squibs | Who I am | Music Today | Theory & Practice
|
New Stuff
Why this page?
Reviewers, disc jockeys, the IRS, and even a few reporters have asked
me
for more material about myself. Since I compose and survive (are they
not
one and the same?) by the skin of my teeth, I hope this page will spare
me
some printing expenses. Press kits are for rock stars. I would rather
be a
rock.
squibs
Music is like underwear - easily categorized, but best not discussed.
The highest praise for a composer today: "Turn it up, man."
Composers hope to become landmarks of one kind or another, but History
has
proven to be a tardy architect - maybe it's best to wait for another
Ice
Age.
Why does my music take so long to compose?
Better a stream of blood than a torrent of shit.
My music is like Halley's Comet: destined to return, but not in my
lifetime - if at all.
Who I am
Portions of this interview were not a "success." At least the
interviewer was honest: he was baffled by my music and persisted only
at
the behest of his editor.
You studied music at the Evergreen State College?
No, I am self-taught, though I did study music history. The stifling
situation there was invaluable, though; I did nothing but think
about music for 2 years and then made my lackluster escape.
What are your credentials as a composer?
You may find my credentials in my music.
But have you won any prizes, awards...
Not to be testy, but if you are looking for a resume boasting of
prizes,
fellowships, grants, etc., consider this: there are many bad composers
who
have piled up these kinds of "qualifications" and remain bad
composers. I would rather avoid their company and present my music. If
someone likes it and feels moved, then I am "qualified", if
another hears a piece and hates it, then I have failed.
And, to answer your question, yes, but I find the "curriculum
vitae" approach to biography rather useless. Stravinsky won the
Sibelius Prize in 1955, a fact which neither burnishes nor diminishes
his
place in history.
Why did you start composing?
I don't know. I think my first my piece was Daybreak In The People's
Republic Of China, but I don't know why I did it. Come to think of it,
I
really couldn't pin a date on when I started, either. When my
grandfather
died, I inherited a Noah's ark of instruments. That's when I started
composing seriously.
What kind of instruments did you inherit?
Violins, guitars, a clarinet or two, many brass instruments, and a
couple
of strange ones that never went
anywhere.
What is your favorite instrument?
Right now, I am favoring the cornet and a Pakistani oboe, and also a 9
foot fence wire that plays quite nicely. Every object is a musical
instrument. I don't discriminate; if it makes sound, I can use it.
Who is your favorite composer?
I have many favorites, but Stravinsky currently tops my list. I also
love
Webern, Debussy, Beethoven, Ellington - I can't understand Mozart and
Haydn symphonies, (they all sound the same and seem rather repetitive
like
pop records) but maybe I'm too young.
As a composer, do you hope for immortality?
Didn't Duke Ellington say 'I'm not interested in composing the music of
the future; I want to write the hits of today.' ? You're asking a very
pre-modern question. With the advent of digital storage,
everyone
will be immortal. The question is really one of distribution: Who will
find you? Why should they look and where will they find you? Benvenuto
Cellini is an example of what will happen to post-modern historical
figures and their creations.
In 16th century Italy, Cellini was renowned as the greatest goldsmith
of
his day. Few of his works survive and instead, he is known primarily
for
his engaging autobiography. I wouldn't be surprised then, if a century
or
two hence, someone exhumed my compositions and said "Hm..., there
must be more to him than that."
With a little research, they would dig up several hundred miles of
rehearsal tapes that I had foolishly archived on disc at some point and
proclaim those garrulous ramblings as my greatest work. Some academics
would painstakingly concoct and corroborate a theory that my issued
works
were a Dadaesque sham to fool everyone and posthumously win renown as a
composer of closet epics for solo instruments.
[the interviewer looked perturbed at this point]
I suspect that world culture will become a post-human India. Society
will
fragment: our consumer preferences and hobbies will become sacralized
and
blossom into thousands of cults. The attendant rites and dialects of
these
pop-culture sects will be barely meaningful to those beyond a jagged
pale
and insulated by those selfsame rituals (e.g. SF/RPG conventioneers
quoting Monty Python, etc.). The upshot of my ungainly babbling?
Composers are best forgotten. Avoid latter-day Nurembergs. Nothing
should
stand in the way of experiencing music; encumbering the listener with
political agendas, heartwarming stories, historical perspectives and
other
tawdry seductions cheapens the music. I want my pieces to survive; let
everything else go to earth.
But what about writings that try to help people understand music
such
as musicology?
Only composers need the necrophilia of musicology. The popularizers who
try to explicate the music ("You see, this piece reveals Schubert
grappling with his homosexuality.") compel listeners to judge
music by circumstantial appendages - such as biographies - and deflect
attention not only from the work itself, but more importantly, from
the
concept of experiencing and exploring music.
But don't "circumstantial appendages" like biographies and
topical issues bring people closer to the music and help them
understand
it?
It leads to the fallacy of judging a work's merit by its
author. Scholars
may view music from a historical perspective, as an 'artifact', but
they
and anyone else who seeks to explain or illuminate music with these
circumstantial appendages miss the point.
To me, music is not a document to understand or even decode, but an
entity to experience. It is the experience, nothing more,
nothing
less, that matters in music.
What about composers' intentions? What if a composer deliberately
divorces herself from history and says his or her work isn't supposed
to
be eternal? And what does this imply about translated texts?
Quite obviously, composers compose for today and, perhaps unwittingly,
for
the future, which makes shirking the crushing burden of history
suddenly
very attractive. If I had not heard the Rite of Spring I would still
compose, but I would be a poorer composer for not having buckled under
the
colossal impact of the piece and endured the incredible challenge of
that
sonic monument. Composers may do as they wish, but our compositions
will
be judged inevitably as monoliths.
Intentions are unknowable: composers can lie, after all, and some
simply
change their minds. The potential variability of a composer's
personality
and intentions make the quest to understand a composition through any
medium apart from the music fruitless.
As for translated texts, all we have is what can be understood now. And
if
that still moves us, so much the better. I am grateful for Gilgamesh,
even
in translation.
Perhaps in the future, our descendants will hear things so differently
that only works with a frequency nexus radiating from 8000 hertz will
be
considered music. That's an extreme form of "translated
text",
but given our noisy climate, not impossible. We view Ancient and
Classical
Greek sculpture without the pigments and other adornments and still see
beauty...
What do you think of popular music?
I think music historians will cite the 20th century as the Age of
Song. And though there are quite a few pop songs I like - after all,
listening to Beethoven every day would make me an emotional wreck - I
get
annoyed with pop music too easily to justify a steady diet of the
stuff.
Why?
Not for the classic and frequently valid reasons: "they don't
know
their history", "the chords / rhythms / harmonies are too
simple", "they haven't listened to [ insert difficult
composer
]"etc., but because I get bored too quickly.
After Tippett's Symphony No. 2, any composer would be hard
pressed
to match that experience, but a few pop tunes measure up: Good
Vibrations, A Horse With No Name, Sex Machine, Negative Creep,
Stigmata,
and so forth.
But those are all very different - Negative Creep is more
alternative
than pop...
That's what Sub Pop would have you believe. Songs are songs.
I refuse to swallow the lactating hype from the press kits of the rich
and
famous; after Stockhausen's Gruppen or Xenakis' Kraanerg
what pop song is "alternative"?
"Alternative to what?" is the real political question
in
music these days...
Music Today
Are composers an endangered species?
I would suggest that only prosperous composers, frequent performances
of
new works and significant media interest in "contemporary
classical" [sic] qualify for this Endangered Species list. The
number
of diplomas awarded in Composition and the volume of recordings attest
to
the abundance - but not necessarily the quality - of composers today.
Composers construing themselves as songwriters, improvisors, sound
sculptors , collagists, etc., have damaged the art by false
labeling. All
of these folks, whether they like it or not, compose music.
To be sure, differences abound in the time-scale, in how much of the
music
is "farmed out" to session players (who are also composers at
least at their own instrument, e.g. Billy Preston on those late Beatles
records), engineers, etc., and who retains legal
"ownership" of
the music being (re)produced.
Maybe composers choose these fancy labels to shirk the burden of
history
or to resist being pigeonholed.
How can a composer or sound artist or whatever resist being
pigeonholed?
Sound artists can resist pigeonholing by cultivating their
taste; composers need to understand that lessons may be learned from
all music and become conversant with music history.
Personally, I find most country music repulsive, but I have learned
valuable lessons listening to Nashville pedal steel players. A couple
of
years ago, I endured a dismaying conversation with a DJ and "sound
sculptor" who was astonished that I had been savoring Schubert's
9th
Symphony and concurrently, Stockhausen's Gruppen.
My taste is neither boundless nor exemplary, but it does not entail
excising entire swaths of history.
Is the audience for new music an endangered species?
Audiences have splintered, for good and for ill. Having bypassed or
never
espied the craggy tors and lofty aeries of Elliot Carter, Milton
Babbitt
and other difficult composers, listeners gravitated to the easy and
pleasant views afforded by New Age, Adult Contemporary, Rock and Roll,
etc. These horizons are not limited in themselves, but only
by
those who look upon it as so much wall paper : though it is far
easier
for the eye to glaze over a flat landscape than to gauge rugged
terrain.
Of course, the few hardy souls that choose to brave all terrain by
thinking, feeling and reacting to the music they hear enjoy the
benefits
of catholicism: Bach, Beethoven, Boulez, the Beatles, blur and the
Burundi
drummers all have something to say.
Then, should music be comprehensible?
Of course. Composers cowering behind tall theories have done an
incredible
disservice to music. Theory can never justify the merit of a
piece; it only helps composers who want to understand and
master the techniques of other composers.
Nothing worthwhile comes easy; you need an open heart and mind. Most
people don't take the time because of imposed expectations ("It's
Mozart, so it has to be good.") or laziness. It's perfectly fine
to
leave a concert scratching your head - at least you paid attention and
reacted.
Consumerism has conditioned us to expect instant comprehension with
minimal effort. We assume that since we've paid money, we should
receive a
tangible, quantifiable product. Music is insubstantial, often evoking
imprecise feelings, which upsets people even more if they feel like
they
didn't "get it." Composers and audiences should become
comfortable with the very human possibility that some things will
remain
beyond their reach.
Mozart's orchestral pieces are an insufferable barrier for me. I hear
good
things, brilliant ideas, yet I weary at the lack of harmonic leverage
and
thunderous orchestration that I enjoy in other composers, say Beethoven
or
Stravinsky. Obviously, my opinion has no bearing on Mozart's merit, but
it
illustrates my own limitations - composers should be able to learn from
all sound. Instead, I'm stymied.
Theory and Practice
How do you compose?
Stravinsky said somewhere ( Where? I 'd like to know. Do
you? [interviewer
shrugs shoulders] ) that composition is "frozen
improvisation." From the miles and miles of tape, I gather and
edit
my performances into complete pieces. Think of it as jazz on slower
time-scale. Miles would play 3 notes in 5 seconds: my 3 notes take 5
hours.
Do you use any modern synthesizers or samplers?
No. I prefer to create everything from scratch - it keeps me thinking
about sounds constantly and prevents me from getting lazy and using
presets. I still use some old analog gear - Moogs and a charming Korg -
I
tried digital synths a few years ago, but was disappointed. Maybe if
they
were better designed...
How?
My favorite synthesizer is the Roland Jupiter 8; it's all there,
everything is laid out for you to consider: the filters, LFO, ADSR
envelopes and so on. In the mid-1980s, synth manufacturers wanted to
sidle
up to the MIDI standard and, trapped in the rat race of innovation,
churned out digital synthesizers blessed with recondite keypads and
illegible will o' wisp displays.
They sacrificed a sensible user interface to save money on parts like
knobs, unstable integrated circuits, while adding the veneer of
"new
technology" to their products. Of course, a lucrative market in
presets emerged, as very few had the fortitude to read those wretched
manuals and try to create some different sounds.
There's an irony in all of this: many of our leading Universities are
researching new interfaces for people and instruments - yet fewer
people
are really delving into these instruments and, to top it off, user
interfaces are getting worse, excepting the Roland JD-800 and a few
others.
How crucial is MIDI in your work?
I like what Vince Clarke said; 'it's slop, it's crap, it's totally out
of
time.' He's quite right. MIDI is not yet a worthwhile tool for complex
music. There are unforgivable delays, and the very idea of quantizing
seems rather chilling and unmusical.
But I shouldn't hypostatize: a tool is only as wretched as its
wielder. What is really evil is that MIDI may pulverize an entire
generation of composers' sense of rhythm and form.
What is your "sense of form" and how do you use it in your
work?
[jokingly] That's a trade secret.
Much of your music seems restless, like you're not happy with any
single sound...
No, I like all my of my sounds, otherwise they wouldn't be there.
The incredible palette of sounds and textures available to composers
these
days has, ironically, made orchestration a dead issue. Anyone can
concoct
a fascinating sound, but to paraphrase Copland, the challenge is to
make
it last longer than 3 seconds.
My sounds underscore contiguous or congruent melodic, harmonic or
rhythmic
tension; for others, I hold such tremendous affection that I am
compelled
to include them.
Would you throw your lover out of bed just because she or he woke you
up
in the middle of the night? I feel the same way about my sounds.
Parts of Hiram's Blood reminded me of Miles Davis.
Thank you. Miles exercises a profound influence on me both as a player
and
as a composer. He is a genius: many of his compositions balance the
mind,
heart and soul gracefully and unerringly. Better writers and
interviewees
than I have described the lonely searching sound of Miles'
playing. Unlike
Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong, both innovative instrumentalists,
Miles Davis belongs in the loftier company of that other great jazz
composer, Duke Ellington.
Can't believe I said...
[to an annoying heckler] "Didn't we fuck in prison?"
Music, like mathematics, should only give the illusion of numbers.
Do I listen to Women's Music? No, the particular sex or lack thereof in
a
composer has nothing to do with whether I listen to them or not.
Someone should write an Active X control that writes a .wav file of
John
Cage's 4'33" on the web surfer's hard drive and plays it!
[Relatively] New Stuff
Every composer must endure detractors, but because I learn more from
those
who brandish different, even virulently opposing viewpoints, I would be
a
fool to ignore them. Doesn't the tale of Narcissus recount the perils
of
self-absorption? This interview sews together email and face to face
conversations.
OK, I listened to Three Camels... and read the other
interviews. You're sincere, obviously not out for a fast buck, but I'm
still skeptical. Most of it is new and weird, to me at least, but what
about Iszkarrchse ? I liked it, but, to paraphrase your own
notes,
what the hell is new and weird about droning analog synths?
I could have shielded myself from such criticism by changing a
conjunction
and subtitling the cd New Or Weird American Music, but as you can
see, I did not. The New and Weird in the subtitle refers to sounds
and structures.
Iszkarrchse is a good example. True, roiling clouds of analog synths
show
up all the time on countless dance and Vangelis records, but if you
listen
closely, the drones are layered in a way to create an undertow of
shifting
pulses. Other composers have used such textures and many more have
embedded subtle changes into apparently repetitive structures. I think
my
combination of the two in Iszkarrchse is new and taken with that
gingerly
closing cadence, weird and satisfying.
The title track is what really baffled me. Three Camels sounds like
theft. What did you perform and what did you steal?
Ah! That would have been an excellent phrase for the press
materials: Three Camels - The Sound of Theft! Just like Motown - The
Sound
of Young America! I cannot control whether you hear Three Camels for
Orchestra as a slaughterhouse of samples, a tatterdemalion
orchestra
enduring a frigid warehouse and later piecemealed together inch by inch
on
tape, a riotous send-up of posh classical or just as music: everything
you
hear is supposed to be there. Thank you for not erroneously citing
quotes
or alleging cribs in the piece. And though I didn't mean to trip up
critics, all have fumbled when claiming to hear such and such or so and
so
from piece X, Y or Z.
Your question, though, is based on the assumption that a person or
corporate entity can own sounds or notes. But can anyone in a
just
and moral sense own sounds? Ownership is the right to collect money
upon
confiscation, yet I have a higher belief: all composers are my
ancestors. To my knowledge no one has copyrighted scarlet red and tried
to
collect from painters. Why should we allow creative building blocks to
remain the property of a few and seal off avenues of artistic
exploration?
Perhaps we have stumbled onto a new school of philosophy and that says
the
universe is comprised of copyrights. Knowing and understanding the
copyright owners and enforcers constitutes true knowledge or some such
blather. Copyrights and patents inhere in each person, who thereby
leases
their bodily years and licenses their unique behaviors to assorted
employers, friends, family, etc. Laws merely a century or two old
should
not impede anyone's experience of music.
Maybe it's easier to describe Three Camels as a sound
collage.
Although some collages such as Max Ernst's Woman with 100 Heads
are
masterpieces of precise construction, collage still connotes
casual
rather than causal order. Those who descry chaos in color splotched
DeKoonings or my music should remember that even chaos must be a
consistent experience. Three Camels is deliberately, densely
structured. A careful ear will be rewarded with interlocking melodic,
timbral, rhythmic and harmonic patterns. But for all that, if you do
not
hear it, I am to blame, not you. The listener is not obligated to
understand me, but I am duty-bound to strive to be understood.
Well it [Three Camels] sure isn't danceable.
Three Camels doesn't have overtly regular,
periodic rhythms, but all music is danceable. Sadly, the will to dance
is
contained only by the fears, notions and social imperatives that decree
what is danceable.
Although the listening to the Grateful Dead can give me conniptions, I
think the autonomous (or should that be autonomic?) whirling-dervish
dancing their music inspires is far healthier and more interesting than
the regimented motions and convulsions I see at the latter-day
Nurembergs
of dance clubs and stadium concerts. A stubborn, exclusive allegiance
to a
genre of music is just another sign of the soporific product-based
tribalism in our society.
Nuremberg? Where the Nazis staged those huge rallies? Can you tie
that
in with your intriguing remark about culture becoming a post-human
India? And why post-human?
A friend of mine told me that he had scored a ticket to the Stone
Temple
Pilots show for Veteran's Day, and made a slush tape of their albums in
order to familiarize himself with their material before the concert.
There is something sacred about this task, akin to preparing for a
Castaneda-inspired trip or learning your culture's lore as you embark
on
your initiation into the tribe. That's really the problem: our consumer
culture produces too many small intense cults (need I describe the
attendant fetishes? concert T-shirts, radio countdown giveaways, the
rite
of abduction performed upon secreted substances...) whose duration of
membership is too brief. After the concert, how many find friendship in
the parking lot?
By post-human, I refer to the eventually ubiquitous software agents
that
will collate our preferences and weave us more tightly into the web of
capitalism. Such intelligent advertising will begin to cultivate then
control our taste in almost every consumer item. Someone with the
proper
consumer profile might even be paid to stay at home and consume.
Nuremberg is a powerful metaphor for the atavistic craving for communal
orgasm. This forgotten part of our ancestry can be found in the Old
Testament where the daughters of Israel are rebuked for joining the
Philistines in divinely sanctioned orgies. Tent revivals, stadium
concerts
and even the Symphony Hall are sublimated Nurembergs. We are lucky that
most composers do not seek a musical messianism that can inflict
orgasmic
paroxysms onto a worshipful throng, like the Beatles at Shea stadium.
Today, instead of a come-on-your-face bacchanalia, we see vestiges of
this
atavistic lust in hilarious pornographic videos and the
pedophilia-inducing wood panels of those chilling Calvin Klein ads. As
for
the shock-rockers, my objection to groups like Marilyn Manson is that
they
have yet to conduct a truly savage pagan freak-out: where are the piles
of
animal skulls and wallets sewn of flayed flesh?
And, if someone wants to surpass the current crop of shock-rockers, the
undiscovered country of murder, pedophilia and auto-cannibalism
awaits. Soustelle's Daily Life of the Aztecs would be a good
read
for any aspiring Alice Cooper. A simpler, legal idea might be to pay a
neurosurgeon to hollow and then saturate a pocket of flesh with
transplanted nerves for a new sexual orifice.
What about music and sex?
Made to order or occasional music always interests me; narrow
challenges
whet my appetite, but let me say this: music and sex and not
congruent. I
am incredulous at the habitual inclusion of music during sex.
Conditioned by films that consistently deploy music during sex scenes,
Americans seem addicted to atmosphere. What's wrong with emotions and
the
creak of the floorboards? The fact that apartment-dwellers often put on
some background music for privacy reminds me that we are a deodorized
society not only in an olfactory sense but in an auditory sense, too.
Colin Turnbull in his book, The Forest People, reported that
among Pygmies he lived with in the Ituri Rain Forest, couples had no
qualms about sex in their single-room far-from-soundproofed huts. I
will spare you a petulant tirade against music in films.
What do you have against, as you say in your liner notes, the
"sonic revanchism" of compression?
In the rock world, compression, among other procedures, transforms much
of
the music into mere "product": matching levels so that no one jumps out
of
their seat, ensuring that silences between tracks are of equal length,
enforcing global EQ, inflicting compression so that no one has to
listen
closely to quiet moments, etc. Rather than strive to get your next song
sounding the same out of different kinds of speakers, why not create a
piece that exploits the differences among all speakers?
You must have a hell of an ego to put all this stuff on the
web...
Anyone who strives to create anything - even dinner - that could
instead
be purchased needs one hell of an ego to resist the cannonades of
consumer
propaganda that exhort us to buy MORE pre-packaged crap.
I hope that these conversations and the sound files on my pages not
only
stir interest in my music, but more importantly, inspire others to
create something of their own.
