This year's event went off without a hitch. As far as I could tell there were no technical difficulties or anything of that nature. I don't think it was as well attended as last year's event, but that is okay. We'll have to think about what we can do differently for next year to change that.
The improv concert at noon was great. When I showed up and we tried out the large group playing, I had some real reservations. I really thought it did not sound good. When it comes to volume levels I can get really worked up. Just like all music it takes a lot of practice to learn how to have good levels in a live concert, especially without a sound person. The Pond Duck Trio had a lot of experience with this playing a lot of shows that had either no sound person, or someone who could care less about the levels and did a terrible job. So we got really good at having really good levels between ourselves on stage, then all the sound person would have to do is turn the all of the sliders to about the same level. With such a large group at the improv class we did not all have this experience, not to mention that we had a little larger group than a trio. The idea to have Ben be a conductor worked fabulously though. I think that the version we did at the actual performance was the best of all of our trials.
The Car Afterlife piece went really well too, especially the second version. The piece has a lot of aspects of improv, especially for the conductors. Some parts of the composition called for the conductors to approximate the tempo of their flag waves for instance. Leaving things to chance in a composition can be a good thing. Of course it is impossible to write a musical composition that accounts for everything, and to realize that as a composer is important. Some composers try to write out every dynamic, even specifying exactly what decibels things should be. I think this is a little pretentious, and can in fact take away the "feeling" from the piece.
The marching drum group that I wrote and directed went very well. I had a series of eight two-bar drum patterns, with hand signals to conduct them. Pattern number five was simply "free improvise" and that was what we spent the most time on. Without a ton of rehearsal time we were getting lost a little bit, but that was good and actually what I had hoped for. The beauty of percussion is that it can be non-pitched, so harmonic dissonance is impossible. The most important thing was that we all kept tempo together, which we did. I was happy with the participation of people who weren't in the core group, and were trying out the various percussion instruments that Margaret Wescott lent us.
The event in Nordica was a lot of fun too. I was very impressed with my fellow composition majors Seth Fogg and Josh Case. Their trios sounded excellent. The next day Lily Funahashi had an interesting point that the three of us have very different compositional styles. I like thinking about what we do the same and what we do differently. I think that Seth is definitely further on the melodic side of things than Josh. I know that I tend to stick to more melodic techniques, specifically diatonic melodies, but I'm not sure if I do that more so or less than Seth.
The solo guitar improvisation was very interesting too. It takes a lot of courage to get up in front of a crowd to perform a solo piece, especially one that is improvised on the spot. I would be afraid that I would have a brain cramp. He let himself go though, which I think is exactly the best thing that one can do in improv. Rather than thinking consciously about the conunterpoint he just let the notes come to him.
The final piece of Guitar Trio that Meg Dzyak brought to us from New York went very well. I was happy to play drums, I always love to do so. I don't consider myself an especially great drummer, but I think I held my own. When I mess up with drums it is always when I try to do some sort of fill that is just too fast. Since western music has so much to do with even numbers, I have come to the conclusion that I mess up fills when I try to double my speed. For instance quarter notes and eighth notes are always fine. Triplets and sextuplets are always fine. When I then try to double again to sixteenth notes, it is usually fine, unless it is especially syncopated or I try to use a combination of drums that causes my hands to stumble over each other. When I go to thirty-second notes I often get in trouble. I think what happens is sometimes I try to fit in thirty-one or thirty-three notes into a bar, and then I get lost. In the moment I never know if I am right or if I messed up.
I remember in one rehearsal of Guitar Trio trying thirty-second notes, and then thinking I might have messed up. I looked at Phil Carlsen to see what he thought, but I had no idea how to read his face. Then if I did mess up, all of us would have to come to consensus on whether to go with the mistake or ignore me and keep the correct beat. All of this without talking. And all of this happening within an instant. I still don't know what happened.
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