modern day software & compositional workflow

Ever since the birth of MIDI in the early 80′s creating music has taken a wild turn in the digital age.  Suddenly the need of writing music by pen and paper turned into the need of learning computer software.  Today, when it seems like there are too many programs to work with, music composers find themselves in a never-ending quest searching for what works best for their creative work flow.

Screen shot incorporating Nodal with Numerology

Music Notation Software

Music notation software such as the popular Finale and Sibelius have tremendous tools for creating professional scores, parts and leadsheets.  There are also a number of open-source notation alternatives rapidly emerging.  Composers today generally find themselves using their penmanship less, and their technical skills more, since the computer can generate perfect edges and complete profound editing capabilities.  Yet since each application has many unique processes, some of the simplest of tasks are the most confounding that often come as stumbling blocks and major sources of frustration for composers who, like so many of us, choose to do our own copy work.  This is especially challenging when one starts a composition directly in notation software.  Often composers do not realize that the driving force behind all notation software engines is a simple MIDI sequencer, albeit hidden from the user interface.

Notation Software Alternatives

One of the biggest advantages of working with notation software is the ability to playback and instantly hear your work.  If you already know what the music sounds like, it might be a good chance to look to other avenues to better convey your written material on paper.  Software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop helps many modern composers ultimately gain unique drawing and text writing abilities generally not possible in notation programs.  Photoshop is great for images, and Illustrator is great for drawing and working text.  Many have experimented with Illustrator for the right chord notation when notation software simply wasn’t able to go the extra mile.  Moreover, all notation software comes with a bundle of specialty music fonts that can called up in any application that uses fonts providing you know where the characters lie on the keyboard.  In essence, it is possible to start typing your composition away in Microsoft Word, although I wouldn’t recommend it.  Utilities such as PopChar can greatly aid in helping you find the desired font character, and where it’s mapped to on the keyboard.

Sequencing & Programming

Sometimes building compositions from raw, MIDI information is a powerful way of developing material.  In a sequencer, a composer can record in MIDI notes and rhythms, and then tweak his performance as desired.  Alternatively, clicking in MIDI notes directly on the piano roll is commonly used for those lacking functional piano chops.  It may be a  slower form of data entry, but it also comes with its advantages.  Working in this environment offers flexibility beyond conventional notation techniques.  It is easy to radically experiment with form, pitch and duration and still hear a playback.  Then, after happy with your work, export the sequence as a MIDI file and import it into your notation software of choice.  After a few hours of copyist work, out prints a chart worthy of reading.

MIDI, Audio and DAWs

DAW‘s are becoming more and more powerful by the month.  Entire compositions can live within a single session of DP, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase – you name it.  They even have built-in notation viewing although it is pretty limited.  Say your composition exists as MIDI in Logic, notated in Sibelius and then recorded into Pro Tools.  The writing process doesn’t have to stop there!  Advances in digital audio are making things just as easy to manipulate audio as it is MIDI, while still retaining excellent audio quality.  It is worthy to note that every genre of music is using the fullest of what today’s technology has to offer.  In this approach, the composer is slowly (or perhaps rapidly) becoming their own audio engineer and programmer, and vice versa.

Max/MSP and PD

Software like Max/MSP and open source cousin Pure Data (PD) are another way of delving into composition from square one.  Anything is possible providing users are able to build it in a real-time, graphical programming environment.  If a DAW’s flexibility is not enough for your composition, I guarantee that Max or PD is!  A somewhat unknown fact is that Ableton Live was originally conceived from a Max Patch.  Synthesis, signal processing, audio to MIDI, mathematical calculations, video implementation, controllerism, along with a thousand other possibilities are at your disposal.

There are many more work-flow choices out there…

the fibonacci numbers in frequency

Here’s an interesting observation found in the Fibonacci number sequence:

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 …

If directly translated into Hertz (Hz) a unit for measuring frequency, we may conceptualize:

0Hz is complete silence, zero vibration, zero movement.
1Hz is the first ripple of vibration, the very act of creation itself.

Humans cannot hear frequencies below about 20Hz, and the few frequencies in the 20Hz – 40 Hz range are very hard to define by most hearing even among the most seasoned listeners.  Instead, these frequencies are simply energy.  Astoundingly, the tenth number of the Fibonacci number sequence is 55, or 55Hz in our case.  This is the first recognizable musical pitch in the Fibonacci sequence.  It is a perfectly in-tune A in equal temperament, when A=440Hz.  Quite appropriately, the frequency has been given the name A, after alpha, the beginning.  Analyzing the other numbers in the sequence yielded an interesting find: every 3rd number in the sequence is a frequency in tune a pitch of equal temperament.

Quickly these frequencies go well above the threshold of human hearing – us humans only hear frequencies up to about 20kHz if we’re lucky.  Up above 12kHz, sound is less as pitch and more as air. These pitches above human hearing can still be named by applying a simple octave adjustment calculation.  For example, an A at 220Hz is a perfect octave below an A at 440Hz, and an A at 880Hz is an A a perfect octave above.  Given this rule, we see the following pattern:

From F10 – Every 3rd number results an “in tune” pitch as it correlates with equal temperament.

Order of appearance:

A Bb B E Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A Bb B C

These pitches are a list of points along an exponential, infinite spiral arc.
It takes 55 Fibonacci numbers to record all our 12 pitches.

It is also interesting to see the predictable sequence of our fundamental A and it’s harmonic E as noted in bold.

This requires further study.  Anyone have  insight?

seal a reed for maximum use

This post highlights a simple procedure designed to extend longevity of reeds.  My first saxophone teacher showed this to me and it is something that I have adopted as good practice for saving time, money and avoid reed headaches.  This is one way to gain a little more control over the consistency of sound a reed can produce.  Quality of vibration is what sound production is all about.   Best of all, it takes only few minutes.

Every reed has microscopic pores that are the veins of the cane from which it came.  To see these pores more clearly dip a new reed completely in water and blow on the butt of the reed and see the bubbles formed on the vamp of the reed.  In the image below, the vamp is the part of the reed indicated by the arrow.

Brand new reeds have these pores wide open which means they absorb all kinds of things like moisture, bacteria and other potentially disgusting things like bits of food, flesh, lip gloss, etc.  Acidic beverages like soda, beer, coffee, juice are the absolute worst. Sealing a reed limits the amount of moisture it can absorb, thus making it less susceptible to deterioration.  All it takes is the pressure of your thumb on a moist reed on a flat surface, rubbing down firmly from the file of the reed to the tip.  The key here is to apply downward pressure while rubbing upwards to the tip.   Repeat this several times.  Thumbs may get sore in the process.

Finally, you can check how much of a seal you achieved by once again dipping the reed completely in water and then blowing from the butt of the reed, observing how few bubbles are now forming.  Keep in mind it’s rare to completely seal all pores entirely.  Doing this procedure along with a  simple reed rotation i.e. not playing the same reed everyday, might just save the cost of buying boxes upon boxes of reeds unnecessarily, and gain a truer reed vibration.

telematic music for peace

Telemusic mastermind Chris Chafe brought this new project to my attention last week.  The same concept-project I worked on over the summer is now flourishing with a huge global consciousness arising as a result.  This concert is sponsored by the United Nations, and featured some of today’s most respected creative improvisers.  This is truly breakthrough technology being used for all the right reasons – bringing people together to create. Featuring such luminaries as:

Jane Ira Bloom
Oliver Lake
Samir Chatterjee
Mark Dresser

More info from their website:

behind closed doors

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London-based improvising saxophonist Simon Rose and I got together one afternoon to play freely.  Two alto saxophonists blowing their asses off simultaneously has the potential to be nauseating, but this encounter was really intuitive and refreshing.  We played completely free, a total improvisation without any set parameters or compositional ideas.  I like to do this  sort of thing with musicians I first meet, it’s like a handshake of sorts – you get to feel each other out on a whole other deeply personal level.  Afterward, I left the room feeling like a huge weight was lifted off my chest.  It’s kinda like therapy – music therapy for improvisers!

Listening back on the recording, it sounds like there are more than just two saxophonists playing at once.  I think that was the coolest part of this experience – bending reality so to speak.

simon rose – alto sax
curtis macdonald – alto sax

telematic performance and entering the matrix

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photo by al kay

Dave Douglas invited me back to the 2009 Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music where I led a number of the “telejazz” ensembles.  These ensembles were very unique – we played live with remote musicians all over the world in real time.  Envision this: half the musicians interacting live to another team of musicians simultaneously across seriously fast network lines, we used the CAnet4 network, that’s uncompressed audio traveling about 70% the speed of light yielding incredibly low latency.  In fact, the latency was so minimal that at a medium tempo, the lag was barely noticeable, it even felt as if it were part of the swing of things:

I know what you’re thinking, you’ve heard of this sorta thing before – it’s true, remote tele-conferencing has been around for awhile, but this is different than protocols like ISDN and SourceConnect, it’s way more simple, not to mention free & open source.  It really was unlike any other long distance studio connection I’ve worked with before. Professor Chris Chafe from Stanford University is paving the way for this new new technology, and if you want to try it out with your friends, you can!  Give it a shot -  it’s called JackTrip and can be easily found on Google Code.  A huge shot out to the team at CCRMA and the SoundWire group for getting it as stable as it is today!

The production for these “telejazz” events was unbelievable – we used over twenty audio engineers for each rehearsal and performance, and upwards of 10 musicians at each location.  Just to make things more complicated, we made these virtual performances open to the public.  It was quite the space-age/pioneering feat.

You will be hearing of this kind of thing happening more and more – just think of its application in rehearsing:  If your band is spread out across several cities, a telematic rehearsal could be the ticket to bring everyone together.  You don’t have to be a huge tech nerd to make this work either – it’s really easy to navigate.

The most difficult obstacle was the lack of visual eye contact with the remote musicians.  Quite often form changes, ends of solos and vamps are easily cued with a head nod or a look straight in the eye but with only an aural reference, learning how to play with  musicians in a completely different city than you took some getting used to!  It’s kind of like playing with someone in a different isolation booth in a studio, but you can’t see them at all.

We tried to compensate a little and hooked up video cams on each side via Skype.  But the video lag on skype was far greater than the audio, so we couldn’t functionally use the video reference for any inter-musician communication.

Below is a an excerpt of a podcast of the telejazz series (be sure to check out other free banff centre music & sound podcasts on iTunes U.  The music playing in the background is from the telejazz performance – it’s a tune of mine called “Opalesque” – the bass player and the tenor saxophonist were in a different city for this particular tune.

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For a great NPR Jazz post written by Dave Douglas on Jazz and Broadband technology, Click Here!