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You Can’t Outrun Your Daydreams now available on MUSLAB-Complex Planet

This was in the works for most of the fall semester, but I can finally announce that my You Can’t Outrun Your Daydreams has been released on Volume 1 of MUSLAB’s Complex Planet album.

From back in September:

Kyle
MUSLAB International Electroacoustic Music Exhibition is pleased to inform you that your work has been selected to participate in the Phonographic co-production – MUSLAB- Cero Records PLANETA COMPLEJO.
This is an opportunity that we offer to people who have passed the curatorship process and who have chosen the option to participate in the selection for co-production CDs.

Your work as a composer offers an interesting perspective to our musical community, since it combines research and artistic creation proposing a personal aesthetic. Therefore, it fits perfectly with the general interests of the exhibition.

The COMPLEX PLANET exhibition includes a selection of different sound, video art and photographic works, where our different cultural identities are analyzed through the relationship between endemic social processes and globalization. The proposal is based on the fact that a fundamental characteristic, which enables evolution in nature, not only in biological contexts but also in social and cultural ones. Thus, both the endemic and global factors are a guarantee of evolution and adaptability that has to do with the importance of diversity.

Receive a cordial congratulations from the MUSLAB team.

Here’s a copy of the cover of the three-volume set:

Complex Planet/Planeta Complejo is available on all streaming platforms, online at http://www.cero-records.com/release/muslab-planeta-complejo-vol-1·2·3/, or if you’d like a physical copy, I have some left.

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Composition Process paper accepted at the Research on Contemporary Composition conference

Dear Kyle Vanderburg,

Your paper “Inspiration/Perspiration: Creating a Map of the Music Composition Creative Process” has been selected for programming as part of the 7th annual ROCC conference at the University of North Georgia.

All participants must register for the conference.

  • To secure your place in the program, you will need to pay the registration fee before September 17; if you have not paid, we will not plan on your participation. Your purchase of a ticket on Eventbrite is your registration for the event.
  • Due to the quantity/quality of submission – presenters are only allotted one performance or paper, all other submissions were not accepted.

The conference is scheduled for October 27 to October 29, and the program booklet will be sent electronically after the event. Congratulations and we look forward to an engaging conference this year.

Research on Contemporary Composition Conference

This will be fun! I haven’t had a presentation or performance in Georgia yet (but I did drive up from Jacksonville when I was there this spring for CMS).

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Brain Dump: Summer Schedule, Social Media, Scarcity Mindset

Several things that are bouncing around my head these days:

First off, let’s talk about the summer schedule. Hopefully this will be a productive working summer. But in between that work, some interesting projects:

For ten days in June, I’ll be in NYC to help run the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF). I don’t have a piece on the festival this year, I’m just working. That should help me get my mixing, troubleshooting, and gaff-taping fix for the year.

The first week in July, I’ll be teaching Audio Technology at the International Music Camp. Lots of firsts for that one—first time at the International Peace Gardens, first time teaching at IMC, first time using Cubase…

At the beginning of August, I’ll be presenting a paper on composition program curricula at the Aspen Composers Conference. A few days later, I’ll be teaching a seminar on recording technology at NDSU’s Music Education Summer Symposium.

Next: Social media. Ugh. I’ve never really liked it. I feel like I always have to be “On” to use it—as in, everything I post has to be amusing or witty or something more than “I’m eating a sandwich.” I’ve long suspected that it’s the cause of most of our recent societal problems. As I teach freshmen every year, my believe that being constantly catered to by algorithms isn’t healthy. And my recent reading list hasn’t helped things.

Dave Eggers, The Circle

and the sequel that I’ve bought but am too scared to read: The Every

David Heinemeier Hansson’s articles on how it’s hard to escape being ordinary in a connected world and how growing apart and losing touch is human and healthy. That last one really makes you think.

Those led me to this fantastic and fantastically-titled article in the Atlantic: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.

Now, I haven’t gotten out the tinfoil hat and I’m not saying that I agree with everything I’ve just listed. But these things have been on my mind for a while.

This is part of a larger thing I’m going through right now, where I’m realizing that I don’t have to be good at everything. I’m not good at contributing to social media (and consuming it isn’t good for me) and that’s okay.

I’m not good at email either, but that’s a project and a story for another day.

This leads me to my third thing—the scarcity mindset. This came up in Beyond Talent earlier in Entrepreneurship this spring, and it struck the students (and me) differently than usual. For much of grad school and my early academic career, I’d say “Yes” to whatever project or job came my way. And this never really stopped—even though I have full-time employment and several side projects, every time I see a job posting I think “OOH! I could do that too!” Not “instead.” “Too.”

Diversification and risk management are good things, but there’s a point of diminishing returns where you’re spread too thin. I just need to calm down and focus on the plates that are already spinning.

OOH! Or I could go back to school to become a CPA!

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Spring 2022 Events

It’s turning out to be a busy semester! I’m teaching a couple of new-to-me classes—Music Research and Bibliography for the grad students and the Symphonic Literature for both grads and undergrads. These are paired with my normal Music Entrepreneurship, the bassoon part of Woodwind Methods II, and a studio of 13 composers.

Let’s talk about performances. I’ve recently updated the calendar, here’s what’s in store!

February 13: Kelly Burns, Cassie Keogh, and Tyler Wottrich premiere my Letters to the Poetry Editor that came about from my work with the NDSU Press.

March 5-6: We’ll present Letters to the Poetry Editor at the College Music Society Central Conference in Omaha. I’ll also be presenting a paper on composer workflow.

The next weekend, March 11-12, I’ll be in Oklahoma for the College Music Society South Central Conference, where Tempest in a Teakettle will be performed.

March 24-26, I’ll be in St. Petersburg, Florida for the Contemporary Art Music Project’s CAMPGround22, where Tape Piece will be performed.

April 21-23, we’re hosting a new music festival at NDSU, including a couple of concerts as part of our Unity concert series, and then a student and faculty (that’s me!) composers’ recital on the 23rd.

May 1, the NDSU Faculty Woodwind Quintet will play Course of Empire as part of the Fargo Moorhead Symphony Orchestra chamber series.

May 8, the Fargo Moorhead Area Youth Symphonies will premiere my One Sows for the Benefit of Another Age.

Oh, also at some point this semester, the New Rockford-Sheyenne High School Band will be premiering the new Steam Powered Rocket in New Rockford. I’ll update the website and the blog when I get that date.

Hope to see you at one (or several!) of these!

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2021 in review

Things I learned and/or did this year:

  1. I never really understood when classmates (or students) said they were “done” with school. I get it now. Learning is fun, but I have work to do.
  2. It’s hard to balance being a human, a student, a professor, a composer, and a programmer. I have to start curating this down.
  3. I started and finished the Publishing certificate at NDSU. I learned a lot about literary publishing (and saw some book projects to fruition), and it was SO MUCH FUN. I did the program to learn more about music publishing because I thought some things would transfer over, and they do.
  4. I also learned that there’s not much structured learning with music publishing—it’s very much apprenticeship and make-it-up-as-you-go. And if that’s the case, what’s stopping me from making up more stuff?
  5. I started making up publishing stuff for my students.
  6. Are we going to start a music publishing certificate in ND? No. Are we going to nudge composers to work with the NDSU Press to get some experience in publishing? Very yes.
  7. I proposed and implemented a new BM Composition program (the first in the Dakotas), which was either the product of or the cause of taking a full-time position at NDSU.
  8. Hey, conferences are a thing again! I presented a piece at the College Music Society national conference in Rochester, NY, and at the first Jacksonville Electronic Music Festival in Florida. I also did my annual appearance at the Aspen Composers Conference.
  9. My parents decided to move to North Dakota—this one is still in progress.
  10. I started using Johnny Decimal as an organizational system, and I think it’s working.
  11. I paid off my student loans.
  12. I stopped buying stuff from Amazon. This was easier than I thought it would be. I have lots to say about this later.
  13. I moved my cloud computing to Microsoft Azure.
  14. I got new headshots made (stay tuned!) and had my sheet music covers redesigned.
  15. We adopted another cat, Lorraine.
  16. I only wrote three pieces, which is embarrassing. But I like them all, so that’s good.
  17. I took on a piece for adaptable instrumentation (flex band) and electronics, which has been a whole new experience.
  18. We installed new livestreaming equipment at NDSU.
  19. I learned how to use printing equipment from the 1880s.
  20. I learned that I like to use printing equipment from the 1880s.
  21. I found out how much money it costs to buy printing equipment from the 1880s.
  22. I found out how much money it costs to find out you’re probably lactose intolerant. But as a bonus I found out I don’t have gluten sensitivity. Either way, I still can’t have pizza.
  23. I learned that you can do whatever you want to do with commas, as long as you’re consistent. I also learned that I still don’t know how to properly use semicolons.
  24. I learned that the drive from Red Lodge, MT to Aspen, CO is something like 14 hours of mostly 2-lane roads and gravel. Only like 100 miles of that are interstate.
  25. I had two VCSU students apply and get in to grad schools in Composition.
  26. Trying to remember everything from the year in the week after Christmas is hard, and next year I’ll be making an ongoing list.
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The teacher becomes the student.

The more I’ve composed, and the more I’ve taught music, the more I realize that there’s just so much interesting stuff out there to learn, a lot of which intersects with music composition. Psychology of creativity, business administration, critical theory, aesthetics, higher education administration–these are all things that sound terribly interesting.

Cassie’s work at NDSU affords me a half-tuition waiver, so this spring I decided to become a bison. An entire degree seemed like a bit much given the rest of my workload, but some of our graduate certificate offerings seemed like a good place to start. The most logical, I reasoned, was the graduate certificate in Publishing, which is offered through the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science working through the North Dakota State University Press. Even though NDSU’s press is a literary press, the business side of things and the publishing process would be the same as it is in music publishing. After all, everything I know about publishing music is from 1) trial and error or 2) things I read on the internet.

I had to check my transcript, but even though I defended my dissertation in May of 2014, the last seated class I took was Dr. Ken Stephenson’s Bartok, Prokofiev, Chicago in the summer of 2013. So, seven years after being a student, here I am again, this time with experience from the other side of the classroom.

So we’re over halfway through: here’s how it’s going. For starters, it’s the first time I’ve been in a class in a while where I haven’t been in charge. This is great, in some ways it’s like a mini-vacation in the middle of the day. Make no mistake, it’s real work. But it’s nice to follow instead of leading for a bit.

There’s a ton of reading:

It looks like a lot, but it doesn’t seem like a lot. Maybe part of it is because it’s real, actual work. These are live projects. The poetry acquisitions project will result in us picking one of those books of poetry to publish. The novel will be printed with my edits. The advance review copy needs someone to proofread it. Everything we do in class matters.

My graduate project for this class involves creating an online music publishing boot camp.

This has made me think of quite a few things, to come later.

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Irons in the Fire

As the semester started, I hoped that things would be calmer than the fall, and thankfully in most ways they are. In some ways, however, there’s more work. Here’s a list of some of the things on my radar this spring, some moving into next fall and further.

  • At NDSU: I’m part of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Course Curation Committee, which is looking at how to update/streamline some college requirements.
  • At NDSU: I’m continuing as a member of the NICE Faculty Fellows, which promotes and explores Entrepreneurship.
  • At NDSU: As part of the NICE center, I’m also helping out with the Civic Innovation Force, which will pair students with the City of Fargo to solve problems.
  • Through NICE I’ve happened to get involved with a project to promote nanotechnology by writing music about nanotechnology. It’s supported by an NSF grant.
    • To Do: Learn how nanotechnology works.
  • NASA is interested in linking to Calibrating the Moon on the Arcstone project website.
  • I have two recording projects in the works.
  • I’m negotiating a commission of a new large ensemble piece–details forthcoming.
  • I’m negotiating a consortium for a second piece very similar to the first one, and writing a grant.
    • To Do: Learn to write a grant. Before Friday.
  • I had these grand plans to start work on an opera this year, and I still might.
  • Then there’s that clarinet choir piece.
  • I’m giving a faculty recital in a week and a half.
  • The composition studio is giving a Student Composers Recital in March.
  • I’ll likely be doing some bassooning in Wind Symphony this semester.
  • Two CMS regional conferences, in Tennessee and Michigan (and a third performance in Arkansas)
  • SEAMUS National at the University of Virginia.

Oof.

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Why the Clarinet Choir piece isn’t done yet.

I’m writing a piece for the NDSU Clarinet Choir, which they’ll perform at ClarinetFest 2020 in Reno, Nevada. Well, I mean, I’m not actually writing it this very minute, I’m writing this blog post. But I have been writing it. Except when I haven’t been. Which has been a lot.

This post isn’t so much a list of excuses so much as it is an exploration into the creative procrastination that goes into writing.

I didn’t want to start the piece until January–I finished the percussion quartet in mid-December, and wanted to take a break. By the time I ended up getting back to Fargo and got settled in, it was already the 10th, with classes starting the following Monday.

I had no idea what the clarinet choir piece was going to look like, so the first several days of writing were just bouncing ideas around. I ended up with this weird musical line in my head, which reminded me of some song I heard in college, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t ripping it off. That resulted in several days of trying to remember what that song was.

It ended up being Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men. And the line stuck in my head ended up resembling this not at all. Score one for me.

Also this video is trippy.

Of Monsters And Men – Little Talks (Official Video)

So that line I heard, I still haven’t worked into the piece, because every time I start thinking about where it could fit in, it merges with MacArthur Park. I had never actually listened to the lyrics of MacArthur park until I listened through trying to figure out where it fit in.

Also the lyrics are trippy.

Richard Harris   MacArthur Park

Part of this time has been spent looking for other clarinet choir pieces.

Crickets.

There’s a lot of transcriptions, but not a lot of pieces originally for clarinet choir. So inspiration is scarce. The NDSU Clarinet Choir will be playing Schickele’s Monochrome III and Curtis’s Klezmer Triptych, so I know what else is on the program.

And I almost know how this piece is going to go too.

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First Faculty Recital

After two and a half years, I’m finally giving my first faculty recital at NDSU, featuring all music written in North Dakota.

The planned program is:

The Notes Between The Notes – My song cycle featuring poems by Jamie Parsley. Michelle Gelinske (who premiered the cycle nearly a year ago) wasn’t able to perform in February, so Dr. Kelly Burns, our new voice faculty member, will be performing the cycle with Dr. Amy Mercer.

Next up is the world premiere of Tape Piece, a tape piece featuring…tape sounds.

We’ll round out the evening with the world premiere of Calibrating the Moon, commissioned and premiered by Connor Challey, and featuring Dr. Tyler Wottrich on piano.

The recital poster also features North Dakota:

I hope to see you at Beckwith Recital Hall at NDSU, on February 10 at 7:30 PM!

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Three New Pieces

Over the past month or so, three new pieces have shown up on the website. Together, they represent 40 minutes of new music.

So working backwards, Calibrating the Moon is a tuba sonata written for Connor Challey. No media or score (partially because it’s a commission, and partially because issuu has decided to start charging for embedded documents), but there’s a program note. This work will be premiered nearly next month at NDSU.

Also receiving its premiere next month is Tape Piece, which is a tape piece (like stereo fixed media) about and using tape (like scotch and duct). Unlike Calibrating the Moon it does have media. It’ll also receive its premiere next month, but given that it’s tape, you can hear it in all its glory right now if you’d like.

Finally comes Four Views of the Butterfly Effect, which is a commission from the MinusOne Quartet, and which was a pain to write. I’ll dive into an explanation of it a little later. No program note, score, OR media at the moment, because all I have are mock-ups.

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Kyle Vanderburg