Competition websites

My dearest composers,

As we all know, competitions are a necessary evil. Repeatedly we apply to these hopelessly biased competitions, to be one of possibly hundreds, of which only ONE winner selected, and of course it someone you have never heard of. Secretly you think, "My piece was better..." The somewhat tragic thing is, maybe it was. It's over now though. So just like that, your hopes of success and notoriety get dashed away with the callous lack of analysis from the incompetent judges.

Of course the easy thing to do is to just dismiss competitions altogether. Bartok said "Competitions are for horses, not composers." He turned out just fine! Well, alright, he died poor and alone in New York, but his music was definitely some of the most B.A. stuff produced in the 20th century. So, the moral here is to apply, even if it seems hopeless, because every nobody who wins a competition YOU should have, will eventually be YOU winning a competition YOU deserved. For a bit more emotional support, composer Eric Whitacre wrote a blog about competitions here.

There are websites out there to help you find competitions, because simply finding them is half the battle. Posted on the blog website are two of my favorites, The American Composers Forum website and the Composerssite. Each have their drawbacks. ACF is widely regarded by the academic music community, and many competitions will advertise on their site. However, in order to see the page, you must be a member, of which there is an annual fee. Luckily, it gives you a snippet of the competition, and you can often google search those details and find it that way. Of course, the magnitude of competition opportunities is quite great. The Composerssite has less, and some repeats within the site, but it is totally free to access.

Another site is Composersnewpencil. This has a few big ones, which is just another way of saying 'more likely to lose." However, it keeps annual competitions on it's page, which is a great way to access them. Let's say you miss a deadline for a competition because you didn't know it existed. If it is annual, just write it down in a log of what competitions you need to apply to when, to keep yourself organized, so you don't miss them anymore.

ASCAP and BMI will also sometimes post competitions on their websites. Some are required for members, some are not, such as the Morton Gould competition. This is not incredibly helpful, but most of these competitions are incredibly prestigious, just hard to win, because so many people apply.

Another site I have used is interestingly on another blog. Most of these are outdated, but it does show a history of what has transpired, and some are useful.

Lastly, other ways to find competitions are look for instrumental competitions for stuff you have written. Do you have a great flute piece? Go look at the International Flute Association, they might have a competition. String quartet? Google that, and I bet you can find a hit or two. Many competitions publicized to big websites, but some do not, and simply post it on their own website.

In short, the way to find competitions is to always be looking. As for what Whitacre said about fees, I would recommend using your judgment about whether you want to risk the money. Don't apply to a competition that has a fee if you NEED to win. You are already spending money to print and mail a score. However, you can't win a Pulitzer if you never apply to competitions requiring an entry fee. (Less than 15 is typically good.)


So, go out there, look, find, and conquer! You may just win one.

Upcoming concert

I just wanted to pass this along; Redlands' own Marco Schindelmann has been working with Hope University, an arts-infused school for developmentally disabled adults, on a large-scale performance art / sound art work that will be performed this coming Saturday in Orange County.  Dr. Andrews' First Year Seminar class will be involved as well.  It should be an interesting evening, and a good reminder about the value of art, the need for all people to be creative, and an important challenge to mainstream views about who gets to create art.  This should be a great event, and unlike anything most have seen before. 

Here's a link to more information.  I'll be attending, helping to transport members of Dr. Andrews' FYS to Fullerton. 

Flute Candy

This is a fun piece by composer Ian Clarke called Zoom Tube.  It shows off a lot of the interesting extended flute techniques you can use, like singing while playing, air sounds, tongue clicks, etc.  Flutists are pretty versatile! 

Blog Assignment

This week, I have been looking at some scores in preparation for my new work. I am writing a melody for the euphonium and I found a very useful and interesting piece named Schottische by Walter S. Hartley. Hartley was born on February 21, 1927 in Washington D.C., where he began composing at the age of 5 and became seriously involved at the age of 16. He is now a proffessor at Emeritus of Music Fredonia State university in New york.

Schottische is a Quartet for Brass that was published in 1979. I looked at the part written for the euphonium and noticed that it was comprised of mostly staccatos and eighth notes. The euponium is a Bb concert instrument that is written on the bass clef. The notes are mostly conjunct. I learned what the range of the instrument is and what some of its' characteristics are. Below, is a link to a video of Hartley's composition named Canzona written for eight trombones. Hope you enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_prFkJeuKBY

Blog Assignment: Eugene Bozza

For my first piece, I decided to write for solo flute. I've never written anything for flute, or any other instrument other than guitar so I looked around for scores and recordings of solo flute pieces to get a slight idea of how it's done. One piece I found was a solo by 20th century composer, Eugene Bozza.

Bozza was born on April 4th, 1905, in France. He studied at the famed Paris Conservatoire, where he learned about composition, violin, conducting and chamber music. He composed many works for woodwind/brass ensembles as well as symphonies, operas and ballets. Although his pieces are rarely performed outside of France, his works for woodwind and brass remain a mainstay in the modern repertoire.

The piece of his that I am looking at is his flute solo "Image." This is a beautiful and well written piece that is actually quite famous amongst flutists. Although it is a tonal piece, there are some sections that are quite dissonant. However, the dissonance, unlike in many pieces, doesn't subtract from the melodic aspects of the song. This helped me to realize that you can be both melodic and dissonant in the same piece. This piece also showed me that the flute sounds good when played both rapidly or slowly as well as the basic range of the instrument. Despite the style of my piece being more baroque-esque, it was still helpful in my understanding of the flute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JYl8UTCNmY

University of Redlands Armacost Library Music Research Guide

Sanjeet Mann, one of our very helpful and knowledgeable librarians here at the U of R, has created a guide for research in music.  The link is here.  It is very useful!  Don't be afraid to contact Sanjeet; he is a great resource and the library liaison for the School of Music.

Recording for the Composer

Basic Question: Are there economical solutions to the problem of composers having to utilize their own equipment to make recordings of rehearsals, etc? (hints, tips, techniques, technology that composers should be aware of?)

If you are a composer and would like to utilize recordings for rehearsals or compositional purposes, then there are a few basic pieces of equipment I would recommend. First, lets start with some assumptions. I assume that you have a computer, and know how to use it to a basic degree (saving files, importing/exporting files, burning CDs, emailing attachments, etc.) Beyond that, there are two pieces of gear I would start out with.

A.) some sort of hand-held audio recording device, such as the Zoom H4, or M-Audio Mircotrack. These small devices can go anywhere with you, allowing for recording of rehearsals or lectures, compositional ideas, or sounds (think musique concrete or foley).

B.) a nice pair of headphones. I’m not talking about the junk that comes with your phone, iPod or any other headset that you get as a freebie. Spend some money on it. Music technology is probably that last remaining area where a consumer can purchase a product and know what kind of quality it is simply by the price. By that I mean the $40 pair of headphones sounds like a $40 pair of headphones, and the $100 pair of headphones sounds like a $100 pair of headphones. Do yourself (and me) a favor; spend $100 on a pair of headphones. You’ll thank me later.

So far, we’ve spent about $400 for our little recording setup. That will take us a long way toward being able to record rehearsals etc. The next step is to edit all the recordings in a computer. This requires two things: a computer, and some audio editing software. Have a Mac with GarageBand? Your set. Have a Windows machine that isn’t archaic or obsolete? There are plenty of free basic audio editing programs out there, try Audacity, it’ll get the job done.

A basic set of audio editing skills will go a long way as well. Here are the things you probably need to know: snipping, splicing, volume adjustment, exporting, and burning the finished project onto a disk. That is a little beyond this first blog, so perhaps we will dive into that deeper.

Hints? Here are a few. Carry extra stuff. Extra batteries, flash memory (both the kind your recorder uses and USB), a second memory card reader, and multiple 1/8”F to ¼”M adaptors (you will loose them). Second, when you start recording a rehearsal, have the performers play for a few seconds, then stop the recording and listen to what you recorded. There is nothing worse than going through an entire rehearsal only to later realize that the microphone was to hot and the entire recording distorted and is unusable. Also, if buying a recorder, ask if it has a tri-pod attachment or a mic stand attachment, these are useful.

Hope this is helpful to anyone who wants to start recording.

Edit: added tags

orchestration books

Hey guys, I read two orchestration books this summer. The first one was Scoring for the Band, by Phillip Lang. like most orchestration books, it covered the basics of all of the instruments that exist in the band and their ranges. This book gave great examples of how to use every instrument, supplemented with score excerpts to reinforce the concepts being discussed. Also discussed in the other sections were how to create orchestrations for the Marching bands and works that featured soloists. I found this book to be somewhat useful in how it approached creating arrangements. It was slightly cheesey because it use yankee doodle dandy for each excerpt (boo) but it it was nice to see how they changed each section according to the choice of instrumentation. Some of the key concepts of the book were to: use key signatures that worked well for the instrument and the ensemble as a whole, know and understand the ranges of each instrument and how timbre changes in each register, explore as many different color combination as possible and if it works-use it. I mainly read the book because I was looking for a section that would explain how to use the overtone series when scoring for the concert band. unfortunately, after 200 pages of reading, I only found one sentence on using the overtone series. The basic ideas are to use larger intervals in the voicing of the lower registers and closers intervals in the highest registers. This approach mimic the division of the natural overtone series and helps to keep the orchestration from becoming muddy. This concept can also be applied to part writing for the various families of instruments themselves.
The other book I read was Belioz treatise on instrumentation, annotated by Richard Strauss. It is a great read; even thought it is dated. There is a great section, during his explanation of the violin family, where he writes about each key, either major of minor and how he thinks they sound. He went through all 12 major and minor keys describing if they sounded bright or dark and what type of emotions they could evoke. I recommend that any composition major reads this work.

Beginning at the Beginning ... with Text

I tend to hate starting things, especially after the minutes (hours) wasted of wondering where exactly to start, the frustrated probing at various pathways into the heart of the subject, and the desperate scrabbling in thin air for words, pitches, or whatever small component makes up the medium at hand. But when you sit down to begin a composition with text, this problem nearly takes care of itself. Starting with the text is necessary to address the compositional questions and quandaries that lie further down the path, and if you’re lucky enough to have a text that you love, it might even serve as inspiration in the early stages of churning out notes.

The first question is, however, where do you acquire the text?

I’m actually writing this because I’ve had the opportunity to work with three methods for the acquisition of text. I composed my first texted piece for a choral competition in early 2009, which specified the text to be used for the SATB ensemble. My second vocal piece was an art song that I wrote and translated the text for, and my third and current chamber project is based around public domain poetry excerpts. Each had their own challenges and quirks, but ultimately your treatment of the text—text setting, dramatic arch, text expression or depiction, etc.—is the same.

For the choral competition, the first minor dilemma I faced was whether or not I truly liked the text that was provided. I didn’t love it, but the competition seemed like a good opportunity to work under a close deadline and compose faster. In reflecting back on that experience, I realize that it didn’t occur to me then to really take into consideration how to make my piece—my one version of this preselected text, out of all the others also being written—more unique. I was more concerned with getting the piece done on time, which for a first-time competition entry was not a bad goal. But if I composed under these parameters again, with the text being picked for me (and being picked for everyone else), I would focus more on how to make my score stand out when unique text choice is no longer an option.

The major problem that I now face with the choral piece I wrote is the text’s copyright. It was translated into English by someone who worked with the organization holding the competition, and upon completion of the competition I received an email notifying me that one, I did not win (no big deal though), and two, (far more annoyingly!) if I ever wanted to have my piece performed publically I would need to email the text translator for permission. Needless to say, I was never inclined to do this, and never had that work performed. In truth it would probably not be too difficult to get permission for a performance at a university, yet it’s an aggravating complication and I have considered writing my own text instead to fit the music—but that’s a project for another day. Ultimately, the copyright problem I faced with this piece likely contributed to the desire to set my own text in my following vocal work.

My next vocal piece was largely inspired by the recent gravitation of cinematic music and scoring toward dramatic choirs declaiming in the mysterious, ancient language of Latin. More specifically, it was inspired by the Latin solo in this Final Fantasy trailer. I loved the way Latin sounded, and I really wanted to avoid the inconveniences of using copyrighted text, so I took one and a half years of Latin here at Redlands in order to be able to write and translate lyrics for an art song. I faced less “technical” difficulties overall in using my own text, though I can see that the extra time needed for creating the text as well as the possibility that you may feel inclined to keep editing it could both be problematic. At one point, I had to make a couple of changes in the vocal line due to the correction of minor errors in my translation.

Throughout the process of writing the initial English text, I kept in mind how I wanted the piece to function structurally. Four-line stanzas became the common structural unit, between which I planned to place small piano interludes, and the “climactic” stanza was longer and placed at an appropriate point in the overall dramatic arch. Its contrast of inner text structure and length also allowed for a logical and supportive change of tonal center. Keeping these kinds of general musical ideas in mind during the writing of the text was essential in establishing a synthesis of the music and lyrics from the very beginning, as was identifying key moments throughout the stanzas that the music should most effectively build up to. Though my translation wasn’t perfect, I was pleased with the final result, and the knowledge that this creation is completely mine, words and all, was far more fulfilling.

For my current project, I decided I wanted to work with someone else’s poetic language, and this quickly turned into the poetry of several someones, so that I could trace an abstract narrative of my own conception between the texts (sort of like the way George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children* unifies the unrelated Lorca poems, except with multiple authors). Due to my impression of requesting copyright permission, at the time, consisting of many unanswered emails, angry rejection letters, promising of the firstborn child, etc., I chose to use only public domain texts (see above: reluctance to contact choral text translator). Any work in the “public domain” is no longer covered by intellectual property rights and is therefore available for public use. How did I, in this particular case, find texts that I identified with and felt were appropriate for this project, out of all the poetry that currently exists in public domain? With this public domain poetry website and its convenient random-poem generator. I kid you not. It took some time and careful weeding, but with the help of this site and others like it I was able to compile four poetry excerpts that capture the theme of my piece, Verisimilitude—and they’re all free of copyright hassle!

While selecting these excerpts, I made sure to keep musical considerations in mind in addition to the thematic narrative. I knew that I wanted several instrumental interludes as well as an effective dramatic arch to the work as a whole, and recognizing this framework played an important part in the picking of the excerpts and the ultimate arrangement of the text orders. With the texts finally chosen and the order determined, I was able to outline the general structure of the piece: Prelude (contrabass solo), First Texted Movement (introductory, expansive), Interlude, Second Texted Movement (developmental, quickening), Interlude, Third Texted Movement (climactic, dark), Fourth Texted Movement (releasing tension, expanding), Postlude (contrabass solo). Ultimately, these structural and developmental considerations are not all that different from the processes applied to works from mandated or personal text sources.

Just remember that if you use a copyrighted text—especially if you expect a public performance!—you must have permission. Composition competitions and lawyers are very particular about that sort of thing.

_{* I linked to this version only because it is conveniently on Youtube; however, I strongly recommend that you find a recording with the original mezzo, Jan DeGaetani!}

Composing for the Harp

The harp, especially the modern pedal harp, is arguably one of the most misunderstood instruments a contemporary composer would encounter. Over the summer, when I was flirting with the idea of writing a solo harp piece, I came across this web page which does a pretty good job of covering the basics that a composer would need to know before putting pencil to paper.

http://www.harpspectrum.org/harpworks/composing_for_harp/composing_for_harp.shtml

Enjoy!