I went to 4 and a half weeks worth of music camps this summer. That may seem like a huge chunk of my summer just went down the tubes, doing nothing but work and traveling from one to the other. That is entirely not the case. This was definitely the most fulfilling summer I can remember, mostly because it helped me realized that I really do want to dedicate my life to composing music.
The first camp I went to was out in the middle of the woods with no internet, no news, no phones (good God), and the only form of communication with the outside world was via snail mail. It was called Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. We played a great piece, the fourth symphony by Peter Tchaikovsky. It was a really long, intense, and insanely hard piece. Our conductor was very intimidating as well. During my week and a half there, however, I thought less about the violin part I was playing and more about the compositional aspect of the piece. For those that don't know (which I would assume is most of you), Tchaikovsky had a rough life. He was a closeted gay man living in oppressive Russia in the middle of the 19th century, thrown into a marriage he didn't want to be in, and he died of what some believe may have been suicide. This symphony reflects that terrible time in his life, and it's some deep source material for an amazing piece of art. When the conductor would stop and work sections with other groups of the orchestra, I would listen and try to see where that fit into something else I'd heard from another group in that same section earlier, or how it fit with my part. I had kind of started getting really deep into the compositional side of things.
I also went to a percussion camp this summer at Indiana University in Bloomington. This was an interesting experience, mostly because I had had no idea that there was such a huge market for solo percussion pieces. Needless to say, this really interested me. There was a speaker there, his name was Casey Cangelosi, who is fairly famous in percussion circles throughout the world. I learned a lot from him as he was a composer and amazing performer who uses a lot of repetition as well as techniques mainly on marimba and snare drum that can get a lot more out of the instrument than just a plunk or a hit. The second I got home from this camp I started working on a solo marimba piece, and have since gotten pretty much nowhere. But, because of all the things I learned about the technique and how to compose for the instrument at Indiana, I will probably go back and work on it, and try to make it sound passable. One day.
to be continued...
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Career choice
I know exactly what I want to do in college.
I've actually had a few different ideas of what I've wanted to do since my freshman year, but it's all been in the same field: music. I've fluttered between Violin and Percussion Performance, because for a long time I was devoted to wanting to make people happy by playing other peoples music. It wasn't until this summer when I realized I'd rather be trying to make people happy by writing my own.
It's no easy feat; trying to find the time and the inspiration to write a piece of music that's worth listening to takes a lot of time. There are many variables that you need to figure out as you go along, such as what compositional program you'll spend the $500 on so you can get your piece down faster than traditional pen and paper, where you get your inspiration, what former composers you want to emulate, etc. I settled on buying a program called Sibelius 7, which is a very easy-to-use professional level program. Since getting it in January, I've had a great time learning and mastering it.
Another variable is inspiration. This is a really hard one to figure out. It took me years to even find classical composers who I wanted to emulate, and another few years to get the music theory knowledge to learn to actually write like them. More on that later, but it was a very important step in me wanting to become a composer.
There's another aspect to inspiration, though, which has to do with environment. The music aspect is almost completely taken out of the equation here. You have to ask yourself, "where do I want to go where I can relax and take in the setting?" For some people that may be somewhere completely quiet, serene, tranquil. I used to live in Monticello, IL and I would like to travel out to Allerton Park, which had trails through forests as well as a fairly sizable grassy area. It was completely quiet. I couldn't think of a single thing while out there. When things get too quiet around me, my mind starts to race and I go a little insane. For me to write interesting music (and not just single long notes over a long span of time, which is what comes to me from being too far into nature) I have to have a little bit of noise, some people chatting, some birds, cars driving by, etc. For me, I like to walk through Champaign-Urbana, or if I'm feeling especially lazy, sitting on my deck in my backyard. There's enough bustle there; not too much, but quiet enough I can still enjoy nature without it being overbearing, and I love it.
Long story short, (although not too short at this point) I find some of the most joy in my life in writing music, even though the process itself is clicking notes into a computer program, the way that hearing my music played back on a computer, and eventually an orchestra, feels, is amazing.
I've actually had a few different ideas of what I've wanted to do since my freshman year, but it's all been in the same field: music. I've fluttered between Violin and Percussion Performance, because for a long time I was devoted to wanting to make people happy by playing other peoples music. It wasn't until this summer when I realized I'd rather be trying to make people happy by writing my own.
It's no easy feat; trying to find the time and the inspiration to write a piece of music that's worth listening to takes a lot of time. There are many variables that you need to figure out as you go along, such as what compositional program you'll spend the $500 on so you can get your piece down faster than traditional pen and paper, where you get your inspiration, what former composers you want to emulate, etc. I settled on buying a program called Sibelius 7, which is a very easy-to-use professional level program. Since getting it in January, I've had a great time learning and mastering it.
Another variable is inspiration. This is a really hard one to figure out. It took me years to even find classical composers who I wanted to emulate, and another few years to get the music theory knowledge to learn to actually write like them. More on that later, but it was a very important step in me wanting to become a composer.
There's another aspect to inspiration, though, which has to do with environment. The music aspect is almost completely taken out of the equation here. You have to ask yourself, "where do I want to go where I can relax and take in the setting?" For some people that may be somewhere completely quiet, serene, tranquil. I used to live in Monticello, IL and I would like to travel out to Allerton Park, which had trails through forests as well as a fairly sizable grassy area. It was completely quiet. I couldn't think of a single thing while out there. When things get too quiet around me, my mind starts to race and I go a little insane. For me to write interesting music (and not just single long notes over a long span of time, which is what comes to me from being too far into nature) I have to have a little bit of noise, some people chatting, some birds, cars driving by, etc. For me, I like to walk through Champaign-Urbana, or if I'm feeling especially lazy, sitting on my deck in my backyard. There's enough bustle there; not too much, but quiet enough I can still enjoy nature without it being overbearing, and I love it.
Long story short, (although not too short at this point) I find some of the most joy in my life in writing music, even though the process itself is clicking notes into a computer program, the way that hearing my music played back on a computer, and eventually an orchestra, feels, is amazing.
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