arrange • compose • conduct
Curation involves assessing a lot of artistic works and selecting the ones that work together cohesively. To me, while there is room for intuition and spontaneous composition, the most successful composition is a form of curated improvisation. I give myself the time to experiment, with my inner critic turned off. […]
A 4-bar phrase might take me half an hour to finish, if I’m working carefully and meticulously. it might have taken me twice or three times as long when I started writing. That same phrase will only last 5 seconds when performed. When we’re writing, time loses clear meaning, and […]
My bread comes out almost exactly the same every time. Even when I take photos of my bread loaves fresh from the oven, they look the same as they did 6 or 8 years ago. It got me thinking about creative voice. Is my bread consistent because I have a […]
The longer I write music, the more I think in terms of timbre minimum. Timbre, to my ears, is more important than specific voicing. What kind of sound is it? Is it unison? 2-part? 4-part close position? 4-part open position? 6-part? Is it vocal percussion, vocal bass, and three part […]
More and more, I’m enamored with chords I can’t label under a triadic/diatonic/jazz framework. They might be quartal chords, whose labels never seem to quite successfully describe how they work. They might be the passing clustery nonsense in Alice Parker’s arrangement of “Vive L’Amour“, which work great because of the […]
For the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve had an annual Tip Jar in which I accepted donations from readers to help support my costs of maintaining the website. Many people were very generous in their encouragement of my writing. In 2020, I skipped it – it was a time […]
I had an interesting arrangement challenge recently – it was for a flash mob-style performance at a wedding, and had some very specific requirements, not least a very limited amount of rehearsal time. Since the commissioning party is an excellent singer but not a professional musician, I thought carefully about […]
There are almost always many different ways to notate the same thing. As simple a change as 4/4 vs 2/2, to more complex metric changes (3/4 in 1 vs 6/8 in 2, e.g.), enharmonic notation, even notating a rubato vs. just using fermatas. When you have to decide how it’s […]
I am completing what I sincerely hope is my last virtual choir video editing project. (It’s one more recording from Shades of Blue, to be premiered soon!) What’s been pleasing is how much more quickly this one has come together. I was able to come up with a vision for […]
When I write music, I often scratch out the rhythms long before I write notes. That’s especially true with vocal music – I’ll layout the meter on a notecard and draw in rhythms that reflect my phrasing of the text. Then and only then will I experiment melodically within my […]