Tips on an successful performer-composer relationship As a young college composer, I was often asked to create pieces for my eager colleagues. Happily I would slave a semester away on a composition, only to see the confused faces of the performers when I excitedly handed them my carefully scrawled pages. "Uh, er...Thanks," they would say....then about a week later, they would let me know the piece was "too hard" and they couldn't fit it in this semester, with the exams, juries, and Phi Mu Alpha keg parties coming up. After piling up a dozen rejected pieces, I began developing questions that would help me get to KNOW the performer. QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASK BEFORE YOU WRITE A SINGLE NOTE: 1) Do you have a recording or upcoming recital I can hear to listen to you perform? 2) What length of composition can you fit into your schedule? (I recommend starting SHORT with a new performance relationship.) 3) What styles of music do you prefer to perform (if he says Blues o...

The Silent Noise of John Cage - Essay Excerpt When John Cage asked Aragon, how one created history, he replied, "You have to invent it." Cage then set out to create his own musical history, that of experimentalism (Cage, Autobiographical 1). This movement included composers Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, and many others who, along with Cage, stretched the boundaries of music composition and broke away from the East Coast post serialists. Largely because of geographical location, rock music and Oriental thought influenced experimental music. They revolted against Occidental music, embracing the plurality and percussive nature of Eastern Music. Cage believed that "IN THE UNITED STATES THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS OF WRITING AS THERE ARE COMPOSERS" (Cage, Silence 52). Cage did not study music in a formal institution and was unable to hear melodies in his head. For him, listening to a performance of his compositions and the actual compos...

30 CHEAP SPECIAL FX HINTS 1. Make your own home camera filters using a plastic sandwich bag filled with different liquids or gels. 2. By using non-revealing camera angles and different costumes and wigs, you can double or triple your cast for non-essential roles. 3. Never underestimate the power of a miniature set with good lighting. 4. Sound can make or break your film. If you can't afford good sound, dub it in later. 5. A cheap mic Pop Filter can be made with a circle of wire and pantyhose. 6. Use perspective to your advantage...can't afford a huge set...? Use camera placement to trick the eye. 7. Create those swirly filters in-camera by shooting through a clear container full of water (just watch for electrical cables). 8. Make a boiling planet by taking an overhead shot of scrambled eggs in a frying pan dyed with food coloring. 9. Hangers work great for prosthetics that don't need much mobility. 10. Buy blankets with different patterns (ex. waves or sand), as a cheap la...

Like many contemporary composers, I am fascinated with the correlation between music and the visual arts. The cross-pollination of the arts has given birth to many great compositions and visual works. Dr. Kristine H. Burns (see link in Artist Links) at Florida International University has mastered an animation style utilizing Final Cut Pro's Video Generator features. She used it for her amazing video piece, Copper Islands. Final Cut Pro has a variety of Video Generators available. You can create a simple color matte, text, shapes, bars, noise, etc. For electroacoustic composers, think of these as the basic sine, triangle, and square waves (and noise, of course) that a composer manipulates electronically through sound synthesis. These are building blocks. You need to be familiar with the KEY FRAME feature available in Final Cut Pro. By setting KEY FRAMES you can alter an effect over time. Start with something basic, say a basic Color Matte with a Mask Shape (ex. a circle) over it. N...

Nearly every piece that comes a Percussionist 's way will consist of the following: A run-of-the-mill SNARE DRUM part A BASS DRUM part which plays monotonously on beats 1 and 3 A MALLET part (usually bells --ouch--- or xylophone) which mimics the woodwinds And a TIMPANI part which copies the tubas or basses Oh, and let's not forget the CYMBAL part, which consists of enthralling cymbal rolls and exciting CRASHES!!!! Now, not much can be done for those currently de-composers who had to write for this instrumentation. After all, if the reigning monarch or local cathedral had a set of kettle drums, a military drum, and a couple of metal plates, that was what you had to go with. Writing for the army? Ditto. The Church your patron? Just try incorporating hand drums. Heretics, for sure. BUT...this IS the Third Millennium. And PERCUSSION has come to mean pretty much anything, yep ANYTHING, you can hit, beat, scrape, blow, whistle, bow, shake, roll, kick, turn on, p...

CHAPTER 6 CURRENT TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS The late 20th century witnessed a cultural shift as professional media editing tools found their way into every home. The advent of the personal computer in the 1980s made each home a potential studio. An almost egalitarian society has developed where anyone with a little technical ability can churn out "professional-quality" music and video. The maverick attitude of early independent filmmakers flows through each discipline indiscriminately, and a significant number of artists can attribute their early success to their own mastering of available techniques. In the visual arts, handheld cameras and high-end video editing programs enabled budget-strapped artists to record and cut their own moving picture creations. The handheld camcorder of the 1980s, with its bulky VHS tape, eliminated the extra step required of film processing. Inexpensive and easily available, camcorders opened the closed door to filmmaking. While not all...

CHAPTER 3 WHAT IS MULTIMEDIA? The exponential outgrowth of technological innovation has left digital multimedia without a cohesive sense of definition. Lacking specific criteria for categorization, multimedia indiscriminately encompasses the visual arts, theater, virtual environments, music, and, according to John Cage, "...all sounds, sights, and other sensory experiences that occur in and around a performance situation..." New media has transformed the notion of art through the lenses of postmodern plurality. Clicking a mouse may make a computer user the active conductor of a sound synthesis ensemble, or a dancer can choreograph a duet in real-time with her own shadow. A computer can generate algorithmic music by analyzing the color of an accompanying video, and a digital gallery disguises itself as a CD-ROM cookbook. Contemporary digital forms, though marginalized by "classical" composers, are the "rational extensions of ballet and opera" and satis...