have people who have never met you who love you to pieces - how cool is that?!
I've been meaning to join in your Let's Make a Racket Thursday series since you started it. Yes, it's been an embarrassingly long time, but I'm here now. Just like a drummer I've turned up for the gig eventually.
This is one of my pieces - not a racket as such, but it's here. It's a classical guitar trio written in my first year of Uni (there'll be a few of the Uni days posts coming up - brace yourself). Citrus Twist, performed by myself, Stephen Tafra and Stephen Thorneycroft [aka EphenStephen] in a loungeroom. For performance identification we were usually known as Totally Plucked.
Glad to see you couldn't keep away from Blogville for too long!
Cheers,
Vic
p.s. Eat plenty of curry. If life ever tries to bite you on the arse again at least you can fart back.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Peanut Butter Sandwiches at 3am
"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage
It's not every day that you wake up from a dream about the composer John Cage. It's definately not every day that you feel compelled enough to drag yourself out of bed and read more about the man in question. So here's the four in the morning, painkiller-laden peanut butter sandwich eating rundown.
There's a lot of fascinating things the man did, but I guess the most famous is the conception and performance of 4'33", which back in those tragic University music lecture days took me ages to figure out as being the shorthand for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Dumbarse. Apparently there's a few versions of the score getting around, but the most famous one is the Tacet edition. Tacet is the traditional musical term for when a musician does not play for a movement - basically it says Hey mate, just sit this one out. We don't need you for it. So the famous score for 4'33" goes something like this:
Movement I
TACET (30")
Movement II
TACET (2'23")
Movement III
TACET (1'40")
That's a score of the first performance of the piece, performed on piano. The performer signifies the start of the first movement by closing the lid over the keys of the piano, and then lifting it at the end of the allotted time. This occurs for all three movements, with pauses in between. The piece has traditionally been stuck with the title 4'33", even though it can be performed for any instrument, by any any number of performers, for any length of time. You're probably performing it now. Cage himself refers to it as his "silent piece" and writes:
"I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece... for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have published. At one performance... the second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium."
So why is this such a significant piece of music? On the surface it looks more like a theatrical stunt than a serious work. How many university composition students have come to studying Cage, with a composition folio due at the end of the week and thought Asshole! Wish I'd have thought of that! I know I have.
In a way it is making the statement that silence within music is just as important as sound, but there's more. It's about listening. While the performer is silent, the surrounding environment goes on making sound, often going unnoticed.
It challenges the definition of what music actually is. If it isn't pleasing to the ear, is it still music? Where does the definition stop? If you look at a painting and don't like it, is it still art? If the artist intends it to be art, do you challenge it's definition as that?
It's not every day that you wake up from a dream about the composer John Cage. It's definately not every day that you feel compelled enough to drag yourself out of bed and read more about the man in question. So here's the four in the morning, painkiller-laden peanut butter sandwich eating rundown.
There's a lot of fascinating things the man did, but I guess the most famous is the conception and performance of 4'33", which back in those tragic University music lecture days took me ages to figure out as being the shorthand for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Dumbarse. Apparently there's a few versions of the score getting around, but the most famous one is the Tacet edition. Tacet is the traditional musical term for when a musician does not play for a movement - basically it says Hey mate, just sit this one out. We don't need you for it. So the famous score for 4'33" goes something like this:
TACET (30")
Movement II
TACET (2'23")
Movement III
TACET (1'40")
That's a score of the first performance of the piece, performed on piano. The performer signifies the start of the first movement by closing the lid over the keys of the piano, and then lifting it at the end of the allotted time. This occurs for all three movements, with pauses in between. The piece has traditionally been stuck with the title 4'33", even though it can be performed for any instrument, by any any number of performers, for any length of time. You're probably performing it now. Cage himself refers to it as his "silent piece" and writes:
So why is this such a significant piece of music? On the surface it looks more like a theatrical stunt than a serious work. How many university composition students have come to studying Cage, with a composition folio due at the end of the week and thought Asshole! Wish I'd have thought of that! I know I have.
In a way it is making the statement that silence within music is just as important as sound, but there's more. It's about listening. While the performer is silent, the surrounding environment goes on making sound, often going unnoticed.
It challenges the definition of what music actually is. If it isn't pleasing to the ear, is it still music? Where does the definition stop? If you look at a painting and don't like it, is it still art? If the artist intends it to be art, do you challenge it's definition as that?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Mediocrity
I sat down last night to practise some serious classical guitar. Practise of that type, for me, represents an intense need for escapism. I can potentially focus on technical work with a metronome for hours at a time. Although there is a gain involved, I do it for the total focus on that one task that closes the door to any other bullshit that may be going on.
I realised that I haven’t done practise like that for months, or with any regularity for years. Since the days of living with my boyfriend. I do a stint every now and then, but I my focus with respect to guitar seems to be circular. I go through a steel-string phase, then a jazz phase, then a song-writing phase, and whatever takes my fancy. Eventually my focus comes knocking back on the classical door.
Frustratingly, my ear has improved continually over this time. My ability is far behind it and that session of practise was far less of a release than it should have been. So many times I berated myself for not being able to do what I could hear. If I did not value my instrument so highly I would have been wearing it around my knee.
Is this my fate? It seems that I cannot focus enough to achieve my full potential in any one area because there’s so much else to do, so much else to occupy my attention. Am I doomed to mediocrity because of my own diversity?
I realised that I haven’t done practise like that for months, or with any regularity for years. Since the days of living with my boyfriend. I do a stint every now and then, but I my focus with respect to guitar seems to be circular. I go through a steel-string phase, then a jazz phase, then a song-writing phase, and whatever takes my fancy. Eventually my focus comes knocking back on the classical door.
Frustratingly, my ear has improved continually over this time. My ability is far behind it and that session of practise was far less of a release than it should have been. So many times I berated myself for not being able to do what I could hear. If I did not value my instrument so highly I would have been wearing it around my knee.
Is this my fate? It seems that I cannot focus enough to achieve my full potential in any one area because there’s so much else to do, so much else to occupy my attention. Am I doomed to mediocrity because of my own diversity?
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Guitar Pieces
Currently I'm working on:
1) A piece called Partita by Australian composer Roland Chadwick. It's fairly easy going and fits under your fingers nicely, so I'm about two thirds of the way through - of course leaving the beasty bits until last. It's listed as an AMusA piece by the http://www.ameb.edu.au/about/about.htm">AMEB, but I think it shouldn't be graded as that difficult. Maybe there are some nasty little nuances that I'm skipping in learning it.
2) Midnight by Joe Satriani. For anyone who skipped out on the eighties guitar god thing, this is from the definitive album Surfing with the Alien. It's all done by tapping the strings and isn't that difficult except for the speed. I've never really bothered with it before and thought I'd do it now just for the hell of it.
1) A piece called Partita by Australian composer Roland Chadwick. It's fairly easy going and fits under your fingers nicely, so I'm about two thirds of the way through - of course leaving the beasty bits until last. It's listed as an AMusA piece by the http://www.ameb.edu.au/about/about.htm">AMEB, but I think it shouldn't be graded as that difficult. Maybe there are some nasty little nuances that I'm skipping in learning it.
2) Midnight by Joe Satriani. For anyone who skipped out on the eighties guitar god thing, this is from the definitive album Surfing with the Alien. It's all done by tapping the strings and isn't that difficult except for the speed. I've never really bothered with it before and thought I'd do it now just for the hell of it.
Monday, December 4, 2006
9BeetStretch
I read about Leif Inge, this Norwegian composer who has taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony and streched it so that it lasts for 24 hours. Interesting concept. He's done it so that there's no distortion to the original pitches and the bits I've heard are pretty trancey. Nice. Here's the link: http://www.notam02.no/9/
Maybe I should experiment with the opposite - speeding things up. There's two ways I think I could go about it:
One is to take something quite slow and condense it's performance time. This might be interesting to see whether any dance style beats emerge. Maybe that could lead to some sampling. Or it could just be crap.
The other idea is to take a multi movement piece and adjust the length of the movements so that they are exactly the same. Then play all the movements simultaneously (thus drastically reducing the length of the piece). It would be really cool to go multiphonic - have a seperate speaker dedicated to each movement and place the speakers in seperate areas of a room so that as you move about the room you experience different combinations of sound levels.
Really it shouldn't be too hard to do?
If I don't get too frustrated I will post some results!
Maybe I should experiment with the opposite - speeding things up. There's two ways I think I could go about it:
One is to take something quite slow and condense it's performance time. This might be interesting to see whether any dance style beats emerge. Maybe that could lead to some sampling. Or it could just be crap.
The other idea is to take a multi movement piece and adjust the length of the movements so that they are exactly the same. Then play all the movements simultaneously (thus drastically reducing the length of the piece). It would be really cool to go multiphonic - have a seperate speaker dedicated to each movement and place the speakers in seperate areas of a room so that as you move about the room you experience different combinations of sound levels.
Really it shouldn't be too hard to do?
If I don't get too frustrated I will post some results!
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