What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[BBMmk2]

All of Elgar’s VS, is wonderful.

Richard Barrett, that looks complicated.

[Serial_Apologist]

All of Elgar’s VS, is wonderful.

Richard Barrett, that looks complicated.

Understatement of the Millennium, I would think!

[BBMmk2]

Understatement of the Millennium, I would think!

Indeed!

[Richard Barrett]

To me "complicated" implies an unnecessary addition of complications to something, which I hope isn't the case here. The rhythmical complexity of this solo percussion music is the result of the constant "serial" variation in the musical figures involving not only their shapes (the "melodies" they form across the array of nominally unpitched instruments) and their dynamics, but also their tempi. The accumulation of rhythmical subdivision brackets might look "unnecessarily complicated" but it's actually a more accurate, economical and (IMO) musically meaningful way to notate this than changing the metronomic tempo several times in every bar!

Whenever I post score excerpts on the internet the first thing that happens is that I find embarrassing typos, and this one is no exception...

[Richard Barrett]

Well, that percussion piece is finished now, apart from its electronic part... which I began work on and then got sidetracked. This happens very often when I start working with electronic sounds: initially getting torn between making a realisation of what I had in mind and what's appropriate to the ongoing project on the one hand, and pursuing the inevitable discoveries that occur along the way which can't be incorporated into it. Usually I do pursue them for a while. Sometimes they lead to my changing my mind about what it was I was searching for and end up finding a place in an expanded conception of whatever the original idea was. Other times they give rise to something else entirely. Since completing the aforementioned score a week ago, which I've been working on intermittently for over a year, my exploratory attempts to find the right sound materials for its electronic part seem to have led to the emergence of an independent 27-minute electronic composition that has nothing to do with it. Or does it? Having put it together I'm listening to it several times a day to try and work out where it has brought me. This is a kind of practising I guess.

[Joseph K]

Well, I lasted all of a month and a half returning to jazz guitar, before returning, now once and for all without a doubt, to classical guitar.

Anyone who can play jazz (on guitar or otherwise) properly has my greatest respect. Not only is it like learning a foreign language - it's like learning to write poetry in that language - or, even, like inventing an new language. I have a stack of how to learn jazz books, some are rather big and even to contemplate them gives me a headache. Not only does your physical technique have to be absolutely spot-on, your technique of improvising phrases often at speed needs to be well-developed. While learning classical guitar I'd say involves a nice consistent learning curve, and to be quite good at that already puts you in the same ball-park as people like Bream and John Williams, great jazz players are in outer-space with uniquely developed vocabularies and techniques all of their own.

When I finished uni, I was really taken in my jazz-fusion and was really set on playing jazz. It was a difficult few years in other respects, but I did transcribe solos by Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and I did work on chords etc. But I suppose I could sound maybe quite competent on a few standards, there would nonetheless be some kind of magic missing... I was attracted to it by the fact that there was no separation in sense between composition and performance, but now, this just seems mind-boggling! To return to jazz guitar now would involve spending years and years without appearing to get very far at all - compared with the aforementioned learning-curve of classical guitar, and at my age - 30 - I feel I would always be chasing lost time with no clear-cut rewards in sight. That is very different to the clear-cut reward that I know if I put the hours in, I will make a Bach fugue sound nice (and it sounds nice playing it over and over anyway!)

[Richard Barrett]

Anyone who can play jazz (on guitar or otherwise) properly has my greatest respect.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but surely the approach to take to jazz isn't a question of learning how to do it "properly" in the footsteps of whoever one happens to admire most, but taking whatever you need as a starting point for developing an individual approach to the music, just like all the great players did, because jazz improvisation is primarily a creative practice rather than a matter of interpretation. To take a related personal example, I know I could put in the time and write pastiche compositions in whatever style, some more easily than others, which would require a learning curve I have a good idea of the shape of, but I also know I won't do that unless I really feel the need to, and I think it's unlikely I ever will. There are so many ways in which technique, imagination and spontaneity can come together. Do you know the work of this guy by the way? https://audiosemantics.bandcamp.com/track/closeup-1

[Joseph K]

Do you know the work of this guy by the way? https://audiosemantics.bandcamp.com/track/closeup-1

Yes, I have come across his name in connection with you a while back.

I think what I had in mind regarding my 'proper' comment was the ability to fluently negotiate changes - being able to say, read a lead sheet and improvise over it. And being able to play the blues in every key, things like that, things that take an awful lot of work to build up a vocabulary. In reality it's something best done with access to a real-life rhythm section to try ideas. Jazz might primarily be about creative practice, but interpreting standards and acquiring the technical skill of negotiating chord changes is quite a large or in any case important part of that practice. That's what I meant. And it could be that someone learns to do that but never actually records themselves. I'm not sure how accurate or apposite the analogy is with pastiche composition is, since that has always been an academic pursuit whereas playing standards or stereotypical changes has for a long time been a part of jazz both inside and outside the academy.

[Richard Barrett]

being able to play the blues in every key

You just put your whole left hand a bit further up or down!

[Joseph K]

You just put your whole left hand a bit further up or down!

True. :p I guess it's more relevant with guitar to talk about playing something in every CAGED position, rather than every key :p

(For those curious about what I mean: https://www.premierguitar.com/articl...e-caged-system )

[Richard Barrett]

I guess it's more relevant with guitar to talk about playing something in every CAGED position

That's interesting, I didn't learn it like that myself (not that I was ever much good at that kind of thing) but actually I wish I had, it would have saved a lot of trouble and awkwardness. I mean I began from the standpoint of scales rather than chords.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's interesting, I didn't learn it like that myself (not that I was ever much good at that kind of thing) but actually I wish I had, it would have saved a lot of trouble and awkwardness. I mean I began from the standpoint of scales rather than chords.

Being as you are a Renaissance man, one imagines you would!

[Richard Barrett]

Being as you are a Renaissance man

If only.

[Joseph K]

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVcLTIl70MY&t=4s

Though still needs practice, as you can see.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Don't have a lot of opportunity to spend much time composing these days. Currently working on a Piano Trio, about half-way through, probably around 15 minutes of music so far.