Indigo Inventions

Reviewing Orchestration

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:28:00 +0000

Now, after writing more music than I care to count, I'm entering a new venue: the University of Southern Maine. I'll be teaching orchestration and I can't wait to take apart my own thinking about the subject which has developed more through practical experience than through academic study. I've cracked my old Blatter orchestration text which has gotten me thinking about Richard Hoffman and Michael Daugherty, the latter of whom often compared good orchestration and use of instruments to good mixing in the studio. Now that I've done a lot of both, I'll be grabbing that analogy and running with it!

Junking Cues for Iron Kisses

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:58:00 +0000

I just got back from the second preview performance of “Iron Kisses” at Portland Stage, and the whole process continues to enthrall me. I'm doing music and sound design for this two person play by James Still, and it incorporates lots of original music and sound as well as dozens of slides projected on a beautiful rear projection screen. Particularly on my mind right now is how much I enjoy the "letting go" aspect of collaborating. I have created lots of cues for this show, over a hundred, actually. And I love each one deeply as I’m making it… then I put it out there for the director to hear and for the actors to use, and sometimes it works. Often, it doesn’t. So no matter how much I love or believe in each one of these little things, I’ve got to be ready to just junk it. Or save it for later. But it feels like junking it. And I get an odd feeling of freedom when the decision is to junk something I’ve worked on and cared for. (Someone once told me that artists need to learn to kill their babies, a terribly inappropriate aphorism for this father of two…) I think some people have a hard time with it; they are ego attached to their music. And I get that way, too, and it’s hard to stop it when it gets going. But when I bring in a cue and Risa, the director doesn’t like it, I get a certain happy feeling.
It’s as though by casting aside something you just made, you affirm your freedom, your unattachment. Or at least you get to practice it.

Back at Improv Boston

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:36:00 +0000

After an almost three month hiatus surrounding the birth of our lovely daughter Anica, I was back at Imrov Boston for the last two weeks, and what a pleasure it was, let me tell you. As actor Aaron Crutchfield so aptly put it, the company is like a dojo, where you practice your craft in its most immediate and tangible forms. And he’s right: in improvised theater (as in the music that goes along with it), we play out dozens of story ideas in our 75-minute shows. There’s no time to think critically or let internal editors stop us from where our instant vision takes us. “Offers” as they are called must be delivered and supported with absolute conviction and belief. It’s like being in a real-time sketch pad that washes itself away every few minutes.
Aaron played both shows my first week back along with Don Scheurman, Elyse Becker, Paul Dome, and Cliff Zawasky… a great cast of seasoned veteran fast thinkers. This past weekend’s shows included Paul again, along with Erin McGhee, Katie Proulx, Mat Gagne, Matt McLaughlin, and renowned improv guru Joe Bill.
Both weekends reminded me of what an important part of my work underscoring improv theater is: it keeps the improvisational approach relevant, and I can sense this bubbling feeling when I get back in my studio to compose music that will stick around for a few minutes. I’m not sure I can describe what the connection is, but I know that when the improv mentality is fresh, I can produce more music faster than when I haven’t been there for a while. Front and center for me is the simple idea (and this goes back to my studies with Bob Brookmeyer) that you have to have material captured in order to edit it, and you have to trust your array of editing approaches enough to be sure that you can take rough, raw material and turn it into something special. The surprising result is that often the first thing that comes out is the best anyway… but I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind to make that happen.

Teaching & Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:12:00 +0000

A last minute teaching assignment took me once again to the hub of animation in the U.S. Naturally, though, I was too wiped after teaching teachers about bringing music into their classrooms to stand up and that eliminated the possibility of going into town.

I don’t know what it is about teaching all weekend with nary a break that makes it hard to stand up, think, or decide on dinner. Nevertheless, I wandered into Barnes and Noble on Saturday night in some strip mall somewhere near Potter Springs. I think that’s where I was. It’s all a blur, as it always is. I’ll be back again at the beginning of next month.

My return brought me headfirst into the Maine winter and the snow right now is delightful. Arresting, really. And I’m couped up in my studio, happily making music for the upcoming Portland Stage production of “Iron Kisses”. So I’ve been taking stabs at composing gossamer and wispy music of grief and melancholy. Good thing those are flavors I love to live in. Director Risa Brainin has been a joy to work with, and the three-thousand miles between us haven’t stop us from getting inside each other’s thinking and moving towards a rich collaboration. Samples later…

Go Outside

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:34:00 +0000

I continue to be impressed by the preschool teacher at the Friends school where I teach music here in Portland. She takes her little ones out for recess, even in the rain, and she makes sure they bring raincoats on rainy days with this in mind. She knows that humans won’t melt if they get wet. She knows that human beings need to be outside and to touch nature. An article in the recent issue of the Press Herald echoed her sentiments about people needing be outside, to interact emotionally with nature, and to develop a gut-level relationship with the world around them. It appears that many of us here in the U.S. suffer from Nature-Deficit Disorder, a term coined by author and educator Richard Louv. We don't go outside, and worse, we don't let our kids play freely in the neighborhoods. Instead we over-protect, over-schedule, and allow them a steady diet of technology.

I wouldn't be as keyed into this issue if we hadn't up and moved to Maine, where real natural beauty is turned up a notch or two, and is always beckoning from around the corner. I’m spending more time outside in nature than I did in Boston or D.C., and it doesn’t mean going camping, kayaking or any of those other much-lauded outdoor activities. I’m gardening and building a studio, as well as squeezing in walks by lighthouses and through woods. If I get this blog written in the next half hour, I’m going to try to get out to Mackworth for the sunrise.

Through it all, I feel the importance of contact with real, natural things. Living things. Simply going outside is one of the most important things a person can do anymore. For more on that, check out Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods.

But I am a real technology lover. I could go for days working in a dark studio, ignoring beautiful breezes and sunshine, and never know the difference. I not only have the kind of gadget-fancy and gear-lust that many of my peers do, but I also marvel at the way technology has put creative tools in the hands of so many and has allowed an increasing number of people to share ideas. We are all aware of the success of YouTube and MySpace for these reasons, and you don’t need me to tell you how cool it is to create a things like web-sites and movies with computers. You know this already. It is likely that you do this a lot.

What I’m interested in is finding a balance between LIVING in the idea-world of computers and breathing through the real world of the outside. This is particularly relevant as I raise my two kids in a house of laptops and electronic music composition tools. Now that I have kids, what I do in these arenas models what I think is important, AND I have to be vigilant and thoughtful in the way I introduce technology to them.

For example, I’ve started “doing Spanish” on the computer with my two-year old son, Charlie. He will sit on my lap and watch (or click) as I match pictures to Spanish words. We have a fine time, and who can argue with passively learning a language at that age? Well, the other night, after a while with Spanish, he was starting to get interested in really using the mouse and soon was directing the pointer ALL OVER the screen. So I opened up a drawing program to see what would happen.

The next thing I knew we were making all kinds of squiggles and shapes on the screen. It was a blast choosing colors for the squiggles and that went on for a while. Now he wants to do it more. But he’s still learning to draw with crayons! So, for now, we’re putting a hold on computer drawing for Charlie.

But limiting children’s access to technology is not what all this is about. I don’t see using computers to make creative work as a problem AT ALL. (Constant multi-tasked media viewing is another thing entirely.) In fact, the article on Nature-Deficit Disorder points an equally scolding finger at parents’ over-protectiveness which limits children’s free outdoor play. I guess what I’m thinking through here is how to continue to craft a life which is intrinsically linked to technology without shutting out nature. How to live deeply in the real world while developing ideas which rely on and leverage computers. And this doesn’t mean bringing my laptop to pretty places.

When it comes down it, it’s about deciding whether to develop certain products I have imagined which will be compelling computer-based music creation tools for people of all ages and skill levels. These are tools which will help people with no musical background create their own music doing more sophisticated things than just combining pre-fab loops. Not only will they facilitate instant music creation, but they will help the user understand what is going on under the hood musically. And they will certainly offer a compelling alternative to a walk outside.

Music Should Not Be A Profession

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 05:29:00 +0000

That’s a radical statement, but I wanted your attention. Rather, I mean this: “Imagine a world with no professional musicians.” Far be it for me, a professional composer and educator to wish a ban on my livelihood. If I had a split personality between my roles of those two, this is the educator talking. I mean it only to start a lively conversation by taking an extreme, if hypothetical, position.

It’s not that I don’t love listening to really amazing music on a great speaker system, recorded extremely well, and distributed commercially for the profit of those who made it. It’s just that again and again, through my work teaching teachers about music, I meet people who think that because they don’t play music anywhere near a concert hall level, they shouldn’t play music at all. Maybe they used to play clarinet in band, and now since there’s not much of a band in their suburban neighborhood, they don’t play music at all. Or maybe they wish to play piano for the first time, but since they’re busy and progress is slow, they don’t get their desired satisfaction soon enough to stay motivated. On some level, they believe that the slick, glossy, highly technical way to make music that they hear all the time through recordings is the only way to make music. That’s a meme that has crept into our culture over the last hundred years, and it has almost completely taken down the idea of making music as an enjoyable pastime.

Think about it: a hundred years ago, as one NPR commentator put it, your home entertainment system was a piano and a daughter. You PLAYED music if you wanted to listen to it. You sang. You stroked a washboard. You did what it took to bring music to your ears. Maybe you played a tune on the piano, and yes, maybe you stank at it. But you did it because it was the ONLY way to get music.

Sure, maybe you went to the occasional concert, or even a casual live music event. But those were rare, and musicians were more likely than not to be employed elsewise in the community. One thing’s for sure: your environment was not saturated, and I mean SATURATED, with recordings of professionals capturing music in pristine, unfettered conditions. Music was not wallpaper.

Fast forward a hundred years and we have professionally recorded and produced music coming out of every public electrical circuit everywhere. Many of us can’t even bear to drive to the supermarket unaccompanied by one kind of soundtrack or another. And anytime and every time you hear music, it is in a clean, archivable version. There are no mistakes. You never hear recordings of someone fumbling along or doing their best at the living room piano.

So, you think that’s how music IS. It’s not a grainy, sometimes messy, often simple form of expression. And when you sit down to play your favorite melody on an instrument you are just learning, it just doesn’t compare. Not only that, but the voices inside your head are not only telling you that “you’ll never be any good,” but they are also echoing the sentiment that so much professional music supports: you SHOULD be good. Music should be played really well or not at all. So, it’s just a short few steps over to the stereo to play the “good” version of your favorite song.

But music by it's nature has tons of mistakes and missteps. There is nothing intrinsic to music which necessitates perfection of every tone. If you listen, really listen, to what you are playing, it truly is perfect, regardless of any “errors”. To say otherwise would be to say that the pebbles and sand on a beach are less beautiful because they are not as perfectly organized by those held together by cement on a paved parking lot. It's in your nature to make music however it comes out.

I’ll finish with this: the nail in the coffin of the general public enjoying music MAKING has been the hit show American Idol, which reduces singing from something anyone (yes, anyone) can do and enjoy, to the high-stakes venture of a few. More on that another time.

And as far as proposing solutions to this condition: RUN, don't walk, to your nearest sound making object (I don't care if it's a vintage jazz guitar or a dirty pot in the sink); pick it up; make a sound; then make another one, and another, until you and your music are flowing.

Starting Shot

noreply@blogger.com (Hans Indigo Spencer) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 03:44:00 +0000

This begins my late-night thinking aloud, perhaps in your direction. Here I will bring together thinking about music, collaboration, teaching, learning and ideas. That last one really has the right image to go with it: the light bulb, and even the somewhat cheesy writer Richard Bach had it right when he characterized ideas as being tangible things that, good or bad, are worth cherishing just for the energy that comes out of them.

Also check out the Applied Imagination blog for more on ideas, brainstorming, and connection making.

More soon.