Music Writing Blog Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Art, family, learning, life.

May 10, 2017February 1, 2020

In search of a beginning

I’ve generated enough ideas for this Polish piece, that now I can no longer hide behind the old “I’m still sketching” excuse. I could, if I let myself, just sketch new ideas forever. But then I would never finish anything. Rule number two of Robert Heinlein’s Rules for Writers is “Finish what you start.” It’s time to develop these ideas, flesh them out into a completed thought. That kind of work is the real work of composing, and it’s hard.

I am searching for a suitable beginning to this piece. I like a number of the ideas I have developed, but I’m having trouble deciding which one to start the piece with. I don’t think I want to start the piece with a simple statement of the theme…. I don’t know, it just feels a bit dated to me. Plus the theme has a nice patriotic punch to it, and I’d rather save that punch for later in the piece. I am leaning toward using this iteration of the theme as the beginning:

It’s got a nice vibe to it, mixing major and minor modes. It also states the main theme of the anthem without being too obvious about it. However I don’t know if the timing is quite right yet… More space, less space? So hard to decide. It also feels a bit repetitive to me. But I think it’s in my nature to imagine my music is more annoyingly repetitive than it actually is. My wife Erica recently reminded me that people enjoy a bit of repetition, especially when it comes to the main theme. Music does not need to be a collection of thirty random ideas one after the other in order to be enjoyable. I want to create “art,” but I also want the average listener to enjoy my work. I do not intend to write music solely for musicologists to enjoy (at least not at the moment). I want to write catchy but deep, varied and creative but cleverly organized, modernesque but rooted in solid classical harmony.

I’ve realized I am not a fast composer. I have to turn an idea over and over in my head until I am finally satisfied with it (or resigned to using it). I figure if it’s catchy enough to stick in my brain, then it’s good enough to work with. I have never been one to just churn out perfect, completed music. I take my sweet time. Maybe one day I will learn how to be prolific, but for now I am still studying the art of completing a piece. Sometimes I want to quit. It’s hard to be creative. It’s easier to go watch tv or cruise Facebook… or write a blog post. But if I wish to call myself an artist, I have to make art!

Back to work. I need to decide if this beginning is actually the beginning, or just something I’ve gotten stuck in my head.

May 6, 2017February 1, 2020

Connecting my left brain with my right

Sometimes I feel like my composition process is a bit stilted, as if I have two separate processes running at the same time.

The first is my left brain process. That process involves sitting down at my computer, away from the piano, and sketching out ideas right onto the sheet music. These ideas are based on chord progressions that I assume will sound nice together, and melodies built around those chords (or based on shapes that I assume will sound pleasing). It’s a somewhat mathematical process; less about passion pouring from my fingertips, and more about a system I have learned to manipulate. I use trial and error to compile ideas into coherent musical thoughts, create variations of themes, and tinker with various types of accompaniment. I try various ideas until something sounds right, almost like experimenting with a recipe. This is where most of my seedlings originate.

This process is how I took the original theme of the Polish national anthem “Mazurek Dąbrowskiego” (which can be heard here) and morphed it into this new theme:

It has the same melodic contour as the original, but with a different vibe. It mixes major and minor with a touch of syncopation, keeping your ear a bit off balance. This theme was created without hearing what it sounded like until it was already notated, built entirely on theory and logic.

The right brain process is all feeling, no math. I sit at the piano and just play what feels right. I hum melodies out loud until they begin to morph into new ideas, until my brain naturally settles on something. This process is always based on what “feels” right to my ear, on whatever musical idea happens to come out when I sit down to play. It’s improvising! But the intention is not to produce fleeting music that is only enjoyed in the moment. Instead it is to use this process to create a lasting piece; allow the musical idea to begin as an improvisation, but make sure it ends up on sheet music. This looser method is how I came up with this rock-infused version of the theme in 4/4 time:

I thought of that theme while lying in bed about to fall asleep. I was too tired to get up and write it down, so I forced myself to hum it like 10 or 15 times so I would remember it in the morning. It’s amazing how a memorable musical idea can fade from your mind if you’re not careful. Once it’s gone, there may not be any retrieving it. Luckily this one stuck. This new theme was born only after I had hummed the original one so many times that I could do it without thinking, so many times that it began to run on loop in the back of my head as I went about my day. I ate my cereal to the tune of the Polish national anthem, at work I marched triumphantly down the hall as images of victorious Polish armies paraded through my mind, and while lying in bed I had to chase the theme away so I could finally rest. After days of this treatment, the theme takes on a mind of its own. It begins to transform, perhaps into a bossa nova theme, or reggae, or gospel, or whatever catches my fancy. The point is that this method is based on singing and feeling, and therefore the result tends to be more singable, and sometimes more passionate.

I wish I could combine my right and left brain processes into one smooth machine, with all the gears working at the same time. Today, while playing around with 3/4 time, I improvised this little progression:

It’s simple and repetitive, more like the accompaniment to a rock song than a classical piece, but I like it. This was generated with right brain, so it just came out. However I would love to be able to activate my left brain on the spot and manipulate the theme into improvised variations. The way my current process works, in order to really manipulate the music in a complex way I have to return to my computer and tweak the music on paper. I still end up with music I am proud of, but the process is not quite fluid enough. This is something I would like to improve. Perhaps one method is to try and force myself to sit at the piano and use my left brain knowledge to create whatever variations I can, using my hands to play rather than a computer to notate it. If practice is the mother of skill, then it would seem that I just need to sit down and practice. It’s difficult to break out of a well-established pattern, even if it’s an inefficient one.

This Polish piece is moving along. I haven’t really started constructing yet, just sketching (I posted more sketches on the previous post as well). Soon I feel like I need to transition out of sketching and work on developing these themes. That is a tough job too… If I endlessly sketch, then I can avoid this difficult, mentally taxing labor. But if I sketch forever, I will never finish anything. Time to get to work.

May 3, 2017February 1, 2020

Poland is not yet lost.

My new project has now come into focus: I will write a piece based on the Polish national anthem, “Mazurek Dobrowskiego”. Here’s what that sounds like in full patriotic glory. Pretty heroic right? This piece was an immediate hit in Poland when it was first composed in 1797, a time when Poland was reeling from a series of military defeats and humiliating partition by foreign powers. Also known as “Poland Is Not Yet Lost,” the piece has served as the unofficial (and later official) anthem for Poland ever since.

It’s a compact little ditty with lots of flair, nice energy. It’s got some fun suspensions too, though it is also completely diatonic. It feels a bit limited by it’s simple structure and use of only three chords, but despite the simplicity it has lots of potential, if I can figure out how to unlock it. My general plan at the moment is to aim for “theme and variations,” but I don’t want it to sound too classical. I’m not even sure I want to open with the main theme. It packs a punch, so maybe it’s better to save it for later in the piece. I suppose that would make this piece more like “variations and maybe the theme later if I feel like it.”

One would think that this music would have already been used for a set of variations at some point in the past, especially since one of the most famous classical composers was a patriotic Pole. I’ve heard rumors that, indeed, Chopin did play around with this piece, perhaps even creating a Chopin-y sounding piano transcription along the way. However I am not able to locate a score, and it is not included in his set of 57 mazurkas. That, at least, is a relief. I don’t really want to be in direct competition with Chopin when it comes to writing variations on the Polish national anthem, for cryin’ out loud.

Modern composer Sy Brandon did in fact write a set of variations for this very piece, a version for alto sax and piano. I recommend giving it a listen. It’s a fascinating blending of the anthem with some American vibes. It’s got hints of klezmer, and a dash of the modern. I like the ambiance he creates, and the colors of the sax hit a real sweet spot for me. But I also feel it’s more literal than I would have written, and leaves a lot of room for further variation. I personally want to take this theme off the deep end a bit. I am willing to lose the basic contour of the melody in exchange for evocative music and new art. Since a straightforward set of variations that continually returns to the main theme has already been done, I feel that I must do something different.

Right now I am in the brainstorming phase, which means sketching and sketching and sketching some more. The point is to save every new idea, but don’t linger on anything too long until I find something that is catchy enough to get stuck in my head. At that point I will turn it over in my brain for a day or two, go for a long walk, and see what I end up humming when I’m not thinking about it too hard. It’s just a start, but I’ve found it’s good way to generate something memorable.

Right now I’m just playing around with various ideas. This is what a typical section of my sketchbook might look like:

There is no form yet, just bits and pieces that could one day become something. Or maybe these tidbits will spend their lives in storage, waiting for their moments to shine, waiting perhaps forever. That bit starting at measure 77 could serve as a sequence, just as a similar chord progression served as one in Chopin’s Mazurka no. 1 ( see measures 4-8). Or maybe I will discard the idea altogether and use another instead. For now I am off to sleep, to see if I hum anything in my dreams.

April 27, 2017February 1, 2020

Write some Polish music? Challenge accepted!

Here is my game plan for the moment: reach out to local pianists and offer to host Groupmuses, in exchange for them performing one of my pieces. This has worked exactly one time, and it was a thrill! Three pieces performed by an actual human being (pianist Jun Cai) in front of a real, live audience, and a set of recordings that I can actually show to people! This was a special day for me. It was officially the first time a non-me musician performed my music. My parents were there! Here’s one of the pieces:

Jack’s Song

So now I desperately want to do this again, only bigger. My current goal is to book a church or community center and put on a real concert. I contacted a pianist named Joanna Różewska, and she told me she would be interested in playing some new music… if I write her a piece based on Polish folk music. So that’s my current project I suppose! I have been researching Polish folk tunes for a couple days, trying to wrap my head around how to write something new and original based on Polish music, without losing the flavor of the folk songs, but also without just copying Chopin’s style. I found this set of folk songs, so maybe I could use one as a theme, perhaps theme and variations? I don’t really know yet. My general plan is to sketch out various ideas using some of the Polish themes and see if anything grabs me. I started tonight by playing around with this theme: Pretty cheerful, perhaps too much so? But maybe as a triumphant theme in the middle of a piece? That doesn’t fit with the theme and variations idea, but maybe this could be more of a medley. A medley of dances perhaps, woven together into a tapestry where different themes come and go. As you can see, I’m in brainstorm mode. That first idea led to this totally new idea, but same tempo and key. It could easily fit with the first bit:I like this one better, it feels more like my style. In fact, it makes me want to take these Polish themes and make them sound all “American-y”. Infuse in some bluesy stuff, jazzy stuff, strange colors. Is that destructive to the “Polish-ness”? Maybe so, maybe not. Chopin’s mazurkas weren’t reeeally all that traditional. They were infused with classical techniques, chromaticism, Chopin’s own flavors. So maybe I’ll take this old music and make it new again in my own way. After all, that’s the point of all this right? Here’s a minor one I might play with:

I think 3/4 time and minor key is the way to go with this piece. I have a lot of sketching to do, but at least I feel some momentum. I’ll keep you posted!