Composers Forum

[Ed. Note -- Jeff Harrington has been doing the composer-promotion thing on the web just about as early as anyone could. Now working out of France, Jeff has written a bit about his own long experience, and wanted to share that with you all.]

Here’s a short article I wrote upon request from somebody teaching a course in Digital Musicianship.  I offer it as a way to encourage discussion about the costs and benefits of the free culture model.  Please pardon the informal nature of it…

My strategy… is basically to get my music into as many people’s hands as possible without expectations of renumeration. What happened to my wife and I in the early 80′s informed the process where I invented the free culture system.

We’d both had to drop out of college, me from Juilliard and Elsie from Pratt because of money problems. We were quite angry about this and started a street art project. This was 1982. At the same time we started showing Elsie’s paintings on the street in the West Village, right on Spring Street to be exact in the heart of Soho. We showed these huge paintings with a sign saying, “Not for Sale.”

This was pretty shocking to people and we started getting more and more interested in seeing where that could take us. We created series of non-destructive art works in chalk and with rubber stamps and displayed them all over NYC. Eventually, we became so famous (or infamous) that we started a whole mini-art movement in NYC and started receiving death threats… we ended up having to flee NYC, broke and regroup in New Orleans.

In New Orleans we continued giving our art away through the mail art networks. These were exchanges where you’d send a piece of art to somebody and then they’d send you something back. These turned into zines eventually, and from there into multiples and even gallery shows. When the computer networks started up in the early 80′s with BBS’s it was a natural progression to take our art give-away there.

I was probably the first serious artist to use the BBS system to distribute art, although I’m sure there were a few more; nobody at the time seemed to have come from the street art/mail art networks. I uploaded the score (as a set of GIF images) to my Variations for String Quartet onto a BBS in 1987 which is probably the earliest music give away. I started distributing MIDI files of my pieces around this time. It was very interesting to upload a MIDI file or a graphic and then watch it get uploaded by a fan to another site. At about the same time I started embedding my music into synthesizer patch downloads. I first distributed my Acid Bach series as a component of a synthesizer patch library I created for the purpose of having a compelling download. That is, I designed the patch library so that people would want it and coincidentally listen to my music. This way they’d have a high quality musical experience akin to the MP3 playback today through the use of the same synthesizer. Read the rest of this entry »

Literally… For a while now, and with far too little recognition, a group of composer-students at Michigan State University have been running their own weekly videocast/podcast. Called SoundNotion, it’s a place where composers share geek-talk with — and more importantly, for — other composers. Whatever’s going on, from the recent Pulitzers to new hot works, current web memes to just your general composerly “what’s up with that?!?”, SoundNotion is a reasonably smart, witty, casual place to catch up with concerns of up-and-coming composers figuring out this musical  world today. The regular cast includes  Patrick Gullo, David MacDonald, Sam Merciers and Nate Bilton, enhanced with the occassional guest composer, guest interviews, etc. etc. Here’s the latest episode, with topics including:

A big thanks to Tim Rutherford-Johnson for alerting us to the video below. If you’re a comp student anywhere from the grand palaces to the podunk armpits of this country, you really should get to know both Michael Pisaro and Aaron Cassidy. I’d wager they aren’t on many professors’ radar, yet they’re both quietly but powerfully influencing directions in contemporary music that I think will only become more prominent in the next decade. And here you get to have a free sit-down-’n-listen on a conversation between the two. It’s little pieces of the puzzle, that often will barely appear in classes, that help you see the real lay of the musical terrain you’re going to be navigating. So pay attention and enjoy:

One of our most spiritedly discussed posts in recent memory raised the issues of composition competitions and application fees.

While a wide range of opinions were expressed, one consistent issue raised was the necessity for composers to invest their resources wisely in profile-building activities. Here in the forum, let’s talk shop about this. Which activities are most important for composers to pursue: competitions, festivals, recordings, publications, etc.?

The photos to the right show where I make all of my music; the top is from the early 1990s, the bottom from 2007. The equipment has changed drastically but one thing remains a constant, in every workspace I’ve had going back to the mid-’70s… See the single sheet of paper tacked on the wall with an image of a piano keyboard, a long row of notes from low to high, and lots of lines above that? It’s a photocopy of a chart from a book I once owned, on the ranges of all the orchestral instruments. It also includes the frequency in hertz, as well as the naming convention of each note. Michael Urich in La Porte, TX has even been kind enough to offer an exact copy of it online.

Recently I spotted another by Charles Houghton-Webb over at BWMusic, that I think will become the new candidate for my wall; in addition to all the original has, this one extends the range, color-codes some stuff, and adds the standard MIDI note numbers for each pitch. It’s also a PDF file, so the print quality’s a bit better (the PDF is password-protected, but Charles offers the password right there on the page). Plenty of this information has long been internalized, but it’s still something I glance at almost automatically a few times during the composition of any piece.

So how about it? Do any of you have some little, almost-totemic item that stays at your own workspaces, no matter when or where?

Even though I’m down in Houston now, I still get my regular monthly email update from the Washington Composers Forum.

Christopher Shanin has put quite a bit of effort into both the site, and keeping it full of current and interesting news. And just as important, he truly works to create regular and real-life opportunities for local composers to share their music and ideas, with both themselves and the public.

Of course there’s the more general American Composers Forum, which is an umbrella linking forums in places like Atlanta, Philadelphia, D.C., etc.; and the even more broad American Music Center and the Society of Composers Incorporated. But I’d like to hear from you, about whatever similar, specifically local organizations are at work in your own piece of turf ( I know, I know, I could look them all up on Google; but I’ve got a life, too, and don’t see why we can’t pick all your brains a bit).

Who’s doing what in your town? Are they active, sporadic, or comatose? Promote calls for scores and concerts, just hang out for an occasional chat, or exist pretty much in name only?  Tell me all in the comments — and link ‘em if you got ‘em…

I just finished reading Molly Sheridan’s interview with David Morneau, who spent the past year writing a 60-second piece every day, over at New Music Box. With Morneau’s project, 60×60 (which Morneau sites as his inspiration), and the Microscore Project, music of extremely short duration seems to be all the rage these days. Are we seeing the rise of the miniature as a new net-fueled genre? Any veterans of composing mini-music or attending the relevant concerts care to contribute lessons learned?

A recent essay by Rasmus Fleischer in Cato Unbound does a great job of explaining the evolution — or better, the progressive convolution — of copyright, what’s become fundamentally different in our own time, and why any model based on our old conceptions of it are utterly doomed in anything less than a world police-state. It’s only fair to point out that Fleischer is part of the Swedish anti-copyright group Piratbyran, founders of the notorious file-sharing site Pirate Bay, so some could read this essay as simply justification for their own “questionable” activity. But Fleischer clearly lays out some real issues here, and there are many good examples of how the meaning of copying and sharing have transcended — and will only move farther from — the old models and enforcement. One of the most mind-boggling is this:

One early darknet [the term for the idea that people who have information and want to exchange it with each other will do just that, forming spontaneous networks which may be large or small, online or offline] has been termed the “sneakernet”: walking by foot to your friend carrying video cassettes or floppy discs. Nor is the sneakernet purely a technology of the past. The capacity of portable storage devices is increasing exponentially, much faster than Internet bandwidth, according to a principle known as “Kryder’s Law.”  The information in our pockets yesterday was measured in megabytes, today in gigabytes, tomorrow in terabytes and in a few years probably in petabytes (an incredible amount of data). Within 10-15 years a cheap pocket-size media player will probably be able to store all recorded music that has ever been released “” ready for direct copying to another person’s device.

In other words: The sneakernet will come back if needed. “I believe this is a “˜wild card’ that most people in the music industry are not seeing at all,” writes Swedish filesharing researcher Daniel Johansson. “When music fans can say, “˜I have all the music from 1950-2010, do you want a copy?’ “” what kind of business models will be viable in such a reality?”

I’d urge everyone to read the full essay, since this stuff will directly affect all our work, our entire career.

Taking a cue from the fantastic new digs Sequenza21 has due to Jerry and Jeff, the concept of web presence springs to mind as a good first topic in the forum. I myself have been slowly but steadily working on creating an online presence over the past year (amazing how finishing a dissertation allows one time for such things) and so far I’ve created a decent non-flash website, a myspace site and (as of last night) a nice little Wiki entry on the Sequenza21 site. Add to that the postings I’ve done on this site as well as comments I’ve sporadically interjected on the NewMusicBox and Adapstration sites – not a huge presence, but I’d hope someone noticed I’m here. The fact that these inroads can be acheived is imperative to those of us who aren’t blessed with a residence in a major metropolitan hub – Oklahoma City is a fine city, but I’d be hard-pressed to have a career solely as a regional composer (as if I’m not already hard-pressed having a career as a composer, period).

I’m curious to see what your thoughts are on the need of composers to have an online presence, how you’ve gone about making your own presence known and where do you see this taking us in the future? Here’s a few related questions – pick and choose as you like:

• What do you see as essential components of a composer’s web site? What about other components that you hate to see on a composer’s site?
• How much time do you spend on upkeep and updates? Do you find this to be a drain on your creative efforts?
• Have you had good or bad luck putting music (both recordings and scores) online, if you do at all? What works, what doesn’t?
• Do you have any favorite composer’s sites that you would point to as models of fantastic design, usefulness and ease of navigation

I must admit, it was fun to have my freshman theory class tell me they liked my myspace site… they loved the idea of keeping tabs on their teacher online untill I informed them that I had already checked out their Facebook pages. Nothing like making a bunch of 18-year olds blush at 8am.

Note to Jerry: Ahhhhhhhhh…posting on the new system is a very good thing!