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.
How much time and energy does a musician spend on an interdisciplinary project? A three-month-long production period does not equal 90+ days of labor. How many days are spent on music, and how many of them are spent on meetings with the collaborators? How much of the music created for the show ends up in the show? I ask myself these questions to better understand the practical role of a music creator in a project involving performing artists of other fields. Answers to these questions require measurable data, such as the total working days and total minutes of music composed. These numbers lead to an insight into the productivity of music creators.
In 2023, Artlab J, Detroit Puppet Company, and I created a one-hour show titled Objects at Play (video link). It was a non-verbal dance and puppet show aimed at young audiences. The first meeting was on February 18, 2023, and the show premiered on May 27, 2023, at the Detroit Film Theatre. I recorded my production process from the start of the project to study my collaboration productivity. I gathered and organized the data according to the numbers I worked and the minutes of music I produced as I composed, recorded, and mixed music. The analysis and statistics revealed that a fraction of the total collaborative period is spent on person-to-person interaction. About two-thirds of the total music communicated with the collaborators ended up in the show.
There are three limitations to this article.
I am sharing my work process as a solo electronic musician who could compose and share music without other musicians. The workflow described in the following section may not apply to performers or composers of non-electronic genres.
No similar data were collected from the collaborators of Objects at Play. Comparison of productivity across the discipline was outside the plan.
The analysis focuses on the practical aspects of collaboration. There will be no aesthetic discussion of Objects at Play.
Data gathering
I used a production diary consisting of a web folder with a session log, screenshots, and photos to record the project’s progress. In the SessionLog text file, I briefly described the work I have done in a workday. Each entry has links to photos of hand-written notes or screenshots of the hard drive folder containing music files used for the project. The screenshots function as a reminder of content changes in music tracks. The Old Versions folder in the screenshots contains obsolete or rejected session files. I kept these files to calculate the amount of music that had not been used at the premiere.
Work Routine
The creative team of me, choreographer Joori Jung of ArtLab J, and theater director Carrie Morris of Detroit Puppet Company shared a Google Drive folder for remote communication and file transfer. The team worked on multiple projects, so daily or weekly meeting was not an option. The list below shows how I worked on the project in this context as a musician.
The first in-person meeting with Joori and Carrie was on 2/16. The three discussed the overall vision of the piece.
After meeting #1, I worked on short and independent tracks that could match the to-be-developed scenes.
I shared nine music tracks with the collaborators via Google Drive before the second meeting.
At the second meeting on 3/9, Joori and Carrie shared their work-in-progress scenes. The directors also shared current music tracks-to-scene placement.
After meeting #2, I made five additional tracks. I also revised and expanded the tracks used in the scenes.
I shared the updated tracks with the collaborators before the third meeting.
At the third meeting on 4/25, the directors shared new tracks-to-scene placement. The deadline for the final version of the music was set.
After meeting #3, I made three additional tracks. I continued revising and mixing the tracks to a presentable form.
I delivered the final versions of the tracks. The directors and performers continued working on the project until the premiere on 5/27, but I did not create more music for the show.
Separate from the theater premiere, I worked on a 14-track album with edits suited for audio-only release. It was published on Bandcamp a day after the premiere.
Note that I had the aesthetic decisions in creating music, but the directors in charge of movement and stage decided the music’s length, order, and selection. Unlike solo projects, the decisions that drove the project forward were not mine by design.
Data Organization
I organized the information in the production diary into two categories. The first category traces how allocations of the music track to one of the seven scenes change after the collaborator meeting. The second category is statistics on days worked and the amount of music produced.
Tracks-to-Scene Organization
Figure 1 shows how each track I made and shared with the collaborators changed their use throughout the project. The blocks with letters A to Q represent 17 tracks with independent musical themes. I composed the first nine drafts after the first meeting, five after the second meeting, and three more after the third meeting. These tracks were available as separate mp3 files on Google Drive for the choreographer and the theater director.
<Figure 1>
The middle column represents the tracks-to-scene assignment after the second collaborators’ meeting. Four scenes needed new music. The two scenes required a combination of tracks. All tracks needed expansion and revisions in terms of the music’s length and formal development. Note that four out of the nine tracks shared before the second meeting were rejected.
The right column represents a revised tracks-to-scene assignment after the third meeting. It became the final version. Some tracks included in the previous version, such as tracks A and L, ended up being excluded from the show. All but one rejected track after the second meeting came back as a part of Scenes 5 and 6. Track M changed its function from the theme of Scene 6 to the finale of Scene 5.
Productivity Analysis
I measured the amount of work by the days I spent on the project and the length of music created and shared with the directors. There are 102 days from the initial meeting on 2/16 to the album premiere on 5/28. According to the production diary,
I worked 37 days on this project (36.3% of total project days).
I met with collaborators in-person for 3 days (8.1% of the working days, 3% of total project days).
I did not record the minutes I worked on each day, so I cannot calculate the hours I worked on.
In terms of the total amount of music, I gathered the following from screenshots and project files.
14 out of 17 tracks made it to the show (82.4%).
The total amount of music communicated with the collaborators was 11474 seconds consisting of 34 drafts (figure 2).
The premiere used 3319 seconds of music (figure 3). That is 28.9% of the music communicated with the collaborators.
The project used a total of 14.1GB in the hard drive. The files were Logic Pro sessions, SuperCollider files, and audio recordings of me playing a melodica.
<Figure 2>
<Figure 3>
Interpretation of the Data
The collaborative process is about quickly adopting and adapting to changes. My role as a music composer was to react to the developing dance and puppetry. It meant constant addition, elimination, and revision. 14 out of 17 tracks making it into the final version looks like a satisfactory rate, but it is less than a third of the music shared with the collaborators. At the same time, once-rejected music can become useful if the circumstances change. Keeping the Old Versions folder intact was a strategically right decision.
I worked on the project for about a third of the total project period and waited for collaborators to develop their part asynchronously to my music production schedule. Waiting is part of the process for musicians in interdisciplinary projects. It is possible to have time to work on a separate project while engaged in a long-term collaboration.
Notice that I did not discuss budget and fees in this article. The amount of time and energy spent on a project does not account for the creator’s previous experience and skill. 30 days I spent on Objects at Play could have been 90 days of work for some or 10 days of work for others. My productivity analysis is not a suggestion for budgeting or calculating artist fees. Its object is to be a reference for a better collaborative practice.
I have been writing and performing electronic music for dance for more than a decade. I learned so much from choreographers, and I look forward to working with them more in the future. Here’s a documentation of my music for dance so far.
Improvisation with Megan Bridge at Philadelphia City Hall (2012)
My dance collaboration started as an improviser. Megan Bridge of the Fidget and I met in Philadelphia, and we had many improv sessions. May sessions I had with the dancers during my Philly years (2008-2014) made me a better musician and listener. Below is another improvisation project with Erick Montes, Eunjung Choi, and Guillermo Ortega Montes.
The strangest thing (2014)
When I moved to Oberlin, I was fortunate to work with Holly Handman-Lopez. I was involved in producing an evening-length show about the woman suffrage movement. My role was to compose music with a short deadline and multiple changes/edits. I learned how to communicate with choreographers and dance production staff. Unfortunately, I do not have footage of the actual performance, but below are a promo video (with someone else’s music) and a recording session of a piece used in the show.
In Detroit, my current stomping ground, I continue to work with the dancers with different roles. In 2021, I worked with IS/LAND as a technologist. I provided an electromagnetic instrument that made sounds as the dancers approach an object. I was happy to be a part of a production as non-composer or non-performer (but still as a musician)
Invisible Embrace by IS/LAND (2021)
Last April, Biba Bell and I collaborated to make a 60min site-specific piece for dance and electronic ensemble. My job was to make music and direct an ensemble consisting of nine electronic musicians. It was the largest work I have ever worked on in terms of the number of people involved. The documentation of the work was also excellent.
A Dream Is A House for remembering the future (2022)
My most recent collaboration is with Joori Jung of Artlab J. Through this collaboration, I worked with a Pansori singer to compose a 20min music. The collaboration also took me to a new stage. I never thought my music was going to be on an Asian Culture Showcase! The video documentation is on the way, but here are pictures of the rehearsal.
Dance and music are time-based arts, and dancers and musicians learn from each other. I am grateful that I had opportunities to work with excellent choreographers and improvisers. I look forward to doing more projects with movements! I am not a dancer myself, but I am studying the relationship between movement and sound. Check out the video below!
A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future, created in collaboration by Biba Bell (Dance) and Joo Won Park (Music), is an hour-long immersive performance created for twenty-one Wayne State University (WSU) dancers and the WSU Electronic Music Ensemble in Minoru Yamasaki’s McGregor Conference Center atrium. A DREAM IS A HOUSE brings together sound, light, movement, embodiment, and storytelling together in the cathedral-esque modernism of Yamasaki’s architecture, evoking creative research driven by memory palaces, buildings as bodies, dream scenes, dancing with ghosts, and personal and collective ritual making. – from Vimeo site
My ensemble (EMEWS) and I worked with Biba and her Dance Class to make a site-specific, multi-channel piece over the Winter 2022 semester. The above is an excerpt of a 60-min piece. McGregor Hall’s architecture and acoustics were ideal for music and movement. I am happy about the result. The in-person experience was something unique, but Noah Eliott Morrison‘s team documented the essential experience of the piece in the video.
Although EMEWS has worked on the piece since March, I started working on it in August 2021. Biba and I spent Fall 2021 trying ideas and finding voices. The video below is a shorter version of A DREAM… presented at an end-of-semester showcase.
The Fall version’s 15min stereo audio expanded to a 60-min piece for a laptop ensemble and a guitarist, each emitting sounds from a portable amp. The music evolved and adjusted every week as the choreography changed, and the ensemble ended up performing based on the score below.
I think music can have an altered life. I plan to perform an audio-only ensemble version in an upcoming show. Let’s see how it goes.
I worked with Asheville Creative Arts and Nehprii Amenii (Khunum Productions) on a puppet theatre piece over the past nine months. My role was to provide post-apocalypse underwater sounds as a sound designer. HUMAN ran for two weeks in May. Pictures and links below show some scenes from the show.
More info is here. Audiovisual documents will be published soon!
