Feature Story

By Matt Scheuber

You’re looking down at a grand piano in a professional concert hall from a birds-eye view. The piano is propped open exposing itself to the world, its strings staring down judgment, daring it to say something. It can’t. Looking closer, you see its soul. It is filled with things you would never imagine you could find, but you do. You find light bulbs, a toy car and maybe a shoe. Such objects are a direct correlation that interweaves the pianist with the piano, showcasing the most unique sound given only in that precise moment. Each string vibrates, telling a different story as it comes in contact with something unfamiliar. This is a prepared piano, a small coil in a string of vast musical repertoire deep inside the mind of OU graduate student, Kyle Vanderburg.

I met Vanderburg during a breezy part of a Monday afternoon. He was sitting inside the lobby of OU’s Catlett Music Center on a bench drinking his coffee from a cup covered with his music logo. After a polite, soft-spoken introduction we journeyed our way through the 25 million dollar facility. The architecture and design of the entire facility were intended to spark the creative imagination much as music does for the human spirit. It does just that. We were walking to the midi lab, a place where notes on a page can be distorted into electronic soundscapes with the use of complex music software and creative minds. This is where musicians like Vanderburg are given the opportunity to conform to a more modern style of writing.

Vanderburg is a composer of eclectically polystylistic music fueled by rhythmic drive and melodic infatuation. In other words, Vanderburg has a great grasp on music theory and isn’t afraid to step outside the norm with his knowledge. A native of Missouri, Kyle holds a degree from Drury University where he studied composition with Carlyle Sharpe and conducting with Christopher Koch. He was then convinced by OU professor Marvin Lamb to come join the OU music family as a grad student. “Kyle has made an interesting journey into his soundscapes & electronic compositions. His work in that world has evolved quickly from a previous sonic world of well written somewhat conservative acoustic chamber music,” Lamb said. OU is where he has found a niche for composing more electronic based compositions. His 2012 composition, Drones, reflects this way of writing.

You press play. Instead of a typical classic sound you might expect from a grad student studying music, you find yourself listening to a swarm of bees. You are surrounded. That sound soon becomes a sonic distortion transforming into rain. It becomes peaceful, but not long enough to relax. Different soundscapes continue to appear, disappear, appear, disappear, giving the listener an out-of-body experience and a chance to feel as if they are doing the same.

This style of composing gives a classically trained writer like Vanderburg the chance to experiment with sounds, space and time in a much different way than before. Creating sounds is a much more important aspect in these compositions. “Imagine a sound and then make that sound happen,” Vanderburg said. His audible explanation comes through well in the piece Creatures from the Black Bassoon.

These sounds are meant to create an environment or mental space from a single sound source. All the sounds in this piece were created from the Bassoon, an instrument Vanderburg has played since junior high. The work explores the attributes of a variety of animal-like and environmental sounds, including key clicks, reed squeaks, multiphonics, and other traditional and extended techniques. It’s a far jump from classical sounding compositions where you can distinguish the sounds coming from the brass section, the string section or the woodwinds. You may not recognize these new sounds like you can with traditional instruments. “If you have a string quartet, you will always have a string quartet. Any sound from that ensemble won’t be that surprising,” Vanderburg said. This newer way of writing allows for different possibilities and unexpected sounds.

So how does someone decide if this qualifies as music? There are many skeptics on this modern electronic approach to music. Some traditional musicians have a hard time grabbing on to this newer style of composition. U`nifying the old with the new is the remedy to this problem. “Creating familiarity,” Vanderburg said.

As Vanderburg’s coffee sips became less and less frequent he pulled out his PC tablet in a room full of Apple computers. When Vanderburg submerges himself into his compositions you will mostly likely find him with a cup of coffee in front of his computer. He typically writes about 70% of his compositions on his computer, the other 30% on piano. Playing an instrument isn’t always something you need to know how to do to write songs. “It’s less about knowing how to play an instrument and more about what the instruments are capable of,” Vanderburg said. For him, realizing what possibilities an instrument has is much more important when writing a composition. The same philosophy carries over to the software he uses to write. When asked about the preference of a PC opposed to a Mac, he simply answered, “Technology is a tool. It’s more important what you create, than what program you use.”

Although Vanderburg still prefers a classical sounding song, he has not been afraid to broaden his horizons with this newer style of music that seems to fit him well. “Part of his journey relies on his formidable understanding of software manipulation and programming. But a more commendable part of his journey has to do with his remarkable openness to new ways of knowing and a desire to inhabit different sonic worlds," Lamb said. Vanderburg’s biggest obstacle with writing any kind of music is how vulnerable it can make him feel. He loves to write because he has the ability to share a part of himself, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Vanderburg quoted Gustav Mahler; “If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.” Some composers can have a hard time expressing themselves through conversation. Music is a bridge for those who think in chords as opposed to words. One of the things Vanderburg loves most about music is its universal language and how it can bring any type of people together.

Vanderburg is a classical composer that has the courage to step outside the norm and re-evaluate music. Music shouldn’t be strictly judged by its format. It’s an art. An expression. A feeling. A language. Most of all, its something that brings people together.