a discussion of music and the trombone

[ttf_brucolli]

Quote from: D Gibson on Dec 08, 2011, 04:21PMwords are strung together to convey thoughts.  you have a small vocabulary?  it just means you'll have to be VERY particular about choosing your words.  it's the THOUGHT that counts. 

my students frequently get caught up in imitating vocabulary that they don't even understand because they pursue the appearance of eloquence.  but, there is rarely a thought that unifies the words.  therefore, it always comes off as gibberish. i think of it as being similar to all of the misspelled facebook status updates...or posts on this forum.  the details are missing...mostly the detail of meaning to the words. 

but, i always encourage my students to use the vocabulary they HAVE and use it to communicate a THOUGHT.  even a 2 year-old can say, "I love you."  not too many words, but a BIG idea. 

no need to "learn it all"....know what you want to say and find the words to say it.  everyone doesn't have to love it, but it may just enrich your life in unexpected ways. 

good luck.

DG

Thanks for your kind words, something rare in this forum. I'm starting to get sick of the whole mess here, where egos are more important than the music.

And you are right, the best solos I've done have been simple. When I try and show everything I can do I usually fail.

Bruce

[ttf_sabutin]

You write:

Quote from: brucolli on Dec 09, 2011, 06:08AMI'm starting to get sick of the whole mess here, where egos are more important than the music.

Bruce
"...egos are more important than the music."

Strangely enough, that is precisely how I feel about what I have seen and experienced in the academic/New Music scene in general.

Hmmmm....

S.

[ttf_gbedinger]

Quote from: D Gibson on Dec 08, 2011, 04:21PMwords are strung together to convey thoughts.  you have a small vocabulary?  it just means you'll have to be VERY particular about choosing your words.  it's the THOUGHT that counts. 

my students frequently get caught up in imitating vocabulary that they don't even understand because they pursue the appearance of eloquence.  but, there is rarely a thought that unifies the words.  therefore, it always comes off as gibberish. i think of it as being similar to all of the misspelled facebook status updates...or posts on this forum.  the details are missing...mostly the detail of meaning to the words. 

but, i always encourage my students to use the vocabulary they HAVE and use it to communicate a THOUGHT.  even a 2 year-old can say, "I love you."  not too many words, but a BIG idea. 

Dave, that's a wonderful analogy.  Absent a written passage for improvisation, expression of thoughts through vocabulary (notes and phrases) becomes the thing.  I am reminded of listening to an orchestral excerpts CD by David McGill of the Chicago orchestra.  In the introduction he states that notes are the letters and words, but reminds the musician to play a musical passage as a complete thought rather than a string of notes.   Something akin to seeing the forest instead of the trees.

It's always good to have someone like you remind us.

[ttf_brucolli]

Quote from: sabutin on Dec 09, 2011, 06:36AMYou write:

"...egos are more important than the music."

Strangely enough, that is precisely how I feel about what I have seen and experienced in the academic/New Music scene in general.

Hmmmm....

S.

I'm sorry you have experienced this, Sam. I never have.
Maybe that's what I like so much about my new music colleagues, they are totally committed to doing their best with no ego conflicts. This is not the case in the orchestras I have played in.

Bruce

[ttf_brucolli]

Quote from: sabutin on Dec 08, 2011, 04:09PM"Quarter tones," eh?

Now...if you are measuring in an academic sense, they are hard to play. In fact, only machines (and occasionally people who want to play like machines, I suppose) can actually play them accurately.

But as blue notes? As bends and idiomatic content the world over? As they appear in the untempered harmonic series? They are as common as an A 440. Quarter tones, eighth tones, even some semi-mythical note like a 264th tone? No matter. Sinatra sang them; Pops played and sang them and every musician with any blues roots who doesn't play a fixed pitch instrument has used them since childhood sing-alongs. Ditto most good Western European-style non-academic soloists and singers and ditto twice the players of almost every other non-Western musical idiom. You know...people who pl;ay for people? People who play for their supper instead of writing grants? Hell, when Thelonious Monk couldn't play them on piano, he played the notes on both sides of them simultaneously. Loudly and relatively undisguised by other, more neutral notes. It worked, too.

And here we are, back to the academic/non-academic argument that I have been trying to make on this site and elsewhere for years. In academe, the "scholars" dissect music just like biologists dissect animals. But neither of those groups can actually put an animal to life. They can only examine what is no longer alive. They can create theoretical simulacrums; they can do robots; but they can't put a swinging life form on the planet anew. The Schrödinger's Cat principle in real life. In order to examine something you first have to stop it from happening. Once you do that you can no longer observe it in flux.

Forget about "quarter tones!!!" Just play what you really hear inside of a naturally occurring idiom and you'll be playing them without thought.

Just music.

Like it's s'pose to be.

Bet on it.

Later...

S.


Sam, you really seem to have an axe to grind about the academic new music situation in the states. It must be really bad!
Of course there is bullcrap everywhere but, in general I can't say this about my experiences here in Europe.

It seems like every time I say something, you say the opposite, but we are really saying the same thing. I agree with you wholeheartedly, the music comes first.

Quarter tones can be pretty cool, though. There was a composer in Italy in the 50s and 60s called Giacinto Scelsi, who was pretty much doing his own thing, uninfluenced by the rest of the music world. He wrote some really beautiful music including an unaccompanied trombone piece called "tre pezzi" and a piece for brass, sax and percussion called "i presagi".
He uses quarter tones in his melodies and the effect is utterly beautiful.

I know that quarter tones are supposed to by 50 cents above or below, that's the academic way, but for me they have a certain color. I know they are right when they have that color. I personally think color could be used much more in music, instead of trying to play every thing the same. One homogenous sound, one brick after another. That was big in America when I left. It's a good exercise maybe, but it has little to do with music.

I think we have a lot more in common than you think. Our tastes are different, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Your analogies of Joyce and Faulkner were brilliant. Why are people so accepting of modernism in art and literature but not music? I really want to understand why so many people (colleagues even) hate the music that I love.

What would Miles, Monk and Mingus be doing of they were living today? We don't know, but one thing is for sure, It wouldn't be what they were doing 50 years ago.

Bruce

[ttf_sabutin]

Quote from: brucolli on Dec 09, 2011, 02:25PMI'm sorry you have experienced this, Sam. I never have.
Maybe that's what I like so much about my new music colleagues, they are totally committed to doing their best with no ego conflicts. This is not the case in the orchestras I have played in.

Bruce

I'm not all that knocked out by the mainstream orchestral scene, either. I fact, I see little difference in terms of attitude. It's just a financial difference. By and large the successful orchestral musicians are simply better hustlers.

So it goes.

S.

[ttf_sabutin]

Quote from: brucolli on Dec 09, 2011, 03:19PMSam, you really seem to have an axe to grind about the academic new music situation in the states. It must be really bad!
Of course there is bullcrap everywhere but, in general I can't say this about my experiences here in Europe.
My ears tell me otherwise.

Quote---snip---

Your analogies of Joyce and Faulkner were brilliant. Why are people so accepting of modernism in art and literature but not music? I really want to understand why so many people (colleagues even) hate the music that I love.
Why?

Well...number one, they are not "so accepting of modernism in art and literature but not music." Not in any popular, paying sense. And number two, the path breaking so-called linguistic modernists like Joyce, Faulkner and Burroughs took recognizable syntax and pumped it up and/or sideways a notch or two. So did the equally so-called "modern" painters. For example, Picasso's portraits are still people and his still lifes are still objects. He just presented another view. Most of the "New Music" that I hear? I don't care if it's electronic, acoustic or any combination of the two, it no longer relates to the basic musical grammar to which walking-around people...you know, "civilians?"...carry with them from the cradle and perhaps even earlier. Meanwhile the real modernists...and I include such disparate composers as Duke Ellington, Chico O'Farrill, Igor Stravinsky (in his prjme) and Bela Bartok...went back to the basics and then (Just as did Joyce, for example) re-ordered them into something both new and somehow comminicative to audiences.

A magic act.

A miracle of creativity.

QuoteWhat would Miles, Monk and Mingus be doing of they were living today? We don't know, but one thing is for sure, It wouldn't be what they were doing 50 years ago.

Bruce
Well actually...they'd probably be working as shoe salesmen and wondering why Jazz At Lincoln Center wasn't paying any attention to their music.

The whole system has gone rotten, brucolli. Those of us who insist on working outside of that system do so at great risk to our own survival. So that goes as well. Eventually things will get better. (Or of course...they won't, at which point this culture is headed for the dust heaps of history.) Until then we tread through our own Dark Ages, doing the Celtic monk preservation thing with what we know of the past and watching the (usually) empty "modernist" thing relegate itself to the sparsely populated ivory towers of academia and grant-supported, non-people music. 


Lee Konitz once suggested to me that he had figured out a way to make money from "free jazz."

Quote Just give free entrance to concerts but charge people to leave. We'd make a fortune!!!
Yup.

Later...

AG

[ttf_Piano man]

Quote from: brucolli on Dec 09, 2011, 03:19PMWhy are people so accepting of modernism in art and literature but not music? I really want to understand why so

I know what you mean. Even so, people are much more accepting of abstraction in music than in visual arts. It's a strange thing. I think the minute you call something 'art' it just pisses a whole lot of people off and makes them suspicious.

[ttf_Ellrod]

What are the masterpieces of the last 100 years? Let's for the sake of argument, assign Rite of Spring, written from 1910 to 1913, to the previous century.

[ttf_HouBassTrombone]

Quote from: Ellrod on Dec 09, 2011, 07:36PMWhat are the masterpieces of the last 100 years? Let's for the sake of argument, assign Rite of Spring, written from 1910 to 1913, to the previous century.
Wow that is a loaded question... man that is one that will be hard to figure out. I think people STILL haven't agreed on the masterpieces of last century.
Too many to list the pieces but here are some composers that I believe had masterpieces:
Satie, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Berg (Wozzeck and Violin Concerto are particularly well accepted), Schoenberg (Gurrelieder at the least), Poulenc, Glass, Adams, Reich, Strauss, Bartok, Sibelius, Ives, Britten, Elgar, Vaughn Williams, Gershwin, and Hindemith. Each of those composers have at least one piece that I think is a masterpiece. And those are just the so called "serious" composers.

[ttf_anonymous]

Seems like the "new music" slipped over here. It's like a fight scene in an old western where two guys are playing cards and one accuses the other of cheating, then throws a punch and they keep punching and shoving until they spill out into the street, then into the barber shop while someone's getting a shave, then they fly through the window into a big horse trough, then...

Everyone isn't going to love us and agree with us, no matter how much we try to convince them. If we do a good job explaining our perspective, some will understand us, some won't be able to understand us, and some will choose not to understand us. We have to deal with that.

I love musical dissonance. I don't feel the same way about personal dissonance, which is something I observe or encounter on TTF way more than I would prefer. Personal dissonance isn't just some naturally occurring obstacle...it's manufactured and fueled and sustained. It's not FUN to me.

[ttf_Ellrod]

In the Nitzan Haroz thread, there is a reference to a contemporary composer named John Mackey. On Mr Mackey's website, he has a blog that makes for amusing reading. The site as a whole is particularly interesting if viewed from the perspective of how one composer of contemporary music makes his living. For example, you can download the solo part to his trombone concerto. It makes some sense to have as many trombone players brushing up the part as possible. If it's any good someone will program it and then it will be useful if there's a player around who is familiar with the part.

There's probably a development system out there similar to football. You start with some talented kids fresh out of high school, train them for 4 years. The best ones go on to grad school and start getting their works performed, first at a college level , then up the professional ranks. The best get tenured positions at prestigious colleges, an occasional AIR at a top-flight orch. and a recording or two by an established label. It's probably obscured by all the pop culture noise out there (Justin Bieber! The Kardashians!) and even in circles that ought to know better, by the  bickering over the musical events of a century ago.

[ttf_sabutin]

Quote from: D Gibson on Dec 10, 2011, 06:01AM
---quote---

I love musical dissonance. I don't feel the same way about personal dissonance, which is something I observe or encounter on TTF way more than I would prefer. Personal dissonance isn't just some naturally occurring obstacle...it's manufactured and fueled and sustained. It's not FUN to me.


Personal dissonance.

Musical dissonance.

You can't have one without the other.

Music reflects human experience and human experience reflects the way that the universe works.

Without dissonance, no consonance. No neutrality, either.

Neutrality...the state of almost all of the universe in relation to any infinitesimal part of it, whether that part is itself involved in a state of neutrality, consonance or dissonance. I see a current state of dissonance in the culture regarding the music(s) to which it pays most attention and I also see a larger, more serious state of dissonance in it regarding more practical matters such as life and death, war and peace, criminality and good behaviour in a societal sense, etc. The ancient Greeks...and many other cultures...believed that the type of music to which one listened had serious effects on the state of mind of its listeners. Read below for a little regarding this idea. (By the way, the modal names that are used? Beware...they are not necessarily the same scales that we associate with those names.)

QuoteIn the Republic, Plato uses the term [mode] inclusively to encompass a particular type of scale, range and register, characteristic rhythmic pattern, textual subject, etc. (Mathiesen 2001a, 6(iii)(e)). He held that playing music in a particular harmonia would incline one towards specific behaviors associated with it, and suggested that soldiers should listen to music in Dorian or Phrygian harmoniai to help make them stronger, but avoid music in Lydian, Mixolydian or Ionian harmoniai, for fear of being softened. Plato believed that a change in the musical modes of the state would cause a wide-scale social revolution (Plato, Rep. III.10-III.12 = 398C-403C)

The philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle (c. 350 BC) include sections that describe the effect of different harmoniai on mood and character formation. For example, Aristotle in the Politics (viii40–1340b:5):

But melodies themselves do contain imitations of character. This is perfectly clear, for the harmoniai have quite distinct natures from one another, so that those who hear them are differently affected and do not respond in the same way to each. To some, such as the one called Mixolydian, they respond with more grief and anxiety, to others, such as the relaxed harmoniai, with more mellowness of mind, and to one another with a special degree of moderation and firmness, Dorian being apparently the only one of the harmoniai to have this effect, while Phrygian creates ecstatic excitement. These points have been well expressed by those who have thought deeply about this kind of education; for they cull the evidence for what they say from the facts themselves. (Barker 1984–89, 1:175–76)
Here is the interesting part of this idea. "Plato uses the term inclusively to encompass a particular type of scale, range and register, characteristic rhythmic pattern, textual subject, etc. " So it wasn't about the "scale", it was about the music. All of it.

Back to dissonance. "Dissonance" can be defined in many ways. Harmonic dissonance, rhythmic dissonance, cultural dissonance, personal dissonance, societal dissonance...da woiks. I see a serious "dissonance" occurring in the culture due to technologically-induced mechanicality...the tendency of human beings  to act in an ever-increasingly mechanical manner in imitation of the machines that now largely rule and order their lives. Clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp, you can see it everywhere. People crossing streets with their brain in their iPhone, oblivious to the personal danger in which they are placing themselves. Ditto texting while driving. And that's only the little stuff. People swallowing whole whatever the technologically-dominated media feed them in terms of information, culture and pretty much everything else. People trying to multitask when in reality they barely have enough useful memory to be able to do even one thing at a time with any real precision or power.

And further back, to our own place in the universe as musicians. Even further back...musicians who play this primitive blowstick that we call a trombone. But it is precisely the simplicity of that instrument that makes it a very valuable tool in the fight against the ongoing mechanistic takeover of the music world.

Now Barry Goldwater...a failed presidential candidate in 1964 United States...essentially blew his whole campaign with one phrase. Here it is:

Quote...extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Out of the context of that place and time this phrase is not particularly offensive, right? I mean if someone tried to capture and enslave you, "extreme" measures to defend yourself would be given pretty much of a blanket pass, right?

Well, I will paraphrase here.

Dissonance in the pursuit of consonance is no crime.

Not musical dissonance, for sure. That's what the tritone does in dominant->tonic harmonic music. It drives and pursues things to their consonant end.

Ditto interpersonal dissonance that is used in the pursuit of consonance.

I rest my case.

Gotta go get consonant with two different horns.

Later...

S.

[ttf_HouBassTrombone]

Ellrond- What do you think of the Mackey concerto?

[ttf_savio]

Quote from: sabutin on Dec 10, 2011, 09:50AMPersonal dissonance.

Musical dissonance.

You can't have one without the other.

Music reflects human experience and human experience reflects the way that the universe works.

Without dissonance, no consonance. No neutrality, either.

Neutrality...the state of almost all of the universe in relation to any infinitesimal part of it, whether that part is itself involved in a state of neutrality, consonance or dissonance. I see a current state of dissonance in the culture regarding the music(s) to which it pays most attention and I also see a larger, more serious state of dissonance in it regarding more practical matters such as life and death, war and peace, criminality and good behaviour in a societal sense, etc. The ancient Greeks...and many other cultures...believed that the type of music to which one listened had serious effects on the state of mind of its listeners. Read below for a little regarding this idea. (By the way, the modal names that are used? Beware...they are not necessarily the same scales that we associate with those names.)

Here is the interesting part of this idea. "Plato uses the term inclusively to encompass a particular type of scale, range and register, characteristic rhythmic pattern, textual subject, etc. " So it wasn't about the "scale", it was about the music. All of it.

Back to dissonance. "Dissonance" can be defined in many ways. Harmonic dissonance, rhythmic dissonance, cultural dissonance, personal dissonance, societal dissonance...da woiks. I see a serious "dissonance" occurring in the culture due to technologically-induced mechanicality...the tendency of human beings  to act in an ever-increasingly mechanical manner in imitation of the machines that now largely rule and order their lives. Clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp, you can see it everywhere. People crossing streets with their brain in their iPhone, oblivious to the personal danger in which they are placing themselves. Ditto texting while driving. And that's only the little stuff. People swallowing whole whatever the technologically-dominated media feed them in terms of information, culture and pretty much everything else. People trying to multitask when in reality they barely have enough useful memory to be able to do even one thing at a time with any real precision or power.

And further back, to our own place in the universe as musicians. Even further back...musicians who play this primitive blowstick that we call a trombone. But it is precisely the simplicity of that instrument that makes it a very valuable tool in the fight against the ongoing mechanistic takeover of the music world.

Now Barry Goldwater...a failed presidential candidate in 1964 United States...essentially blew his whole campaign with one phrase. Here it is:

Out of the context of that place and time this phrase is not particularly offensive, right? I mean if someone tried to capture and enslave you, "extreme" measures to defend yourself would be given pretty much of a blanket pass, right?

Well, I will paraphrase here.

Dissonance in the pursuit of consonance is no crime.

Not musical dissonance, for sure. That's what the tritone does in dominant->tonic harmonic music. It drives and pursues things to their consonant end.

Ditto interpersonal dissonance that is used in the pursuit of consonance.

I rest my case.

Gotta go get consonant with two different horns.

Later...

S.

This post did learn me some Sam. If I understand it the right way ...with my english and "my head" its never certain I do understand anything at all.  In music the dissonance always give the exciting feel, its like a thriller movie, in the end the solution come. And the boring things start again. Its as simple as an C-F6-G7-C chord progress. You could see it like this. The C chord is safe and life is OK but boring. The F chord suddenly is there and we feel something is new and we have a feel that now something more will happen soon. The "6" make us a little unsure what will happen. Then it suddenly is there, the G7. It makes us very restless, the dissonance is there and we hope all will go well. But all of us that like some excitement really enjoy this moment. We can not be sure all is going well. Some of us want to stay there long time. It make us feel alive. Like a thriller movie can do. OK most of us like a happy ending, and harmony/peace in the end. The C is back again. Some say thanks God. It feels safe again. What a disappointment it would be if there was an Am? Then we have to start over again? Or if it was a C9? Like a nightmare? Horror movie? Or a "E" chord? A science fiction movie? Well, that dissonance is making us feel alive, it makes colour. Also in real life its good. "but" We are entertainers. I just hope we see the difference in "real life/ movie, entertainment" ? A real war is no constructive in any life. Think about all the wars out there. Never any good. Different colour is very constructive. Let them out. (I bet no one understand anything in this post... ;  Maybe its like a French movie about love, can you imagine anything that boring? Hope my wife dont see this... )

Leif

[ttf_Bonefide]

"Dissonance in the pursuit of consonance is no crime."

I like that.

...I don't really have anything to contribute; just thank you Sam for that post. though if the US did go after the Soviet Union, I might not be here right now.

[ttf_anonymous]

The old pastor of my churh often says ﾞNOT homogeneous unit, BUT heterogeneous unityﾞ.

hurry

[ttf_anonymous]

The old pastor of my churh often says ﾞNOT homogeneous unit, BUT heterogeneous unityﾞ.

hurry