What motivates me to write or practice a piece? As I grow older with less time and energy, I must strategize what to do for the next research or creative activity. The decision-making process is multidimensional, but a simplified guideline helps me. I ask two questions before I commit to a project.
Do I want to do it?
Do I know how to do it?
Answers to these two questions yield four degrees of motivation plotted as four quadrants in a graph. My goal is to identify in which quadrant I start the project so that I can identify the level of motivation and amount of work. I also find that the answers to the above questions change at the end of the project, sometimes.
I am most eager to work on a project that starts in Quadrant IV and ends in Quadrant I. Changing the “I don’t know” axis to the “I know” axis takes time and energy, but that process is what being a researcher, artist, and student is all about. Learning SuperCollider was an IV-I move. Going to graduate school to be a teacher was IV-I. Improvising on a no-input mixer was IV-I. Spending a few months of the COVID quarantine time to learn Mark Applebaum’s Aphasia was IV-I.
Quadrant IV is also a fandom area. While some pieces move from VI to I, like Aphasia or Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire, I don’t mind Jeff Mills’ Exhibitionist Mix 3 and Bach’s music staying in Quadrant IV. Discovering and admiring awe-inspiring pieces is what being a researcher, artist, and student is all about. The permanent Quadrant IV pieces become motivations for new pieces as well. Cobalt Vase is my homage to Exhibitionist, and 847 Twins is my Bach fan art.
Ideally, all projects should end up being in Quadrant I, where I am happy to do the work with the skills I know. Realistically, many works fall into quadrants II and III. Dismissing them is not always possible, especially when the projects involve benefits like money, graduation, future opportunities, etc. Some projects in Quadrant III move into Quadrant I through education and repeated experience. Many dance and sound installations were my III-I projects because I learned more about the benefits of collaboration as I got more experience and studied more. Witnessing students doing the III-I move is equally exciting as students doing the IV-I move in my music technology classes.
In contrast to the III-I or IV-I move, II-I moves are much rarer. Projects in Quadrant II often stay in Quadrant II, and they involve extra motivational factors, like deadlines or funding, to accept and finish the project. Some projects move from Quadrant I to II due to burnout or changed interest. Such regression, however, was not always bad, as it pointed me to new artistic/aesthetic directions. I am currently not focusing on further developing free improvisation skills as I feel the plateau or burnout. This condition led me to make notated electronic music less dependent on an individual’s improvisation skills. My notated electronic pieces gain more performance opportunities nowdays, and I am happy to present both improvisational and no-improvisational pieces in a show. Music career is cumulative.
Evaluating the need to start a project by asking two simple questions with four possible answers clarified my thoughts. Perhaps I could extend this to plot listener reactions. I want the audience, colleagues, or commissioners to feel Quadrant I when they listen to my piece (I want to play it, and I think I figured out the technology!). The audience feeling Quadrant IV could be good (I don’t know how he’s making that sound, but I want to try!), especially if they are scholars or performers. Learning opportunities and capable institutions abound for the audience in Quadrant IV. I hope my pieces do not fall into Quadrants II and III.
The production of 847 Twins, the title track in the album Fan Art, is documented in four sections. The first section, Program, is a one-paragraph description of the music written for a concert booklet or album promotion. I share information and thoughts that may help listeners enjoy the music. The second section, Form, is for the creators who want to learn how I used electronic sounds in composition. The third section, Code, is for the technologists who want to learn how I designed the piece in SuperCollider, a code-based audio app. Links to the code are available here. The last part, Anecdote, has extra narrative relevant to 847 Twins but is optional to enjoy the piece.
847 Twins is a two-movement piece based on harmonic progressions of Prelude & Fugue in C Minor by J.S. Bach. An electronic remake of Bach is a well-known practice pioneered by Wendy Carlos and Pierre Schaeffer (Switched-On Bach & Bilude). I learned so much from reading and listening to their works. J.S. Bach is also my hero composer. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to dedicate a song to my musical cornerstones in an album about fandom.
Listen to the tracks linked below before reading the next sections.
Pluck and Blip, the two movements of 847 Twins, algorithms written in SuperCollider use the harmonic progression of the Prelude in BWV 847. The downloadable code, 847_Pluck.scd, generates randomized voicing patterns played by a guitar-like synth. Below is a step-by-step explanation of how the composition process.
Design an electronic string instrument. Each note of this instrument is detuned at a different ratio every time the string is “plucked.” The note’s duration, dynamic, string stiffness, and pan position also vary randomly.
Using the instrument in Step 1, strum a chord with notes at a measure in BWV 847. Unlike a guitar, a strum of a chord can have multiple pan, accents, and note durations due to the randomization in Step 1.
Each measure of BWV 847 is played four times before advancing to the next measure.
Add a bass part with gradually increasing loudness. It plays the lowest note in the corresponding measure.
Add the intro and the outro for a better form. They are not quoted from BWV 847.
In short, the first movement of 847 Twins is a reinterpretation of BWV 847 featuring an imaginary string instrument and a synth bass. I loved how Bach created exciting music with a predictable rhythmic pattern. The key was harmony and voicings. I wanted to emphasize that aspect with an additional layer of dynamics articulations in Pluck. The added bass line, which imitates the “left hand” of basso continuo, fills in the low-frequency spectrum of the piece. The bass part is best experienced with a headphone or a subwoofer.
Mvt II. Blip
The first movement lacked elements of counterpoint, so I tried to make an electronic polyphony in the second movement. In Blip, each measure has 3-6 parts playing different phrases derived from a measure in BWV 847. The phrase shape, the number of voices, and articulation are determined randomly at every measure and create a disjunct yet relative form. Schaeffer’s Bilude explores this idea by combining piano performance and recorded sounds.
Below is my process of creating a random phrase generator. Please run 847_Blip.scd to hear the piece.
Create a list of pitch sets by reducing repeating notes in each measure of BVW 847.
Make three different synth sounds.
Make a phrase generator that uses the list in Step 1 and synths from Step 2. The instrument choices, phrase length, note subdivisions, and articulations are randomized. The SuperCollider code also has the option to generate a rhythmic variation (i.e., insert rest instead of a note).
Make a polyphony generator that spawns the phrase generator described in Step 3. The number of polyphonic voices and their octave transpositions are random.
Play and record Step 4 twice. Then, import the tracks to a DAW. Insert a reverb plugin on one track. The reverb should be 100% wet.
The algorithm described above creates different timbres, polyphonic patterns, and the number of voicings at every measure. Furthermore, every rendition of the SuperCollider code makes a unique version of Blip. One measure can be a duet of two-note phrases, and the following measure can be an octet of eight phrases played in a four-octave range. The room sound created by the DAW reverb plugin doesn’t reflect the source, but it sounds similar enough to be heard as part of a whole.
Code
Mvt I. Pluck
The SuperCollider file for Pluck consists of seven parts. Please download and use 847_Pluck_Analysis.scd to hear and modify each part. Make sure to run the line s.options.memSize=8192*16 to allocate enough memory.
SynthDefs: SynthDef(“Gtr”) uses a Karplus-Strong physical model with controllable pan, frequency, stiffness, amplitude, and duration. SynthDef(“Bass”) makes a sinusoid tone with a percussive amplitude envelope. The UGen Lag.kr smoothens the sharp transient of the amplitude envelope.
~onenote: this function uses two SynthDef(“Gtr”) to create a detuned note. The amount of detuning is randomized along with other parameters of the SynthDef.
~stroke: this function creates instances of ~onenote with pitches specified in the ~chords array. ~chords is a collection of all the notes in the Bach Prelude, categorized and indexed by measure number. The order of the notes in a measure is random. ~stroke plays the chord in sequence or reverse to simulate a guitar’s up and down stroke motions.
~strums: this function continuously triggers ~stroke. The global variable ~pulse determines the tempo. ~strumsend function is used once for the ending.
~clock: this function changes the chord progression at time intervals set by the global variable ~mdur. It also changes the parameters of ~strums by altering the values of global variables ~mm, ~accent, ~volume, ~notedur, and ~stiff. Note that both ~strums and ~clock functions must run simultaneously for a correct chord progression.
~bassline: this function plays SynthDef(“Bass”) a few seconds after the start of the piece. It uses the if condition to change the rhythmic pattern. The line pitch=~chords.at(count).sort.at(0) picks the lowest note of each measure as a bass note.
SystemClock: this scheduler syncs ~strums, ~clock, and ~bassline to play a version of Pluck. Every rendition of SystemClock will make a new variation of the track.
Mvt II. Blip
The SuperCollider file for Blip consists of four interconnected parts. Please download and run 847_Blip_Analysis.scd to hear each part.
SynthDefs: The three SynthDefs, PBeep, TBeep, and SBeep, are all slightly detuned percussive instruments featuring a classic oscillator waveform, such as sine, triangle, and pulsewidth.
~phrase: this function creates a short melodic pattern based on pitch sets received from global variable ~arp. It controls which SynthDef to use, amplitude, phrase length, note duration, and transposition. The last two arguments activate or deactivate that random rhythm generation and arpeggio pattern variation.
~section: this function duplicates ~phrase. The number of ~phrase and octave transpositions are randomized. The function also makes further variations on amplitude, note duration, and panning.
The Routine in the last section uses the ~piece array as a cue list with details on when and how to trigger the ~section. The array ~chords is a list of all the notes in corresponding measures of the Bach Prelude. The Routine also sends a changing pitch set from ~chords to ~phrase via the global variable ~arp.
Anecdote
847 Twins does not use the Adagio section of the Prelude and Fugue. When composing the first movement, I could not transition from a constant 16th-note drive to a free and improvisational ending. I tried to address this incompleteness by writing a complementary movement, Blip, but it did not work out. I made a satisfying solution six months after completing 847 Twins by incorporating an instrument I could improvise aptly and freely. Nim6tet, the sixth track in Fan Art, has six layers of no-input mixer improvisation guided by the chord progressions of the Adagio section. It shamelessly shows off no-input mixer sounds I can not create with other instruments.
It took many attempts in the period of 1.5 years to finish three tracks about the first half of BWV847. The electronic interpretation of the Fugue part is a puzzle yet to be solved.
I got obsessed with Mark Applebaum’s Aphasia (2009) in the past two months. I perform my own music and often improvise, so studying and learning another composer’s piece with a score was challenging. But Applebaum is one of my electroacoustic heroes, and I have wanted to try Aphasia for a decade. After about two months of practice, I think I learned enough to enjoy performing it. Thank you for watching!
I was attending Mid-MO Composers Symposium in mid July. This week-long event was initiated and directed by composer Nolan Stolz, and was hosted by the Osage Arts Community in Belle, MO. Total of eleven composers from all over the country gathered at the OAC, and we discussed various topics and inspired each other. In fact, I don’t think I ever had this much fun talking about music since the college years.
Here are some topics we have discussed in the formal discussion panel:
Electronic music
Perceiving musical form
Timbral/behavioral counterpoint
Intertextuality in instrumental composition
Teaching students in the interdisciplinary arts
Perceiving musical form
Outreach and funding
Here are some planned (and a few unplanned) activities
Hang out at the river
Listening and discussion of Corigliano’s score for Altered States
Attend Alarm Will Sound’s open rehearsal at Mizzou International Composers Festival
Attend county fair and demolition derby
Watch the movie Untitled
Tour of a restored Missouri prairie
Karaoke night
“Guess the composer of this program notes” game
When there were no activities, each composer worked at his/her work in a private and quite space. The center has many buildings in the town, and is transforming the town into an artist heaven. All accommodation and foods are provided by the OAC for free. In short, I highly recommend the Composers Symposium and residency at the OAC. I know I will come back when I need a time and space for my projects.
Lastly, Belle is located in a beautiful rural area. I was happy to hear many inspiring sounds. The below is a recording of a chicken coop owned by OAC. You can almost hear checkins pecking my leg and the recorder.
Making Your Life As an Artist by Andrew Simonet is a free, concise book that can be downloaded at the Artists U site. It took me less than three hours to finish the book, but it gave me great tips and advices on how to live a balanced and sustainable life as a musician.
The author is an active choreographer, but the principles discussed in the book can be applied to music (or any other art). I was stressed for not having enough time and space to work in the past week. After reading this book, I learned good strategies on how to plan, finance, make time, and focus on artistic mission. I’m not so stressed anymore.
The first three chapters discusses about the role of artists in the world, why artist have challenging life, and the skills that artists already have to overcome such challenges. The last five chapters provide practical examples and how-to’s on making a living as an artist. I was also enlightened to read about entertainment vs art, science vs art, career vs mission, perfect vs good enough, and other analyses. I particularly love the analogies and examples:
“[Seed savers and some farmers] grow things that don’t fit with industrial agriculture. They preserve the seeds for plants we may need someday. This is what artists do culturally.” -p29
“Art is not cultural broccoli, something you hate but should consume.” – p33
“A lot of artists’ lives are built for 23-year-old single, frenetic, healthy, childless workaholics. That doesn’t last. Our lives change and our needs change” – p77
For its price and quality of information, the book has great value for my artist friends. It has even greater value for my non-artist friends since it will help you understand their art/music/dance friends a little better. I am planning to use the book as a reading material for my improvisation ensemble and upper-level music classes. I look forward to have a great discussion with the students about artist sustainability.
