I’m not ready to talk about what I’ve landed on for parts 3 and 4, but I do want to talk about the initial idea that I landed on for part 2 – bee swarms. Bee sounds, particularly in swarms, have a lot of personality to them and can be translated in a myriad different ways into a sonic art. I found a dozen or so public domain sounds of bees that I really liked and started listening to them over and over again trying to determine how I could shape the aural narrative of the work.

I was struggling to pick a direction that I really liked, so I decided to do some basic research on bees for inspiration. I knew most of the basics and some fringe knowledge about things like colony collapse disorder and that the population of bees are declining, but it wasn’t until I dug into it more that my eyes were opened to the true facts and myths about bees. Once I dug deep enough, I realized that I had no choice but to scrap the bee swarm idea from Through the Sonic Glass completely.

The reason? Including bee sounds in a work whose central thesis is dangerous/hostile environments spreads misinformation and perpetuates a myth that damages our global ecosystem. Not only are most bees not a threat to humanity (with the exception of Africanized honey bees), they are essential for pollenating the world’s crops and unnecessary eradication of them due to apiphobia (fear of bees) has potentially irreversible consequences on our food supply.

I wrestled to find ways to justify its inclusion because the sonic environment is so fascinating. I tried to argue with myself that since Fast-Paced World was taking a dangerous sonic environment and recontextualizing it into something more peaceful and serene, I could weave a similar narrative with bees and make it more educational and promotional. The problem is that without what would be an extremely long essay of a program note, its inclusion could easily be misinterpreted, especially with surrounding movements whose premise starts with Actual Dangerous environments rather than perceived ones.

On the one hand, it saddens me because I started to get really immersed in that sonic world, but on the other hand, I consider this as a tabling rather than a trashing. It doesn’t belong in Sonic Glass, but it could belong in a different work, one that could not only avoid spreading a false narrative but perhaps make an active effort to abolish it and dispel the myth. We’ll see what happens in the future, but for now? Back to the drawing board.

First, one of my marching band students has asked me to write a piece for his senior trumpet recital. After a brief discussion about ideas, I decided to write it as an interactive piece using Max, which has gotten me down the path of re-learning and doing a lot of Max programming (because apparently I can’t make things easy for myself even if i tried). I’m not as familiar with MSP as I should be, but hopefully this will graduate me from beginner to competent amateur.

Right now I’m conceiving of the piece as being done in four movements, all of which play with a different concept of time. The first movement will be about the trumpet playing some passages that will then get echoed back and potentially manipulated, representing the trumpet playing from the “past” being used with current material. The second movement will be about the trumpet playing passages that has chordal movement in live unison, representing the trumpet playing from the “present” being used with the current material. The third movement will be about the trumpet playing passages that it hears from Max first, representing the idea that those passages are grabbing trumpet playing from “future” passages. The fourth movement will pull from all of those concepts into a single movement that is loosely based on the concept of spacetime.

The beginning stages of this is mostly programming Max patches that can deal with these various mechanics. I’m trying to figure out the best way to get the trumpet signal into Max, easily identify its pitch, account for tuning errors, different input/output gains and levels, and the like. Once I create that groundwork, I’ll deal with tools for the actual music. The patch for Movement 2 is going to be a modified version of an external patch already built by ICST, so that’ll also probably be what I compose first.

Second, I need to write a piece for nienteForte this year, and if all goes according to plan, that will be for the TALEA ensemble. A lot will depend on exactly what members of TALEA will be a part of the festival, but if all goes according to plan, the piece will also include some basic Max programming (but much more simple as it will be MIDI only and I can do that in my sleep). The piece is going to be based on a Dali painting that i love, with the idea that the ensemble is going to be split into two distinct tonal groups – one that uses equal-temperament and another that uses a “parallel” microtonal equal-temperament that phases in and out as controlled by Max and a MIDI piano. The idea I have right now is to put the responsibility of the parallel tuning on string instruments with the idea that it’s easier for them to constantly microtune than it is for wind instruments.

We’ll see how all of this shakes down; the current goal is to get the Max programming structure of the trumpet piece done in the next few weeks so that I can start writing the actual music in July. My progress on that will be somewhat contingent on Life getting in the way, which is going wonderfully ballistic right now with house hunting with the girlfriend, staying on top of TUMB stuff, etc.

There are a couple of small nagging sloppy parts to the piece that frustrate me and I think the middle section before the final climax is something that I would do slightly differently, but there’s more about it that I’m still happy with than unhappy, and that feels pretty good.  The more important thing is that fifteen years later it still feels like me – given the same source material that I had back then (which was probably over two hours worth of material), my approach to the composition might be more polished, but the general structure and idea behind the work would still be the same.

It serves as a good reminder that contemporary electronic art music is something that still holds importance to me in some way, and that, along with some other stuff that i’m almost done creating a different blog entry about, is giving me the drive to kickstart some abandoned projects in that realm to complete for the next couple of years.  There’s two electronic projects in particular that I’m planning on doing – one is a revision and a revamp of an old piece I did during my undergraduate years that then carried through to my masters called Surrounded By Mirrors for clarinet, MIDI keyboard, and interactive electronics.  The other, In a Fast Paced World, is a piece that I was originally conceiving of as an interactive octaphonic piece of music using a LEAP Motion Controller.  I’m not 100% convinced that the LEAP is the right controller for the job anymore, but it’s still worth fiddling with since the software side of the tech has improved greatly since i last experimented with it, and they may have even figured out at this point how to get two LEAPs to connect to a single computer.  We’ll see what happens, or if something else comes along that is a better sort of input for that project.

I started playing through the B section i had already written in Finale and then in my head to try to monitor the pacing of it and figure out how to get out of it, and then sometime a half hour later when i was taking a break (i might have been at the grocery), the ending sixteen measures of the piece instantly appeared in my head.

Occasionally that happens, where the right thing for the piece just pops in my head out of nowhere, as if to say, “duh, mendel.  what else could it be?”

When i got home I wrote down a description of what happened in text, confident that i’d remember what it sounded like, and writing the words was incredibly gratifying.  The ending of this piece is something i had been struggling with – the A’ material was strong, but wasn’t leading anywhere yet, and i didn’t know where i wanted to take it.  To have a definite idea of how i was going to get there felt like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – all i needed to do was fill in the details and the piece that i had struggled so much with and fell so behind on was finally going to hit that hump of completion.

Between craziness at work and catching up on some much needed socializing, i ended up shelving the piece for a few days.  When i came back to it, i was revisiting the B to A’ transition, struggling because the method i was currently exploring felt stale – the way it was leading was a gradually increasing density of parts that would abruptly turn into unison hits – i initially started that way to give it a unifying element since it was a variant of how the A section led to the B section, but since i also used that technique multiple times in the B section itself, to do it a fourth or fifth time in the piece and end it the same way started to feel less like a unifying element and more like a tired overbearing repetition.

Tonight i started to go a different direction with the material leading to the recap, something that sparked in my head a few days ago.  The new direction feels right for the piece – but it bridges the transition to the A’ material so differently that that A’ section i wrote about a month ago might get thrown out, which means that those perfect sixteen measures which are pretty still well etched into my memory might not actually make it into the piece – sure it’ll end in a similar way, but it won’t be the same.

But ultimately that’s what composition and art is about – malleability and the exploration of multiple possible scenarios that lead to their own individual outcomes.  The strength of the material the way i have it written right now is enough that i don’t want to stray from it, and the fact that it’s completely changing the ending material is disappointing in some ways but is ultimately a better choice for the piece.  Even seemingly perfect endings can change drastically enough that a different ending that wasn’t even on the radar pops up out of nowhere, and that new ending becomes the perfect ending in a way that the previous one could no longer ever be.

Life is kind of like that too, i think.

For those interested, here’s the tail end of the development of the B section.  I’m plunging ahead with how it’s written with a clear level of acceptance that it might have to change because it’s not really playable.  We’ll see.

The theme for the concert is essentially the Pacific Northwest – the concert is going to spotlight composers that have connection to the Pacific Northwest, and the group has asked me to write a piece that has a Pacific Northwest theme, the common examples being things like rain and mountains. As i’ve started trying to come up with ideas for the piece, I find myself steering away from those two examples specifically because I feel that those are very easy targets – first, it’s easy to associate the PNW with rain and mountains and i wouldn’t be surprised if half of the repertoire on the concert has one of those two things as a theme. Second, there are a lot of pieces in general that use rain and/or mountains as thematic content, and aside from my potential use of interactive technology with Max or Live with the highly-anticipated-but-yet-to-be-released Leap Motion, I don’t feel like I’d be creating anything that hasn’t been done a million times already.

So I’m putting some thought into more atypical PNW theme to use for the piece. One idea that popped into my head was to use the theme of “grunge music” since that’s associated with Seattle, but I ultimately rejected that because i thought it would be too difficult to pull off with a percussion quartet in addition to its lack of relevance in pop music these days. We’ll see what sort of ideas pop into my head in the next week or so.

I have some mixed feelings about how the music turned out for a few reasons. First, the piece is a strange hybrid of me and not me. The principal concept of the piece required me to write musical material that was supposed to sound like someone else. Originally the piece was going to be pretty much a very simple and slow chorale, non-minimalist, as its primary musical material to help set up for the Shock Moment at the end of the piece (involving the ringing of a mobile phone in the audience at the end of the piece’s climax). The idea i had in my head was to make it like the slow-moving parts of The Unanswered Question or for it to have the same sort of personality as Adagio for Strings. Don’t get me wrong, i love that music, but it’s not the sort of thing that I generally associate with my own musical voice, at least not exactly. But once i started writing it, it started to take a mind of its own and some very characteristic Mendel things crept into the piece, particularly rhythmically, and the result is something that definitely sounds like me, but also not me, and i don’t have a good sense right now whether or not the strength of the material is therefore diluted because of that split personality.

Secondly, the music suffers a little from the product of being the first large ensemble piece that i’ve composed (rather than arranged) in about nine or so years. It took much longer than it should have to get this piece going to the point where as recent as a couple of weeks ago i was starting to get worried that i wouldn’t finish the piece by the deadline. The piece thus feels a little bit rushed and is in need of tweaking that i don’t have time to do right now. Hopefully i’ll get a chance to revise it next summer or fall.

But while the execution of the compositional aspects of the piece may be a little below my standard, the motivation behind the piece and its thesis is very important to me, enough that I’m thinking of scripting and storyboarding a video project to talk about it not just in the context of the piece but its wider application to the classical music community as a whole.

In any case, while we were talking about it, Kate put forth the suggestion that I take a trip sometime this spring to give a presentation about it in her Music and Ethics class. My spring is fairly busy, but i think it would be good on my resumé and be a great experience to help flesh out the thesis of the piece and aid in its musical revision and accompanying video presentation that i want to put together. Plus there’s the added bonus of seeing her and her husband again in Hawaii, as it’s been a few years since i’ve seen them and more since i’ve been to Hawaii.

I’d probably get an honorarium from UH to pay for travel – although it wouldn’t be much, it’s better than nothing. The tricky part is scheduling – i have my nienteForte concert on April 22nd and the Tulane Spring Concert Band concert is on the 24th. UH’s last day of classes is the following Wednesday which Kate was going to use for final review, and since she was envisioning it being a two-day class seminar-like thing, that would mean i would have to do it on Friday/Monday which could be super tight if my parents are still in town, plus I don’t know what tickets would be like during that time since that’s prime Jazz Fest time. On the other hand, earlier could be a bit tricky since i’ll have dress rehearsals and last minute prep for the upcoming concerts.

I’m sure i can make it work – i just need to have some foresight in planning, not just because of those conerts but also because at that time i’ll probably be deep in the throes of creative brainstorming for Hermiston’s marching band show in addition to whatever Galaxy Interactive might throw at me, and on top of that i may also be trying to work on a commission for the Portland Percussion Group for PASIC that would be due in July/August if that negotiation works out.

and oh yeah, i might be writing a piece for the Portland Percussion Group for their application to PASIC in 2013. More news on that soon.

1. Deadline. I’m at the beginning of October and the piece needs to be done by Christmas. The scope and concept i have for the piece is incredibly complex – there’s a lot that i want the piece to accomplish and to do it in the right way, i feel like i’ll need a few months to sketch and compose the piece before i even deal with first level of revisions.

2. Time restraints. The piece has to fit within a time restraint of about 7-10 minutes, and given the amount of musical material that i have to work with and how i want to develop it, i don’t think that that’s enough time for me to say what i want to say.

I’m still going to hold on to the work that i’ve done already and maybe make some progress on it when i have more spare time energy in the spring. The piece has started taking shape, and i think it has a lot of potential, i just need to give it its proper time and weight so that it doesn’t end up being something much less than it should be or ends up being close to what i want but in the sacrifice of me putting way too much pressure and stress on myself between now and the holidays.

So what i think is going to happen is i’m going to take the sketchwork of a piece i did in a Composition for Orchestra class i took in grad school, revise it and reflesh it out for wind ensemble. There’s two sections of the piece that i think are really strong, it’s just a matter of how to make the rest of the piece strong as well. I’ll probably start looking at that starting on Thursday.

1. Download all of the national anthem MP3s as is available on The Navy Band website.
2. Have one of my friends create a script to rename all of the files (because the files were all named the country of the national anthem) into a random 1 to 5 digit number.
3. Put all of the mp3s into a playlist on my iPhone, listen to them whenever i get a chance on shuffle. Make notes on interesting things by file number via a note in Evernote.

I opted to rename the anthems to random numbers and have someone else do the randomizing because i wanted to be able to listen to and evaluate the music without bias as to where the music originates from or what it represents. Clearly there were a few national anthems that i recognized (US, UK, Canada, France, for example), but for the most part I have no idea what i’m actually listening to.

After having spent probably a few hours listening to the playlist (i’m not sure if i’ve actually gotten through all of the anthems since i’ve had to start the shuffle over at times) and mostly passively (as background as opposed to paying attention), i think i’ve come to the conclusion that my original idea of having all of the national anthems get their spotlight isn’t going to work. Although the piece is going to have a medley sort of feel to it by default, i still want it to be feel more compositional than cut-and-paste-medley.

So what i’m working out in my brain now is making it a little more “Ivesian” for lack of a better made up word – i want to mash anthems together, but in a complementary way as opposed to a clashy way. I may also take some anthem themes and stretch them out rhythmically to provide some sort of slow moving bass line or something, and maybe do some other “masking” to give some of the anthems a unique sort of feel, but without losing the integrity of the anthem itself (so i’m not planning on playing any of them backwards or doing set inversions or silly things like that).

I still have several days of constant listening before i’m going to take some serious notes, and then a few days of listening after that to see if i can start to get a feel for the shape of the piece. That’s really the key – how to take the key material in my head and give the piece a big picture shape and form – once i have that, all of the details can be filled in pretty easily and/or get morphed. If after all of that i can’t get a feel of the big picture shape, i’ll probably go back to the drawing board.

The first idea i had was to steal one of my favorite sections of an old orchestra piece i did for an orchestra composition class in my grad school days because it’s a pretty great section and find a way to expand on it. That’s still the backup plan. But the second and now primary idea that i’m going with is a piece that i’ve been thinking about for the past four or five years now, which is a “anthems of the world” kind of piece, as in i want to incorporate all of the known current national anthems of the world into a huge fused hybrid that’s meant to arrive at some sense of global unity.

The potential backfiring of doing a piece like that is that it’s a pretty big undertaking. If this website is comprehensive as it seems, there are 212 national anthems that exist, and to find a way to journey across all 212 in an eight to ten minute piece that’s due by January 1st when i haven’t written a large ensemble piece in almost a decade seems like i could be biting off more than i can chew. i don’t want to suddenly have to cancel my Christmas vacation plans because, say, i still don’t know how to incorporate the Senegal national anthem into the piece and i don’t want to exclude them because then they could take me hostage or something.

It all boils down to timing. After my two long weeks of band camp are over, i basically have four months to write the piece. Is that enough time? Probably. Is it enough time on top of my full time job, the WSOP satellite event in early December and potentially writing a winter show for Hermiston that would be due around the same time? Maybe.

The one compositional stumbling block that i’ve already been trying to address in my head is how to end the piece. Is there an anthem that can serve as the Big Ending, one anthem that can serve as a climax over any other? As a citizen of the United States i could use that as an obvious answer, but this piece is meant to transcend any personal sense of patriotism i may have; the idea is that no nation is more important than any other, we are all one globe and one world. In that sense, creating an ending climax that resembles *any* of the 212 anthems is problematic, so chances are the music will have to be original and maybe derivative.

The other compositional challenge is how to fuse the anthems together in a way that can ensure that all of the anthems have some time in the spotlight. It’s easy enough to use some of the anthems as background material and i’d probably rely heavily upon that to give the piece depth, but to have an anthem *only* exist in the background is also counter to the philosophy of the piece.

Probably what the plan will be is to stick all of the anthems into a playlist and listen to them ad nauseum for the two weeks following band camp. Next would be to spend a day in a very quiet room or at a park or go on a walk or something and let the ideas buzz of their own accord around in my head, and then spend the next day with staff paper, a pencil with a very big eraser, and a computer, and see what manages to come out. If what comes out seems promising, i move forward with the piece. If what comes out seems strained and difficult and stupid, i start over.

Sometime last week, i decided to walk instead of drive to the store. The main reason was that i was in the throes of trying to figure out how to arrange Hermiston’s ballad, which is My Immortal by Evanescence.  I didn’t know the tune before it was brought up, so i had to listen to it a few times to get a feel for what the tune was about.  I put the whole framework into the computer, but i was dissatisfied with it for some reason; the pacing felt weird, or the climax felt weird, or something else entirely that i couldn’t identify.

I played the original tune a couple of times, then played my version.  Then i had both of them fixed up in my head pretty well so i didn’t need to physically play either back anymore, and i started pacing my living room, running both versions in my head, experimenting in my head with different variants of my own arrangement to see if i could figure it out.  I think at one point i stood up on my chair and looked down from “higher up”, as it were. It was the first time i had ever really done that; i’m not sure why it was a part of my thinking process.

At some point i realized that i should get something to eat/plan out the whole dinner thing.  How to make the ballad work was still in my brain and i knew that if i drove i would have to lose some of that focus, so that’s why i decided to walk.

Along the walk i ended up running into a friend of mine who lives close by named Gavin. He’s originally from San Francisco and basically works as his own construction company. He’s also a fairly talented guitarist who back in his heyday recorded a punk version of the entire musical “West Side Story” that developed a small cult fan base. He was out walking his two dogs.  We exchanged pleasantries and a couple of brief stories of our recent travel, and then went our own separate ways, and i went back to running music in my head while i walked.

I stopped thinking about the music briefly while i was actually in the store trying to figure out what my dinner plan was.  I think i ended up defaulting the salad bar which i’ve been doing usually these days, but i also bought some ground beef for cooking the next day.  My time in the actual grocery store was maybe ten minutes max, and then i started walking home.

The kind of focus i had during the walk and being in that particular creation space is an incredibly exhilarating and zen-like sort of feeling. My brain felt like it was working out some very intricate and fine details, fragments and pieces of this larger puzzle that i was slowly putting together in a way that would hopefully make the music sparkle.

Somewhere in the middle of the walk on the way home, i figured out how to make it work (take the chorus out of the middle, swap it with the B section that currently resided at the end, move these four measures to there instead).  I ran it through my head several more times before i got home. Once home, i put the groceries away, then immediately went to put the changes i made in my head into the Finale score so i could play it back and see if i liked the pacing and the general new intent.

And yeah. It was much, much better.