36.) Thought Power January 8, 2014

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The upper staff of Thought Power cycles through all the transpositions of Messiaen's fourth mode, changing each bar.  The lower staff is composed of the second mode, and is an increasing equal division of the measure.  It starts with a whole note, and adds a note until there are seven equal divisions, then it reduces until we are back to two.  (It's much easier to see this on the score, than for me to explain it.)

I enjoyed this concept of dividing the bar equally in increasing numbers, all played underneath a steady succession of 16th notes.  However, I knew it would be a problem to play, given the amount of time I had.  I must confess that I estimated the placement of the notes.  If I had the time, I could have calculated precisely where the notes should be placed with some math.  Instead I listened to the computer play the piece, and made some annotations as to the approximate placement of the notes.  I think this worked fairly well.  I'm not a machine, and I don't really want to play like one anyway.  I like this tempo, but a faster tempo would also be fun.  Give me a few weeks.    

I've been reading Play of Conciousness by Swami Muktananda, who was a guru in the Siddha Yoga tradition.  So I have been thinking a lot about meditation, mantra, and the mind, etc.  And the other morning I was walking the dog, and I walked by someone who was smoking a cigarette.  And wow did I ever have some less than pleasant thoughts for this fellow.  And I realized in that moment, that my reaction to this guy was the problem, not him, or even the fact that he was smoking.  It was me.  I took a harmless situation, and made it my problem, and he was just a dude smoking!  If I hadn't reacted to him in that way, I would have been at peace.  And I noticed that day, riding the subway and walking around NYC, how often I am making a problem for myself out of other people, and other things.  I don't think I'm the only person who navigates this city in this way.  What a terrible sickness!   We are prisoners.  I am now attempting to avoid those thoughts which make unnecessary problems out of nothing.  If I can't avoid them, I've written a mantra that I will repeat when I begin to have these thoughts.  Our state of mind is completely determined by our reactions and our thoughts.  Thought power!

35.) White Light January 4, 2014

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What did this guy do with a snow day you ask?  Get caught up on his composition project!  Man it would be nice to regularly have this much time to devote to this sort of thing.

White Light is what I would call a bastardization of Messiaen's modes.  He created them partially to get himself away from conventional harmony, and here I am forcing conventional harmony into them.  This actually has brought some thoughts on innovation to the surface.  First let me explain the piece.

It uses Messiaen's seventh mode, which is essentially a chromatic scale, minus two pitches.  A month or two ago, when playing around with the modes, I discovered that mode seven can be viewed as two major pentatonic scales a tritone a part.  In the case of White Light, the two pentatonic scales are C and G flat.  Pentatonic scales are very natural and are used melodically in an incredible variety of genres - blues, jazz, pop, funk, traditional asian music.  They are truly a world scale.  Check out this video of Bobby McFerrin demonstrating the universality of the pentatonic scale.

I've been feeling like I just want to play country tunes lately, so I happily helped myself to these pentatonics, and found some other nice things, such as the D7 and Ab7 chords, in mode seven as well.   Generally speaking, the A sections of the piece are in C major and the B section is in G flat major.  The tricky part of this is that complete IV and V chords can't be constructed within the mode.  There were a number of times when the IV chord was begging to be used, and I had to avoid it.  In one sense this problem is nice, as my project is forcing me to go into different directions.  But in another sense, I might have created a better piece if I hadn't been following these pesky rules, and was instead being guided by my uninhibited instincts and preferences.  Therefor I don't think this piece is truly a good manifestation of the project, but I do like it, and sometimes a little contrast is needed to keep me sane.

Now onto innovation.  White Light is one of those pieces that I feel quite self-conscious about posting.  I think of these heroes of mine who are constantly pushing forward, and wonder if they would be displeased with this one because it's not pushing.  Being trained as a jazz musician, and being part of the more progressive faction of the scene in NYC, I've been bathed in this idea of innovation.  There's a constant emphasis on pushing forward and finding new sounds, and I have to wonder where that came from and if it's really a good thing.

In our scene, it's easy to lay the blame for many issues on jazz eduction.  However, in the case of innovation, I can't really see it to be at fault.  If anything jazz education encourages stylization - imitating the playing of master musicians.  But if you get out of school and enter the music world trying to follow in the footsteps of jazz giants, you can either copy their notes literaly, copy their career trajectories - most often as innovators, or by some grace forge some kind of new original path.  I think the later two result in a desire to be an innovator.  Don't copy Coltrane's music, but imitate his career by pushing forward, expanding, searching.  It could also be said that jazz is innovative by nature.  It's a melting pot of influences in any time period of its history.  But really, what art isn't just that?

Personally, I felt drawn to more avant-garde music after leaving school to a large degree out of fear.  I  didn't feel competent in playing straight-ahead jazz because I didn't think I had the necessary command of the harmony, melody, or even rhythm.  But playing dissonant weird music was something I could potentially do without requiring that command.  As I've matured, I've concluded that those elements are not what's most important.  Rather honesty is most important.  It's more important for me as a listener to hear someone truly connecting to the music, even if they lack "perfect" rhythm, or amazing harmonic language, or if the music isn't innovative.

I still love hearing new things, but not at the expense of honesty.  That's why I make it a rule to like what I compose.  Not all of my pieces are the best, but if by the end of the process I'm still not connecting to the piece, I'll abandon it.  And I really enjoy the feeling of connecting to listeners when I perform.   A key element of connecting to an audience, is connecting to the music yourself, especially if it's adventurous music.  I'm no longer feeling like everything I do needs to strive for innovation.

A few years ago I had a long conversation with drummer Vinnie Sperrazza about innovation.  He despises the word, saying it is only a marketing gimmick.  I couldn't fully understand his point of view at the time, but I wonder if he was going through a similar process as I'm going through now.  Perhaps he was freeing himself of this need to do constantly something brand new.

The bottom line for me is that honesty and love are the most important factors in the composing and performing of music.  If it's forward-looking, that's fine.  If it's not, that's fine too.  Just so that the composer and performer believe in it.

34.) Old Aristocracy January 2, 2014

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Welcome to 2014.  I didn't compose last week because of the holidays.  One of these weeks I'll manage to get two pieces done.  52 is the goal, and I'm committed to getting there.

Old Aristocracy was composed rather quickly.  The idea kind of came bursting forth.  Later I realized that the idea was from Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor, which I had listened to earlier in the week.  Do a comparison listening, and you can't miss the similarity.  Ironically, I've never been a huge Rachmaninoff fan.  To me his music has a "more is more" kind of flavor, and I'm usually drawn to the "less is more" stuff.  I don't deny his importance, but the overstated nature of his music is usually not my taste.  I'm sure he's got understated stuff is well....  I must admit though that his Prelude is sticking with me, especially since I – subconsciously at first – spun his idea into a piece.

Also ironically, I would have to say that Messiaen is also somewhat of a "more is more" composer.  Again there are exceptions to that statement, but a lot of his stuff is big and pretty flashy.  However I'm not bothered by it in his music because it almost always sounds like radiant light or something, and his modes have such a unique and fascinating flavor.  His music arouses my curiosity.

Anyway, Old Aristocracy uses two transpositions of the octatonic scale.  The upper staff chords are constructed of one, and the lower staff bass notes of another.  After composing with these modes for thirty-four weeks now, they are starting to come out more naturally, which is nice.  It was enjoyable to play kind of big and flashy on this recording.

33.) Kamu December 20, 2013

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Kamu features a couple of modes.  The upper staff is composed of the fifth mode of limited transposition.  This is the one I find most difficult to use.  But I enjoy this line.  Every 4 measure, I raised the line a diatonic step (diatonic for that mode).  Because this scale is made of half steps, and major thirds, raising the line results in drastically different intervals.  The lower staff chords are created out of a transposition of the 3rd mode, and each 4 bar section is a non-retrogradable rhythm.
Kamu is Japanese for "To Chew."

This will likely be the final post of 2013.  Thanks for checking out the project.  Happy Holidays.

31.) Immaculate 7-11 December 13, 2013

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Well, this is something different.  This piece uses two transpositions of Messiaen's fourth mode.  The chords really do not make full use of the mode at all.  Rather, I found a more conventional couple of chords, and got stuck on them.  I decided to go with them.  The sound is not at all what I imagined to be happening in this project, but I feel somewhat refreshed by it.  While recording it I realized how much it sounds like some of the extended vamps from the Keith Jarrett Trio Blue Note box set, which I listened to extensively years ago.  Life is circular I guess.

It takes some courage to post this because it's a different side of me, one that I don't show so often, and haven't shown at all in this project.  But it is a part of me.  Just because I've spent years now avoiding presenting this sort of thing, doesn't mean it's not there somewhere inside wanting to be let out from time to time.

The title really has nothing to do with the music this time.  Rather, it's just a phrase that my friend and colleague Kirk Knuffke coined the other day when referring to the new 7-11 that opened in the neighborhood.  There was a time in my life when the opening of a 7-11 would have excited the hell out of me.  When I played in the Disney College Band, I used to get a 44 ounce cherry slurpee every day.  My poor liver.  I can't believe I'm still alive.  Now I find the new 7-11 to be a bit of a drag.  Something much cooler could have opened there.  I would be happier with a local business of some kind.  But, hey, you can't win them all....

30.) Reach December 6, 2013

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This is the second edition of this piece.  At first the line was played slowly, and there was an additional line which utilized several Messiaen techniques superimposed underneath it.  It was a lot of work, but in the end I wasn't feeling it.  So I began to mess around with the top line alone, and realized that it was a lot of fun to play as a medium/up tempo blues.  The line is composed of three transpositions of Messiaen's sixth mode.  The tritone interval is blatantly over used, which is fun.  For my solo, I attempted to use the scales, but didn't hold myself to them rigidly.

The title refers to our perception as performing musicians.  We want to play for people, and it can be discouraging when you have light attendance at a concert.  But perhaps the energy we are putting out goes beyond the people in the room with us.  Perhaps it is only our limited viewpoint that says one must be in the room to experience art.

29.) Temperance November 27, 2013

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Upon looking for inspiration, I listened to a little of Messiaen's organ music.  In fact, I heard about 30 seconds of his Prélude pour orgue and that was enough to send me off.  The stuff is so great.  I took some of the opening chords, analyzed them, and concluded that they were derived from two transpositions of mode two.  So, I decided to do the same in my piece.

It started out with definite shifts between the two modes, the chords are of one or the other.  But as I worked on the melody, I found that the notes of one of the modes sounded irresistible over the chords of the other, and I indulged.  So the piece is a progression from shifting modes to simultaneous modes.  I have to admit I love that sound.

Today I had the day off from teaching, so I was able to work on this piece this afternoon - a different time than usual.  It's a dark rainy day today as I was yesterday, and I found myself crabby and barely able to stay awake while making the score.  After I finished, I had to title the piece so I could save it, which is most often when the title is added.  I was trying to think of a word to describe light protruding from the gloom, because I find these Messiaen chords so illuminating.  But nothing was coming.  Then in a flash I realized that I was crabby and tired because I over ate, and was reminded of Ben Franklin's Virtues that I have recently read about in his Autobiography.  I highly recommend that book.  Anyway, Temperance is the first of the virtues, which are followed in order.  Franklin says one must master Temperance before moving onto Silence, etc.  His description for Temperance reads, "Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation."  So here I was feeling the effects of ignoring the first virtue.  And how fitting that this is the day before Thanksgiving, when most Americans will ignore it as well.  I will make a valiant attempt to not forget Ben Franklin's first virtue tomorrow.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.  I'm thankful that you've checked out this project.