A Glimpse Into Composing (Story from The University)

My Music I: Classical Composition

I have found these days that composition has turned into something of an evil demon that makes you feel like the most spat-on speck of dust. In my latest piece, "A Singer's lament (my least favorite piece) I mention that the harsh reality has darkened the very dream. Well, I have found that the execution of this work has darkened my very dream of a career as a professional composer. One of the things that I admit that I have not done is successfully blocked out my previous anxieties on the complexities of my craft which should not exist. Ten weeks, eleven weeks, and now twelve weeks into my studies, I still am struggling with definite edits as people that I have graciously summoned to perform my works that I've so desperately tried to put on the table. The common practice with Dr. Menton, my composition teacher and I is that I do one set of corrections while he corrects them, which is fine but it leaves me thirsting for more favorable reviews from the people who hear these works day in, day out. I know, to everyone, this is just life. This is just the way composers have to work. Composers must be really be willing to devote hours and hours of practice and editing to make their compositions the best and the brightest they could be.
They must also build a real, working relationshipwith performers. This includes the performers being ready to rehearse and perform compositions in a very communicative format. The composers have to also have all scores ready for the performers to perform. But, minor edits should be allowed in rehearsal. All this sounds great, but my experience below is the reality of the odds of having a performer perform your piece.
From a rehearsal stand point, the energy for my works is seldom there. Maybe when I get to heaven, a choir will cover all the glorious work that I have tucked away deep in my mind and heart for so many years. Every time I approach some one for a rehearsal of a piece of mine, I always get some enthusiastic replies, but yet there's a majority that come up with reasons that they cannot commit to my work. I always feel like the recitals are sort of off-points for me. I tend to think I'm in the wrong place, when I know that I'm in a right place. I can't really understand my place in this music world. I feel like I'm expected to be a slave for performers. Well, if there are no performers available to give you some rehearsals of the music, how are composers supposed to survive? I wonder if my compositions are really that terrible.
And then, there is always this bold statement: You know, I can do other things to make money and to make important relations with people through my books and subsequent songs. I don't need to do these compositions for a grade. I'd much rather do my compositions for performers just begging for music. It should not be the composer begging for performers. I'm tired of begging.
Also, I think that pop music is much faster for me to write than this classical music. Classical music is just too serious for me. Singing in choir and performing in jazz are almost the only highlights for me. I just wish that my work would be as rewarding as these two performing acts. I really wish I could write a swan song for choir that is not as difficult as the last. Yet, I do not understand how we can do a piece like Whitacre's "A Boy and a Girl" which is full of dissonant stuff and we can't take on a student's choir piece of the same or similar nature. I think there is something wrong with this picture. I almost think I should have edited the choir piece and perfected that instead of doing this new choir work.
I believe that as a department, and as a collective of music majors, we are feeding into laziness and passing people on who are not as hard-working. But yet, how can I say that I am hard working when I'm a composer who doesn't act on offers that present themselves to him, let alone goes after his chance to perform. What the hell am I doing writing this material? Better yet, what am I doing sitting here living, when living is going out and performing? I don't get out much. That's a big problem.
I figured that I have to write my feelings down at this point. I don't know what my composition career will hold. I know that more simple music sells well and I know that more simple (non musically educated) audiences understand the music better than atonal mathematical stuff. But right now, I don't have my compositional stride in check. If only I could focus and write something with some feeling.
With my writing, feeling is key. I am not a mathematical soul. I cannot write music utilizing tone rows. I have an ear and the ear should be for the use of consonant materials. Yes, one could use dissonance in certain intervals, but do it tastefully. Don't just throw some meat on there that listeners can't chew. Have some class! Be colorful. I could see doing something partially synesthetic which involves some increased amounts of dissonance but throw a consonant chord in the music at the ends of phrases, at their buildups.
It seems all too often the case, nowadays, that a composer can be taught all of the essential aspects of the artistic side of composing--i.e. the music theory, the aural skills, the counterpoint, the orchestration, the arranging, even technological tips on how to save copies and engrave compositions, with the inventions of software programs such as Finale, Sibelius, Notation, and other such programs. Not too much attention; however, is paid to how composition as a career relates with the real world. This would lead the erstwhile young composer to feel lost after four or more years of training at the university level. This leads the composer to frustration and angst about what he or she is to do with his or her future. I have been a "victim" to this on many occasions where I have asked my composition professors for tips on how to get my music into the appropriate hands to be nurtured and performed. My professors would have me focus on just the quality of the works that I compose for now and worry about promoting the work that I do write when I'm perceivably good enough. Hence, the old adage, "Walk before you run," or "Crawl before you walk."

From Rock Music To Classical and Back

From this path in time where I sit, classical music has become less of an interest to me than telling a story, as I figured it might. All of the abstract rules of how to make a certain section sound a certain way, or to make me sound like a certain composer of the nineteenth century really doesn't work. Yeah, it's nice to point out ideas in the scope of all this training and to examine what other master composers have done but it all means nothing when it will not stick in my head. It may stick when I'm on a break from the laborious task of school or work, but once the projects start, my brain goes right into just getting the job done.
Also in a society where we are not allowed to slow down for fear of a loss of some kind, whether it be money or a breach of contract, I find it very difficult to make ideas work. Everyone wants simple fast results. Well, not every career or industry is as fast as the manufacturing industry or subsequent offshoots of it. Not everything is created within the snap of a finger. Trying to put art in a time-slot that is ready-made to order is not art at all. That is why so much of the supposed art we have nowadays is half-baked. Whenever you try to do something but are expected the opposite, it doesn't work. Writing my ideas takes a lot more time than this merely short quarter system to come to full fruition. Professors say, "Then, make it simpler." So, I try and make it simpler. I go in for the jury. The professor says, "Add more color to this. Make this stronger. Bring this out." All the while, you sit there and go, i just made it simpler after making it extravagant and now you want it to be extravagant again? People, make up your minds! If you water down things too much, you diminish any standing quality that the work may have and it becomes a joke on stage. But, if you make it too difficult, it will also be a joke to the audience who will not like the performance of it. Doing chord analysis would help, but that alone does not manufacture originality.
Looking through edits throughout this chapter, I've realized that I've needed to slow down quite a bit, take a few moments to ponder what these other composers have done so that I'm not making the same mistake for yet another jury. At this point I need to be seasoned. If the professors were reading this, they would say, "We're trying to season you. That is why we are suggesting the things we are suggesting." Well, in my off-time, when I'm not writing, I do peruse scores for hours on end, trying to figure out what these composers are doing. But the results that I get from this process aren't much better than the ideas I had to begin with. Thus, the only solution that I find that works is engraving the scores as I analyze them, just as many university pupils rewrite their notes in order to study for tests. This way, I get it.
As of today, I'm still not writing the phrasings as I should for my pieces and doing all that I can to make due for hearings and other important events. Hours and hours of research in the library, studying scores like La Mer by Claude Debussy or Frank Ticheli’s Blue Shades and Angels in the Architecture brings some depth to the kinds of harmonies that should be employed today. In meetings with the conductor and the director of bands at Cal State, I have two widely scored this piece. There is just too much going on right now. Mary—A Prelude for Concert Band in D Minor is my take on a dream I had where this Clapton-esque rock song was blaring in the background while a carnival progressed in front of me. It is a wild and crazy story—this ghost girl coming back to pounce on unrelenting victims that were not victims in the first place, but attacked her viciously. She was the Iris—the eye soar that the world couldn’t stand.

Junior Recital in Progress
Going through the motions looking at all the work that I had done, I see that I have plenty of material to do a recital since the triumphant premier of my first ever band piece Mary—A Prelude for Concert Band in D Minor. Many of my fellow classmates and friends that played in the CSUSB Symphonic band thought that my first work for band was one of the craziest but also one of the funnest works they have ever had the privilege to play. If I were to place it on the grading scale of band music, it would have been a high grade 5 or grade 6.
I'm preparing for my junior recital. I have a lot of different work that I'm doing--even past work--the clarinet concerto. Everything's going well.
Then, there are the private compositions, most notably “Fire In My Soul” that are some of the best I have ever written. I sit back and think “Why didn’t I ever put that on a student recital? Better yet, why don’t I put that on the upcoming recital?” Fast forward almost eight years after the song was “written,” the full orchestral score is yet to be completed and re-recorded and released. At least, a single has been put on iTunes and Spotify for people that are interested.