What's this? I haven't blogged since I waxed poetically about my automated music delivery engine!? This must change at once!
It is the nature of composing that I blog when I'm not composing, and I compose when I'm not blogging. Since I've not been blogging, I must have been composing, right? (pay no attention to the fact that I watched the first four seasons of NCIS in their entirety this summer). But, as it turns out, I HAVE been composing this summer, just not as much as (and weirder than) normal.
I spent the beginning of the summer recovering from The Thesis, and while looking through my folder of “things I haven't finished but probably should someday,” I discovered an orchestra piece that I'd tried to write back in 2008. The work, with the working titles of “Post Tenebras Lux” (after darkness, light) and (as I became more frustrated with it,) “Asinus ad Lyram” (an ass to the lyre), was intended to be my Opus 7, but the work never came together properly during undergrad.
So in June, I dust this piece off and try to shape it into something new. That is, after I spent several days wondering “what was I thinking?” Such is the norm for looking at old compositions I suppose. After a few weeks of doing some extensive musical renovation, I discovered what the piece needed to be. I needed to write a choose-your-own-adventure orchestra piece.
You read that right.
I've thought of applying the choose-your-own-adventure idea (normally seen in books) to music, but I've never discovered how I could make it work. I'm still not convinced that I'm staying true to the concept, but here's what I'm doing. I've taken the aforementioned orchestra piece (which currently clocks in at around six minutes), and doubled the instrumentation (For example, Flute I A and Flute I B). Most of the original music is given to the “A” instruments, and I've written new B material that both fits in with the A material and can stand alone. So really, I've written a 12-minute orchestra piece and folded it in half. Or I've written a six-minute work for double orchestra.
Of course, the plan is that an audience will only hear half the work at any performance. (I suppose if a large orchestra wanted to play the original double-orchestration work, they could). The idea is that a conductor will study the work, pick the sections that meet the aesthetic of the concert, and program it that way (For example, from the beginning to Reh. H, play A parts, from H to O, play B parts, from O to the end play A). Or, if a conductor wanted more fine tuning, the work could be programmed “At section H, everyone play A except for Oboe I, who will play the solo written in part B” Or, for something a little more indeterminate, the conductor could say “everyone play whatever part they want”.
I call it Some Assembly Required.
Of course, this produces a number of challenges. Like writing two different pieces that can stand alone and be combined with each other with no problems. Or convincing Sibelius that “yes, I really do want to do this.” Or explaining this all to an orchestra. (yeeeeah, I'm not looking forward to that part).
Meanwhile, I'm working on an acousmatic work titled “Creatures from the Black Bassoon”. Thank you Steven Eiler for that title.
Also meanwhile, I've done some upgrades to my home office/studio. I switched my old Wal-Mart surround sound system with a pair of Mackie MR5MK2's, bought a Zoom H2 for recording, picked up a copy of MaxMSP, and upgraded to Sibelius 7 (well, eventually. They're backordered on physical copies). I also think I was one of those people who bought an HP Touchpad. Because it's shiny.
I ran into a problem on January 12. I was in Stillwater, Oklahoma (no, that wasn't the problem) at a reading session by the Michigan-based Brave New Works ensemble. They were getting ready to perform a reading of my Salvation, for piano trio, but the cellist had forgotten (lost, left elsewhere, etc) the cello part, which is quite important if one is interested in performing the work on cello. I hadn't thought to bring extra parts, so all I had was a score. Luckily, we quickly remembered that I had originally sent the parts via email, so it was just a matter of finding a computer with internet and a printer. The day was saved by Gmail. But still, I wondered how I could prevent such a problem in the future. For example, what if the aforementioned cellist had deleted the email? What if we couldn't find a computer with internet access and a printer? (Which could be a significant problem, seeing as most institutions like OSU require logins and have print quotas and such.) I worry about these things.
A separate conversation that seems to be recently ongoing is the relevancy of present art music. Or, put in question form, how do we keep attracting audiences? Is art music still relevant? I think part of that answer lies with technology, specifically the digital promotion of our analog art form. While the rest of the world is tweeting and facebooking, sheet music still largely exists in the physical world. While physical goods are great (As Zappa said, people like to own stuff), digital goods move quicker. I'm immediately reminded of the way Nonesuch handles their releases. For example, I have John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony album preordered, which consists of an immediate digital download paired with a physical CD. Does anyone do this with sheet music? (serious question, I really don't know).
So back to my problem with parts. I suppose the easiest solution could be to carry all parts (either digital or physical) with me all the time, but that only works if I'm at the performance. What about dumping everything to a directory at kylevanderburg.net? Well, the unfortunate downside to that is access control, or how to prevent the links from going public and allowing everyone access to all of your music. You know, it would be easier to just make a list. Here's what I needed:
I'm sure there are several great, established systems out there for doing this. But of course, I had to build this one myself. And here's how.
The NoteForge Hammer Music Management System is almost entirely composition-driven, meaning that (nearly) every piece of data within the system is tied to a composition. The first step in creating this download/permission/distribution system (which is temporarily called the partslinger until I come up with a better name) was to create a file storage database. This component allows me to upload a file (which is stored in a directory that doesn't allow direct downloads), specify which composition to which it belongs, and whether it is a score, part, or audio file.
The permissions database becomes more difficult due to the security of the system. It essentially asks for an email address, what composition is allowed, and how many days the permission is allowed. The system then calculates a variety of secure hashes which are used in the following steps.
The last two parts, the download management pages and the download delivery system are where all the fun happens. The download management page (which is dynamically generated for each user that has a permission in the system) runs through a series of loops that determines what permissions the user has, and therefore what files are allowed. Then ,by using data from the file storage and permissions database, the page creates dynamically generated download links. The main page looks remarkably like http://noteforge.com/downloads/ed705a791e1d426edb8c4fa1acf3cba2/.
In addition, knowing that such a system may be useful at some point for distributing parts for a large ensemble (who could download the parts, but shouldn't need access to the score), a second, “public” download link is generated, like http://parts.noteforge.com/3acf6e80686b9065bf4a61903895defa/.
All of these pages provide wonderful links like this one:
No, that link doesn't really work, because of this next part:
Finally, the download delivery script takes that download.noteforge.com link, parses all of the information, checks against the databases, finds the file in secure storage, invalidates the old link, creates a new link for future use, and delivers the file.
Useful? Very. Interesting? For about two of you, yes. But hopefully this will spark conversation about the use of technology in the promotion of art music.
And besides, now I get to save money on stamps.
As it turns out, I passed my thesis defense. Four months of writing and stress and coffee, and the entire defense lasted roughly thirty-five minutes. Aside from a few issues in the wording of my abstract, there weren't many changes.
Almost immediately I started sending out perusal copies, hopefully someone will pick it up and want to play it. Meanwhile, I've taken it easy the past three weeks as I wrapped up the semester and, you know, graduated. I'm hoping to get back to writing in the next few weeks now that I have my summer schedule set. I think another piano piece is in the works. Or perhaps a string quartet. Suggestions? Send them my way.
I think it's done. I mean, it certainly looks done. All the notes are (supposedly) in the right places, all the margins are set, the paper is ordered, and the Graduate College gets a copy of it tomorrow to approve the defense of it. My committee gets a copy of it Monday morning, which means I'm spending the weekend putting together a MIDI realization of the entire thing.
And then I defend a week from tomorrow.
Is it time to start panicking yet?
It is terrifying to think that this piece is going to be done in less than three weeks. It's well on its way, with about half of it orchestrated and in Sibelius, but there's still plenty of work to be done with dynamics and accents on the front half and orchestration/scoring/Sibeliusing on the back half. That's the project for this weekend.
Earlier this week I ran into the now-obvious problem of having 16 channels of available sound, but having 44 staves (and therefore needing 44 channels). I eventually solved this by running multiple copies of the Garritan/Plogue ARIA engine. I'm using Garritan COMB2 (Concert and Marching Band) for my brass and sax sounds, Garritan GPO4 (Personal Orchestra) for my woodwinds and piano, and the built-in Sibelius soundset for percussion. So my audio playback device window looks like this:
I would show what my mixer window looks like, but I don't believe it will fit here.
There is still no word on the paper-size issue, which I hope gets cleared up this week. It would be nice to produce a thesis that can be, you know, read by humans. Until then, I'll continue to compose on tabloid-sized paper.
And here's what the score looks like, 21 days out: http://kylevanderburg.net/thesis/Tempest-Day21.pdf
Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote, I was trying out a new download system and rebuilding a harpsichord. I’m still in the middle of both projects, but for right now my time is occupied doing something quite different than programming or woodwork.
As part of the strangeness that is the graduate music composition curriculum, I have to present a recital of original works (which happened on March 6, and you can listen to it here), and I have to write a significant large composition as a thesis. And of course, this being academia, there are plenty of forms to fill out and plenty of deadlines, but the important deadline right now is the date of my defense: April 29. This leaves 25 days in which to finish writing and orchestrating a 13-minute piece for symphonic band, a piece named Tempest.
So, I thought, to take up time, I’d write about it. Perfect sense, huh?
My initial idea for Tempest was as an orchestra piece, but it appears to be notoriously difficult to get new orchestral music played. The wind band genre on the other hand is less populated and full of players wanting to try new playing techniques and notation. The first several minutes of the work are quasi-aleatoric and use proportional notation (music in free time, without a time signature). Due to the nature of this notation, I chose to orchestrate a great deal of the material by hand rather than convince Sibelius to write such alien notation (though it should be said that I’ve since notated this opening section in Sibelius and it looks fine).
The act of writing a composition thesis is especially unique in two ways that immediately come to mind. One, with a little change in margins and pagination, the work will be ready for publishing after it is completed and defended, which can’t always be said for prose theses. The other issue is that the document is not a prose thesis, and forcing a 37-stave piece of music into the “normal” 8.5” by 11” size paper is an adventure in spacing. I have asked the graduate college about the possibility of submitting an oversized thesis, but I’ve yet to hear an official answer.
So the state of Tempest, 25 days out, can be described as being partially-orchestrated and partially notated. In the next three weeks we’ll watch as it becomes a full-fledged piece. Well, I guess you’ll watch and I’ll panic.
I’ll try to post pictures and score samples tomorrow.
One of my favorite things about writing music is the freedom to do a variety of things that are related to music, but not directly related to composing. I’ve written in this blog many times about the website-related issues that come with self-publishing and self-hosting (and I’ll get to a similar topic soon) but recently I’ve had an opportunity that is not quite normal, even by composer standards.
Fellow composer Steven Eiler somehow received a harpsichord. Or rather, a harpsichord-shaped object. I’m not quite sure how this harpsichord came into Steven’s possession, but considering that he keeps a clavichord in his apartment I’ve found it best to just not ask questions. As neither of us have any experience restoring baroque instruments, we thought it would be a brilliant idea to restore this one. Restore, rebuild, whatever. We had no idea what we were getting into.
Step one in restoring a harpsichord is to acquire said harpsichord, and this requires a roadtrip to Tulsa. That is, if aforementioned harpsichord is in Tulsa. So, we made a weekend trip to Tulsa, full of tacos and music and watching True Grit (which has a marvelous soundtrack) and packing up the (absolutely unplayable) harpsichord.
So we deliver the instrument to my dining room, and take the first real look at it. It appears to be a kit harpsichord, fairly well made, but whether or not it has ever been playable is beyond either of us. It has, however, been used as a plant stand, indicated by the large dark stain on the lid and soundboard. This is how we feel about the project so far:
Besides the cosmetic issues, we didn’t know how much work this project would require. We knew that the instrument didn’t play, but we didn’t know how or why. Of course, we also didn’t know how or why a harpsichord is supposed to play…
We started by removing all the jacks—that is, the part of the action that plucks the string. Many of these are in need of significant adjustment and replacement. But at least we have all of them!
Other than some problems with the action and some minor structural and cosmetic issues, this instrument should be soon be playable. Staining the instrument a dark walnut may be an option, or perhaps a baroque-style paint job. I like the idea of painting it red with a racing stripe.
Beyond the harpsichord project, I’ve also been working on a download management utility for selling sheet music, MP3s, and other music files. It is in the process of being tested, and will probably become part of the Hammer Music Management System within the next few months. It’s this ridiculously complicated system of secure links and permissions that expire and hidden file names. I’ll likely mention more about it as it’s developed into a workable thing.