The new semester is off to a great start, and thanks to a bunch of work I put in this winter to streamline my lesson planning, I'm finding more time for creative projects. In an attempt to update the blog more, I'm planning on doing a monthly review of the projects I'm working on. So let's get started!
New IMPROV! Century Ensemble
After an 18-month hiatus, OU has chosen to re-launch the New Improv Century Ensemble (N!CE) with equal focus on established improv repertoire, new works by OU composers, and laptop ensemble experimentation. We've had a healthy showing so far, and our fearless leader Joshua Tomlinson has plans for us to play Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 4, if only we can find enough radios.
As part of that ensemble, I'm writing a piece for audience participation and computing cloud, creatively titled CloudMusic. I'm still finessing the details and the interface, but what I envsion is that the audience will create “clouds” by selecting variables in a web interface, and a performance computer running Max 7 will poll the computing cloud to render those “clouds”shortly after. The performance interface in Max is adorable:
Saxophone and Fixed Media Piece
I have a commission sitting on my desk for Andrew Allen at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, that I spent a lot of work on last semester. Unfortunately I'm not terribly happy with the interaction between the saxophone and fixed media, so I'll be doing substantial work to that piece in February.
Norton Lecture Series: Inspiration/Perspiration: Exploring the Creative Process
As part of OU's Norton Lecture Series, I'm working on a presentation on the creative process and how we teach the creative process, especially as it relates to Music Composition. It's been simmering for six months, and I'm in the process of writing it as we speak, or at least I should be writing it but I'm updating the blog… February 22: 5pm at OU-Catlett Music Center 131.
Oklahoma Student Composers Workshop: A Keynote I Need To Title and Write.
The composition students at OU are working on creating a statewide student composers workshop, a statewide forum for composition students to get together and discuss their music and issues in their field and in Oklahoma specifically. I've been asked to give the keynote speech, which will likely involve composer marketing. February 18: 10am at OU-Catlett Music Center Pitman Recital Hall.
That's it for right now…off to work!
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and for the past three years or so I've used that as an excuse to cofound “Creativity November” among my friends in Norman. The rules are simple: Like NaNoWriMo, during the month of November you must start and complete a creative work of your choosing. The planning can occur before November, but the actual work has to take place during the month. If the work is completed by the time we meet for our annual December Third meal, you win. If you don't finish, you owe the rest of the participants a cake.
My project this year was a piece I created the title first (Tempest in a Teakettle), and recorded my stove for an abnormally long time. And my teakettle. I already had a good number of water and storm noises from across the country, and the bulk of the work was just whipping fairly tame storms into an epic tempest. And then I ran a storm siren through a granular sampler and annoyed my neighbors. The resulting eight-minute piece is my first in four-channel surround, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Of course, like many of my recent pieces, I asked Walter Jordan for a program note, and he delivered a beautiful one.
‘Tempest in a Teakettle’ uses a common household scene to explore the universal feeling of watching small problems grow. As the title suggests, we often minimize these problems, and are left watching and waiting as they compound silently within us. ‘Waiting’ is explored in several ways throughout, and uses the medium to augment these daily dramas until we will allow ourselves to view them center-stage.
As the piece begins, we listen to the ritual of a kettle being filled and placed on a stove. The ring of metal and the hiss of the burner are stretched into storm winds as the listener is drawn down into the kettle. Where we were waiting for the kettle to boil, we are now waiting for the approaching rain.Pressure builds, and a palette of familiar storm sounds beat against the sonic space, ushered in by the tornado siren which will haunt the background. The tempest is in full force, even though it is built of milder layers: light rains and distant thunder recorded across the United States layered on top of one another until they slosh from one side of the space to the other. A feeling as familiar on the plains as on the coast, we are now waiting for the storm to pass.
The siren, which has since been drowned out in the wind and rain, reasserts itself. The wail is distorted and layered into shifting harmonies, striking a balance between a lull and a claxon. Through these elements, we explore the sense of obsession that comes from being kept constantly on alert. Fears become disassociated and aimless, until only the waiting itself remains. We are waiting—now that the storm is over—for whatever comes next.
In perfect time to interrupt the cycle, the tea kettle set to boil at the start begins to whistle. The pinging inside as it is removed from the heat echoes that of rain on a tin roof, heard earlier. Just like the sonic manipulations alter and extend the soundscape of the piece, the unease of waiting blurs the sense of scale between the tempest and the teakettle.
And the abbreviated note:
The title suggests the small problems we consider on a daily basis, waiting as they build within us. ‘Waiting’ is explored in several ways throughout, and uses the medium to augment these daily dramas until we will allow ourselves to view them center-stage.
After being introduced to the teakettle in which we’ll be experiencing the storm, the noise of rain and wind quickly begin to fill the sonic space. Soft rains and distant thunder churn over one another in a tempest, finally giving way to cautious harmonies fashioned from the wail of a storm siren. Through these elements, we explore the sense of obsession that comes from being kept constantly on alert. We wait for the storm, wait for it to pass, and are waiting for what comes next.
Just as soon, the sirens fade, and a full kettle has come to boil while we were preoccupied. As the sonic manipulations alter and extend the soundscape of the piece, the unease of waiting blurs the sense of scale between the tempest and the teakettle.
Program notes by Walter Jordan
Hey everyone!
A lot has happened in the *cough*several*cough* months since I've updated the blog. Here's what's new in my world:
Meanwhile, I've written absolutely no music since June, and I'm starting to get antsy. So I have to go do that (and teach)
In the spirit of spring cleaning, I've taken several older and less popular compositions down on the Music page. Some are just early works that I don't need to advertise, and others just need some work. I'm also working on getting new recordings for some of the works, and of course better program notes all around (which is a work in progress).
It's been a whirlwind summer, with Steven and Michelle's wedding in Canada in July, and Cassie getting the NDSU clarinet job and moving up to Fargo. For the latter part of July and the beginning of August, we made like three trips to Fargo, either from Oklahoma or from Manitoba. That made composing difficult, but we'll get to that in a minute.
While I was bouncing around the great plains, my music found some new performances around the world. First off, Creatures from the Black Bassoon found a spot on the Sonic Arts Forum's concert at the Oriel Sycharth Gallery of Glyndwr University, in Wrexham, Wales on September 9. I'm still debating on whether I get to buy a Welsh flag for this one. Reverie of Solitude, my new-ish work for environmental recordings, was accepted for the 2015 Congreso Internacional de Ciencia y Tecnología Musical (CICTeM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and was performed on September 17. Creatures had its South American debut there in 2013. Reverie was also selected for EMUFest 2015, and will have its European premiere on October 9 in Sala Bianchini at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. This only barely counts as an international performance, but Reverie will also be performed at this year's International Computer Music Conference in…Denton, TX at the University of North Texas on September 28. I'll actually go to that one, seeing as how it's only two hours away from Norman.
After all of the driving, and some of my other summer projects (which included a lot of notation work and a magazine design), I didn't have much room for writing music. I have a lot of samples for a new tape piece, but I've really been wanting to write something for oboe and electronics, or oboe and piano. I finally (as of last week) got back into a routine, and here's what's become of that routine thus far.
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It's going to be a good year for creativity.
I've had a lot of things on my plate this June with creative projects, teaching, composing, and a short vacation. I should be packing for my trip to the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (where Reverie of Solitude will receive its premiere), but this is more fun.
Here's the rundown of what the past three weeks have looked like: I've been working on the OU School of Music's 2015 MUSIC MOSAIC magazine. To the annoyance of the OU Printing Services staff, I did the entire thing in Microsoft Publisher last year. So in addition to curating content this year, I also had to learn InDesign, which I really like. If only I had a reason to subscribe to it all the time. Last week, I was the music technology instructor for the Norman Suzuki Piano Camp, which taught me a lot about what works and doesn't work when teaching young children about music technology. The kids had fun, I had fun, and they at least know of different musical possibilities than they did before. I've been working on substantial upgrades to Liszt and the Encore Concert Management System, which tracks concert attendance and helps plan recitals.
Those of you who pay attention to me on Facebook and Twitter will know about my Pointless Haiku project with poet Walter Jordan. So far I've put together two sets of haiku (a set of five and a set of seven), with an additional set of five forthcoming. You can find everything on the pages for Five Pointless Haiku and Seven More Pointless Haiku. While the haiku thing was going on, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) posted a call for works for electroacoustic miniatures, with the theme being…Haiku. So now there's another tape piece on the website, Automation and Autonomy.
I hadn't realized that my clarinet and live electronics work Crosswinds took as much out of me as it did, and once I got that one performance-ready, I took a short moratorium on more writing. Instead, I did some website housekeeping, and introduced some substantial upgrades. Overall, I added some breadcrumb menus, like the one you see above, for better navigation through the entire site. With a few exceptions, they now appear everywhere.
Most of my work went into the Composition pages, starting with a revised color scheme for the complete catalog. I'm not sure that I'll keep it, but I think it's an improvement. Within each individual composition page there are some changes that I find pretty cool. The components of the page (program note, media, performances) have larger headers and an icon now, and some improved display logic only shows components that have content. For example, there is a new Awards component that appears if a work has been granted an award.
There's also a new Perusal Score component, which embeds an Issuu document, allowing you to see the score as printed. The Buying Options component now allows for some cleaner buying options, and I'm in the process of adding a bunch of never-before-available offers. I've started using a new score distribution system, and I'm excited to try it out. But one of my favorite parts of the new composition page is that it now includes an in-page menu that links to the various components. This menu travels with page scrolling, and highlights where you are in the page. Also, now all the embedded bandcamp plugins match. Let me know what you think!
I conduct an annual review every December 27, and this year is no different. This year's annual report can be seen at http://kylevanderburg.net/annualreport/2014/index.php.
FINALLY, after ten full months, Liszt has received a major upgrade which improves the interface and calendar components, re-introduces the Liszt Rehearsal Scheduler, and allows for better single-sign-on for Liszt/AudioAtlas/ScoreShare apps.
I've been fairly quiet lately while I've been transitioning to a new position and updating some code. So here's what's going on in the Vanderverse!
AudioAtlas has been updated with geolocation (finding where you are), geocoding (finding where you want), and new map tiles (yay Bing!). There's a bit of stuff to fix on the backend, but otherwise it's ready for release.
ScoreShare is chugging along with no issues.
I've coded a wiki into Hammer, and this will contain information about all sorts of interesting things, once I fill it up.
One of my big projects this week has been coding an API for Hammer, since it's probable that most of the websites using Hammer won't be on the same server, so direct DB access isn't ideal. An early version is running, which will be up on Cassie's new site whenever I publish that.
On the music side of things, I've been working on a work for the International Clarinet Association's composition contest, with varying degrees of success. That's the biggest thing on my plate at the moment, but it's coming along.
Whee!