What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Richard Barrett]

I'm also tempted by Michael Finnissy.

As always, Michael has some very interesting things to say. I've always looked up to him for his ability to wear his formidable intellect so lightly and thus to speak clearly about things that other composers get highly complicated about. As for my interview I wish I hadn't agreed to do it after being awake for 19 hours...

In the last couple of days I was working on mixing the recordings from last Thursday which, after all the stress and trouble getting the gear set up, turned out to be quite satisfactory - they've been sent off now to be lined up to the video, which is scheduled to appear on Youtube in a couple of days. The audio will also be one of the first releases on a new Bandcamp label I will be putting online next week to put out stuff by myself and friends. I've been using Soundcloud for the past few years for this purpose, but the layout of Soundcloud pages isn't very helpful when you have a large number of items, and most people don't bother to scroll down to find things. Organising them into "albums" as on Bandcamp seems like a much more attractive idea, with artwork, liner notes and a nicer and more customisable design. There's also the fact that listeners can buy uncompressed downloads of the material. Not that there's any serious money to be made of course!

[Richard Barrett]

This is listenable in parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj_rXnLqnx8

Better than that I would say! You've clearly been working hard and getting results. Good sound too, from what I can make out.

[Joseph K]

Better than that I would say! You've clearly been working hard and getting results. Good sound too, from what I can make out.

Thanks. The blues is not necessarily something I practice every day so it's odd that, like my performance of 'There Will Never Be Another You' (although even more the case with that) I should produce something that pleased me to some extent, whereas something I've practiced much more like 'Stella' I kind of feel a bit stale on, and continue to do so.

As for the sound - yes. The P90 pickups on the guitar I use for this performance of 'Billie's Bounce' are significantly louder and more powerful than the pickups on my Fender Mustang - not only louder but they project more and cut through nicely whereas with the Fender Mustang I'll have to be more careful about getting a balance between the backing track and the guitar. It's something I'd like to remedy TBH; I'm not sure if it's something that could be achieved just through messing around on my amp, or whether I'd need to get a pedal; I think one of the Mustangs John McLaughlin used had a humbucker as the neck pickup, though doing that would be a bit drastic...

Anyway, glad to hear your recordings have come out satisfactorily, I look forward to their appearance on youtube.

[Dave2002]

Playing around with a movement from a piano sonata by Ginastera - electronically that is, since there's no way I could play that piece - not this year or next, anyway.

Helps to pass the time, if nothing else. In the process of doing this I discovered an instrument I didn't know about before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylorimba a Xylomarimba - and yes I did think it would be a cross between a xylophone and a marimba - which it isn't!

The electronics don't necessarily improve on the piano, but do give a rather different effect.

[Joseph K]

As for the sound - yes.

Also worth mentioning in this regard is that in August I got the guitar set up (which got rid of some fret buzz on one place on the neck) with thicker strings and a round-wound G string - all in all making it sound nicer and play nicer than it was before...

[peterthekeys]

J. S. Bach's Italian Concerto - coming on reasonably well (sometimes - frequently at the moment - it seems that only Bach will do).

Also still working on John Ireland's Piano Concerto - can just about get through the first movement now, but a long way to go. I didn't use to be keen on it, but my opinion of it is gradually increasing: it's a better work than I thought.

[Serial_Apologist]

J. S. Bach's Italian Concerto - coming on reasonably well (sometimes - frequently at the moment - it seems that only Bach will do).

Also still working on John Ireland's Piano Concerto - can just about get through the first movement now, but a long way to go. I didn't use to be keen on it, but my opinion of it is gradually increasing: it's a better work than I thought.

I fell in love with the Ireland PC some twenty years ago when I saw it performed at the mini Hollywood Bowl in the Kenwood House grounds, high up on Hampstead Heath, one hot and stormy evening in August. The clouds that were piled up all around turned deep red as the sun set, and the concluding performance of Tchaikovsky's 1912 with co-ordinated fireworks took place against a dramatic darkening sky with distant rumbles and lightning flashes. One never forgets experiences such as that one was!

[peterthekeys]

Good microphones and audio interfaces are, I think, a lot easier to come by than used to be the case. At the beginning of the present crisis I got myself a matched pair of Røde NT5 condenser mics for £250 or so, which were used for the aforementioned harp/electronics concert.

Agreed that good kit is definitely cheaper and more readily available than formerly. Probably almost simultaneously, I bought a pair of NT55s (interchangeable cardioid and omni capsules: in omni mode, they seem to be one of the top recommendations for classical piano). I was planning to record the whole of the published piano music of William Baines in the Square Chapel Art Centre at Halifax (Steinway D grand and wonderful acoustics). Then came the pandemic! To make matters worse, the Square Chapel went into administration at about the same time (it may reopen - fingers crossed).

I keep wondering about trying a pair of Royer R-122 ribbon mics - but £3.5K for a pair is a bit beyond my budget ...

[Dave2002]

I haven't written any music in a long time and am honestly not sure if I'm going to do so again—have a few things that I've started and should finish, but I think my problem is that I honestly evaluated the quality of the music I've written in the past and found it inferior to what I'd like to be capable of. Also it's much easier to just listen to music other people write since chances are they have more original ideas than I do.

Have been spending a bit more time playing the piano instead and finding that I have the same problem (inferior to what I'd like to be able to do) but at least with that I have the excuse of only practicing about an hour a week. I think I've been resisting setting up an everyday practice regimen because I'm afraid that I won't improve enough, since my goal would be to play at a professional level, and that's not particularly realistic for a 28 year old. Current repertoire that I've been working on is Beethoven Op.109, Ravel Alborada del gracioso, Schumann Kreisleriana and sometimes bits of Scarlatti or Bach as warmups or to practice specific techniques.

I have recollections of having responded to this before - I remember the concern about not improving enough at a really advanced age (under 30!).

There are several kinds of meta-questions above this -

"is it worth attempting something if you know you'll never do better than some who are already very able and producing good works?"

"Is the experience of doing something, even if not well enough (by whatever standards....) enjoyable to the person doing it, and if so, should that still be encouraged?"

"Is it fair to compare one's ability later in life with what one might have done earlier on?"

I am finding that with several things right now - particularly exercise. Many people are amateurs regarding what others might call their hobbies. People who spend time renovating canals and running trains on heritage lines, people who play tennis - and really quite well - but know that they'll never appear at Wimbledon or Roland Garros.

I quite enjoy trying to write music, but very obviously it's not worthwhile - it won't make me money, other people might not like it, I may not like it either (that's possible - to write something one doesn't like), etc. but the fact is I do still - so far - like to see if I can do new things, and the fact that I write anything at all still surprises me. Even if the only real skill I will have achieved by this is being able to write out music parts for other people to play - which is where I started - I will count that as a success.

So really it's a kind of "is it the journey, or the destination?" question.

If we "should" all give up activities because we can't (now) do as well as before, or as well as someone else, or we can't make any money or a living out of them, then surely that's too negative. I knew someone who was a very good amateur pianist who took up the cello when he was around 60, and he was still accompanying singers into his 90s. He lived to be 100. I think he enjoyed his life.

[Dave2002]

Just found a solution to a problem re practice. In Musescore there's a metronome facility - which I don't normally use. There is also a count in feature, which possibly is not always available. There is an option to put this into the toolbar - View -> Toolbars -> Customize Toolbars then drag items in or out of the left/right panels to put/remove them from the toolbar. There is a count-in feature, which looks a bit like a conductor's hand with a stick.

To use it, it may also be necessary to activate it in the Play Panel - (again View -> Play Panel - or F11 on some machines - if that doesn't conflict with some other key shortcut)

Having done this it's quite nice to use. This is useful for pieces which "go straight in", so that one doesn't miss a few beats at the start. Also, if a bar in the middle of a piece is selected, then it'll give an audible count in for just that one bar too.

I wrote what might become an ensemble exercise (not really any more than that), with seemingly quite a lot of interchanges between instruments, and this technique makes it possible to practice the entries.

If one wanted to have a slower tempo for practice purposes, it would probably be necessary to put an explicit tempo marking in for the practice bars. There is a feature to slow down or speed up the playback, but it distorts the sounds quite a lot, so putting in a temporary speed change might be a better option.

[Richard Barrett]

Continuing my efforts to find ways of making music for performance in these distracted times, on Sunday I finished a very brief (the brief was 30 seconds!) trio for the Debussyan combination of flute, harp and viola (actually bass flute) for the New Gates Trio, an ensemble led by flautist Matteo Cesari, known for his excellent CD of solo flute music by James Erber among other things. Back in the spring they asked a massive variety of composers to contribute "sonic postcards" for their Youtube video series - 51 of them are up as of today, here

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0FzemDVuQR0vJZSTPbSTkg/videos

... and I believe there are at least 20 more to come. Writing a piece of this duration that still has a rich and complex sound and structure was quite a challenge, and in fact took me over a week of quite intensive work. The thing is that there's something about conceiving and realising a composition that's somehow independent of its duration. Obviously, when there are fewer notes, less time is taken writing them down, but the necessity to make something with a distinctive sound and structure is of the same order whether the result is going to take 30 seconds to play or 30 minutes.

[Dave2002]

Obviously, when there are fewer notes, less time is taken writing them down, but the necessity to make something with a distinctive sound and structure is of the same order whether the result is going to take 30 seconds to play or 30 minutes.

Quick response, as about to brave the weather and go out for a walk. Yes - it can take a long while to produce even a short piece. Further, some people seem to go in for length, and one wishes they wouldn't. I have sampled a few recently.

[Dave2002]

Quite by chance discovered this - which is on right now ** - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQg...yLUzFxGDA/live

This is a Youtube talk about MuseScore by one of the gurus.

It's called MuseScore Café and is hosted by Marc Sabatella who seems to be an expert - he has also produced books on the software.

** that was at 6pm UK time - almost an hour ago now. Seems he does these most Wednesdays.

[Joseph K]

Composing some licks using chromaticism - passing notes and enclosures. As I mentioned over on the what jazz are you listening to thread, I recently squandered some money on an online jazz course which, now I see what's in it, doesn't really offer me much I didn't already know, or that I already knew that I had to do; but, like the few guitar lessons I got a few months ago, it has the benefit of giving a bit of form to my endeavour and composing licks is some of the required homework. I think the money spent is like added encouragement to do something I already wanted to do. And while of course I can sit at the guitar and improvise ideas, in a systematic way too, I quite like writing things down because that way I'm not thinking what my fingers are doing, and it gives me something tangible to work off, so I read and play the licks and practice them on the tune the course is based on (Take the A Train) and practice varying them...

[Dave2002]

Are there any tips you can pass on for licks?