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	<title>EMUSIC-L &#187; composition</title>
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	<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l</link>
	<description>electronic music and other vaguely-related topics</description>
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		<title>The Orchestra: a User&#8217;s Manual</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2006/10/30/the-orchestra-a-users-manual/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2006/10/30/the-orchestra-a-users-manual/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:59:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joemcmahon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[composition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[orchestra]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/wordpress/?p=40</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Fascinating site from the Philharmonia orchestra; includes an incredible amount of information concerning the individual instruments (including extended techniques, which I found particularly interesting).
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Fascinating <a href="http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/intro.html">site</a> from the Philharmonia orchestra; includes an incredible amount of information concerning the individual instruments (including extended techniques, which I found particularly interesting).</p>
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		<title>Finding a new voice</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2006/09/29/finding-a-new-voice/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2006/09/29/finding-a-new-voice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Sep 2006 22:43:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joemcmahon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[technique]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[composition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/wordpress/?p=56</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I haven&#8217;t been composing much for a while. I&#8217;ve been telling myself that I don&#8217;t have enough space to set the studio up, that I don&#8217;t have enough time, that I&#8217;m more interested in software lately, but the honest truth is that I had gotten stuck.I&#8217;ve been toying around with a set of ambient tracks [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I haven&#8217;t been composing much for a while. I&#8217;ve been telling myself that I don&#8217;t have enough space to set the studio up, that I don&#8217;t have enough time, that I&#8217;m more interested in software lately, but the honest truth is that I had gotten stuck.I&#8217;ve been toying around with a set of ambient tracks which are reasonably good, but I haven&#8217;t committed them to CD. I&#8217;ve not been satisfied with what I&#8217;ve been doing for a while now. I seem to be stuck in the same riff, the same chords, the same &#8220;you&#8217;ve heard this a thousand times&#8221; vaguely-new-age results.I&#8217;m not happy with this. The ambient stuff was an attempt to clear the decks and start off in a new direction, which partially succeeded, but didn&#8217;t move me to the new place I feel that I need to be.A couple of months ago, saw a sign for a local piano store. I looked in; looked good, and I decided to come back later. We hadn&#8217;t really decided that we were going to get a piano for sure, but we walked in and found a jewel of a piano.
<p>It seems to be like the <a href="http://www.centennialbulb.org/">hundred-year bulb</a>: all of the tiny little elements have al fallen into exactly the right place. It&#8217;s as warm and sensitive as any piano I&#8217;ve ever gotten to play, including a few Steinways. It feels like it&#8217;s been lovingly played for years, and has just gotten to that perfect place where it sounds as good as you could imagine.I&#8217;ve been playing it more and more; I lucked into a wonderful jazz piano book with a lot of extended harmony exercises. Since I&#8217;ve been playing them, my fingers are reaching for new things along with the old, and my playing is improving greatly; more right-brain than before, and my left hand is no longer just something to push buttons with while I play the keys with my right.I&#8217;m glad to have set aside the synths for a while. I don&#8217;t think I would have had this change to grow without first losing my voice and then finding it again. I feel like I can go back to my ambient tracks with fresh eyes and see what is there that I can really work with now.<small>[formatting updated 9/29/06 - JM]</small></p>
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		<title>Roger Reynolds at LOC now up</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2005/04/27/roger-reynolds-at-loc-now-up/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2005/04/27/roger-reynolds-at-loc-now-up/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2005 02:40:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joemcmahon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[composers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[composition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[library of congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[roger reynolds]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[technique]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/wordpress/?p=10</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Library of Congress&#8217;s site featuring the music of Roger Reynolds is an outstanding example of what such an organization can do. The site shows the depth of the Library&#8217;s holding in a particular are, covering everything from Reynolds&#8217; music to photographs of the composer.
Reynolds has a close working relationship with the LOC; I only [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Library of Congress&#8217;s <a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/rreynolds/rreynolds-home.html">site</a> featuring the music of Roger Reynolds is an outstanding example of what such an organization can do. The site shows the depth of the Library&#8217;s holding in a particular are, covering everything from Reynolds&#8217; music to photographs of the composer.</p>
<p>Reynolds has a close working relationship with the LOC; I only wish I had heard the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0201/justice.html">performance</a> of <em>JUSTICE</em> performance while I was still living in DC.</p>
<p>As a composer of sorts myself, I find the <a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/rreynolds/interview-part1.html">interview</a> with Reynolds particularly interesting. He&#8217;s an interesting character. Originally an engineer, he didn&#8217;t really come to music until he was 14. His approach is an interesting combination of intuition and formalism; he uses tone rows, but what to do next is <em>guided</em> by the row, not dictated. As he says:</p>
<blockquote><p> &#8230; It&#8217;s very clear that there will be an aesthetic consistency to anything that<br />
an artist does with commitment and capacity. It cannot be otherwise. Because what it is all about, and I&#8217;ve said this to you in our correspondence, what it is all about is <em>the exercise of aesthetic consistency</em>. I am a being, a creature; I hear and see and interact with the world, and when I am making something the ultimate question is: Does it fit? Does it belong in this thing? And that&#8217;s not a local question. It&#8217;s a question that involves understanding the whole project even the way the whole project fits in a larger set of things &#8211; something which may be locally inadmissible in terms of its relationship to the larger thing. So for me it&#8217;s always about my aesthetic sensibility, and the things that I al<br />
low in are <em>right</em>. Now they may be foolish, they may be banal, they may be<br />
trivial, but they&#8217;re &#8220;right&#8221; if they get past my filter.</p></blockquote>
<p>Now this is a principle I can agree with.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s an amazing variety of material here. I won&#8217;t link to all of it &#8211; better you visit the site and see it in context &#8211; but the particular bit I <em>will</em> link to is the <a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200029025/track.html?ID=tr0001">recording</a> and <a href="ihttp://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/rreynolds/interview-part3.html">analysis</a> of <em>Transfigured Wind III</em>. This interview intersperses comments by the composer, score excerpts, and the appropriate sound clips; this is something I hope other sites will aspire to doing.</p>
<p>Most contemporary classical music doesn&#8217;t do a lot for me. I like the electronic stuff because of the unique sonorities, mostly; I&#8217;m not an analyst by any means. Taking a composition apart in real-time is more work that I prefer to do when listening to a brand-new piece, especially when the piece is a complex one. <em>Transfigured Wind III</em>, however, does a great job of combining &#8220;extended&#8221; performances on various instruments with a very subtle computer part to produce a uniquely haunting and interesting piece that is an excellent esthetic experience even without deep understanding. Thanks to the analytic interview, I can have both the pleasure of listening to an excellent piece of complex music and the intellectual pleasure of really understanding the composer&#8217;s methods and intentions at the same time.</p>
<p>In short, this is an excellent presentation of a particular composer&#8217;s unique approach to music, and worth a detailed exploration. I plan to study it very carefully and perhaps to save a copy of the interview pages for reference.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>The Hand That Feeds</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2005/04/27/the-hand-that-feeds/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/2005/04/27/the-hand-that-feeds/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:23:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>joemcmahon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[composition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garageband]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nine inch nails]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/wordpress/?p=49</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[OS X readers: if you haven&#8217;t already done so, pop on over to the Nine Inch Nails website and pick up the GarageBand version of The Hand That Feeds. It&#8217;s a fairly typical track; but for that reason it&#8217;s pretty interesting.
It&#8217;s a great guide to pop song construction. A relatively short track, but with a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>OS X readers: if you haven&#8217;t already done so, pop on over to the Nine Inch Nails website and pick up the GarageBand version of <a href="http://boss.streamos.com/download/interscope/nin/with_teeth/nin_garageband.sit">The Hand That Feeds</a>. It&#8217;s a fairly typical track; but for that reason it&#8217;s pretty interesting.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a great guide to pop song construction. A relatively short track, but with a fair amount of variety. I find it particularly interesting as a study in the careful reuse of riffs and motives.</p>
<p>I have fooled around with the tracks a bit &#8211; nothing major yet &#8211; and I find GarageBand actually very good at its job. I think this track was probably made with the newest version of GB, leading to a number of warnings and error -61 messages while the file is loading, but if you stick to it, it will load fine in GB 1.0.</p>
<p>I may play around with reprocessing some of the sounds to see if I can construct something completely different out of it, just for practice in this medium.</p>
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