[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.

In the early 90′s I started using FTP sites to distribute Postscript files and MP2 and later MP3 files. The first IRCAM website actually distributed for a short time the MIDI file to my piano piece BlueStrider. In 1995, the LA Times, wrote an article saying that David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet had set up a website where he was engaging in guerrilla action to freely distribute contemporary music. I called them up and corrected them – it was me they were writing about and I was only distributing my music that way.

Since then, of course the whole music world is used to free downloads. My strategy has always been that I’d love to sell my music, but I’m more interested in getting new listeners than I am in making a few thousand dollars. I’ve told people that there is a greater risk that you’ll miss 1000 listeners by selling your work than there is a chance of you making $1,000.00. As far as my scores go, I have a few pieces that are published, but I am not that interested in pursuing publishers especially with the risk that they might stymie the discovery of my music or even have them get locked up in limbo. I distribute my PDF files at several different locations and get hundreds of downloads of them a day.

This has still been a fairly risky proposition, but in no way as risky as being unpublished, unheard and ignored. I have to constantly run searches on Google to find performances. I only recently learned of a premiere in New Jersey of my big piano piece BlueStrider last October. I find that some of my MP3 files have lost their indicators of authorship. My quartertone electronic piece, Acid Bach is found all over the web, and is often found without my name. People believe because you give your music away that they can perform it without notifying you.

I keep my music copyrighted with reserved rights and non-derivative rights because I don’t want my music to be used in commercials or in any commercial activities. I also sell my scores through Lulu.com and I accept donations. I believe it helps create a more professional appearance in that it suggests supporting the artist and slightly obviates the appearance of being a cultural anarchist.

When you look at the consequences of self-publishing the costs can be quite huge for a successful composer to give their pieces away. When I dropped out of college however, I effectively destroyed any hope of becoming a truly successful composer in America. Without the network of college affiliation, a composer is at a very serious disadvantage. In effect, my pricing is a discount into the advantage my competitors have, that is, I have to compete with well-networked, famous people, thus I have to discount my work in order to garner attention.

Regarding social networks, I was also the first composer to set up online communities in order to promote my new music in general and my work. I helped establish the newsgroup, rec.music.compose in 1991 and was the moderator for comp.music.research for its first 5 years. I established an online community for new music NetNewMusic in 1994, which was basically a links list with forums. I added news feeds and publishing in 2000 and it later became the hugely successful Ning group, NetNewMusic which I was forced to destroy because of trolling and harassment in 2010. I also set up the first websites for the American Music Center, and was webmaster of Sequenza21 between 2005-2009. I set up these networks and participated in them to draw attention to my music. My idea was that if you established yourself as an interesting or provocative person you could draw attention to your music. Today one can use Twitter or Facebook in the same manner.

In the end my philosophy is that my main problem is lack of exposure. I believe that if people knew my music that they’d like to play it. The biggest consequence now is something that everybody suffers from – the lack of both serious criticism and the lack of curation. I get performed between 20-60 times a year all over the world and composers much more famous than I get less performances and more exposure. The network which supports them either through academia or through affiliations with famous composers such as Philip Glass, etc. enable their careers to have a stronger referral and promotional network. It’s very hard to generate a ‘buzz’ without being mentioned in magazines or NPR. I don’t know what the answer is except more exposure.

I was lucky enough to get in on this early and make a certain reputation. I recently attended a workshop put on by the American Music Center where representatives from a well known orchestra gave a presentation about developing an online presence. They went on and on about having compelling graphics, about how to submit professional materials – it was all very ordinary and expected. Finally I raised my hands and asked them, “When was the last time your orchestra played a piece that was submitted by email or that you discovered through their website or through social networks?” They looked surprised and honestly confessed, “We have never played a piece that was submitted by email or that we discovered from a composer’s website.”

Call for Scores:

Deadline: January 31, 2011

The contemporary classical music website Sequenza 21 (http://www.sequenza21.com), in partnership with Manhattan New Music Project (http://www.mnmp.org/), is pleased to issue a call for scores. Composers of any age may submit a single work with the following instrumentation: violins (2), viola, cello, piano, and percussion. Works for smaller groupings (solos, duos, trios, etc.) that employ the above instruments are especially welcome.  In the interest of performing as many entries as possible, pieces that are shorter in duration may be preferred.

Several pieces will be selected from these entries for our 2011 concert in New York City (date/location TBA), performed by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble – ACME (http://acmemusic.org). The program committee will include Christian Carey (Sequenza 21), Clarice Jensen (ACME), and Hayes Biggs (Manhattan School of Music).

There is no entry fee. There is also no remuneration apart from the performance. Those composers selected for the concert will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations should they wish to attend the event.

Scores with CD recordings (if available) will be accepted at the address below until 5 PM on Monday, January 31, 2011. Please do not send parts at this time. Materials will be returned if accompanied by an SASE with appropriate postage.

Sequenza 21/MNMP 2011 concert

c/o

MNMP

243 West 30^th Street,

Suite 500,

New York, NY 10001

Summary

Deadline: 5 PM on January 31, 2011 (receipt of materials; not postmark deadline)

Age limit: none

Entry fee: none

Limitations: only one (1) work per entrant will be considered.

Instrumentation: vlns (2), vla, clo, pno, perc

Prize: a New York performance by ACME, sponsored by Sequenza 21 and MNMP.

Return of materials: With SASE

Submitted works that do not conform to the above guidelines cannot be considered for inclusion on the program.

I’ve been following the Bravo TV reality series, “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” (fifth episode this week). It tracks a group of young-ish  artists, most of whom have already been exhibited, and assigns them a fresh project each week to be conceived and completed in about 1.5 days. 

The completed works are then displayed in a private gallery showing, followed by a critique from a panel of judges (a core of regulars, plus  one fresh prominent figure per week; one week it was Andres Serrano.)  The projects range from utilitarian-but-arty (design a book cover for a classic novel re-issue) to almost-unspecified (“do something outrageous”), and at times the artists receive their assignments by lot, with no say as to the subject agreeing with their own affinities (or preferred medium).

Although it’s the usual winnowing-out design typical of such programs — and I don’t at all care who gets tapped as eventual winner — I’d pinpoint the same two interesting elements within each hour-long segment:

•  The very different processes each of the artists follows in interpreting the assigned project. These are profiled in some detail — surprise! — and follow the gradual development of each new work. This manages to take up a big slice of the program, some 20+ minutes. It’s exhilarating to see cameras paying attention to a working-out that stems from labor which is primarily  ‘head-work’.  And  rare.

•  A refrain in the judges’ comments, present virtually every week: that the works they find successful do  *in some respect* provide for viewers to respond to the piece — and actively. (For example, they very much admired works in which the artist incorporated a mirror, or sign-in boards to register comment, or placed him/herself actually physically into the piece; etc.)

Of course the judges want  the artist’s individual personality to be expressed in the piece; but beyond that, and far from an auteur context where a viewer is only meant to “receive” an utterly  complete document, the judges want the art to invite the viewer to respond, so that the work is ‘incomplete’ unless and until someone reacts to it in a way that registers to other viewers. (This forested tree demands the listening ear be there! so its fall can be heard.)

There’s plenty of opinion flying about throughout  the episode  — in addition to the judges, the artists themselves comment liberally on one another’s  work throughout the show.  If you pay no mind to the trumped-up  personality conflicts and the bland or fatuous criticism (or the commercials), the  show can be worth screening.

The level of  the works  — particularly those by  three of the competitors still ‘alive’ — is certainly professional. And the prize is $100,000,  plus a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum. Sarah Jessica Parker is one of the program originators.

Would that composers could reap the same on-camera attention for our head-scratching  hours…!

Accessible Contemporary Music is a non-profit group out of Chicago. Their goal?

It is our artistic mission to promote the performance and understanding of contemporary music, especially the music of living composers. We have as our target audience both those already acquainted with contemporary music and those who may not even realize that there are people still composing concert music today.

To that end they run a very nice concert series, all kinds of classes and workshops, and what I want to tell you about, namely the Weekly Reading series beginning again this November:

Weekly Readings was begun in the 2004-2005 season to address the growing number of composers who find themselves without available professionals to read and perform their music. Each week members of ACM and professional guest musicians from the Chicago area meet and conduct a prepared reading of a different new piece of music by a living composer who has submitted a piece to us specifically for this project.

Not only does the piece get read and performed at the series, each piece will also receive consideration for a future ACM concert. And for $10 they can get you a CD of the reading, too. Follow the link for the complete description and guidelines.

Seems to me that this is a great idea, and a real boon for a lot of composers out there without players at your beck & call. Writing music is fine, but the reality of what you’re writing doesn’t happen until you actually hear those dots, blobs and scratches in the hands of real performers. Kudos to ACM!

Jim Sector over at the Albany Symphony told me about competition kicking off just now, that some of you might be game for:

The Albany Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is proud to announce the orchestra’s first young composer competition: the “Composer to Center Stage” Reading Session. The ASO will hold an open call for scores starting on September 14th, 2009 and ending November 14th, 2009, available nationally to young and emerging composers looking to refine and develop their orchestral craft. From the pool of applicants, three composers will be selected to join the ASO in March 2010 to attend an open forum, hosted by nationally-acclaimed composer John Harbison, and to attend the ASO’s March 26th concert featuring Mr. Harbison’s music. In May, these finalists will be brought back during the orchestra’s annual American Music Festival, where they will have their pieces read by the symphony on May 22nd, meeting again with Mr. Harbison for feedback. An honorarium will be awarded to finalists, and both travel and housing will be provided for their trips to Albany.

A few of the more important rules for this one:

- Applicant must be either a US citizen or non-citizen lawfully and permanently residing, or studying full-time, in the United States.
- There are no age restrictions; however, applicants should be composers at the early stages of their professional careers.
- Each composer may submit only one composition for consideration.
- Only works that will not have been performed or read by a professional orchestra nor received a public performance prior to the reading date are eligible.
- Only works completed within the last five years will be considered.
- Works may be up to 15 minutes in length. Sections of longer works will be considered.
- Instrumentation should not exceed ASO’s standard symphonic complement. Works with instrumentation which exceed the above will be considered only with advance approval.
- Not eligible are concertos, choral works, works with excessive electronic elements.
- Works with Electronic elements are discouraged, but will be considered on a case-bycase basis. For works with electronics, MIDI, and/or digital technologies: include a one page statement describing the rationale for its use, as well as any pertinent production requirements and technical specifications.
- If selected, composers must provide professional, legible orchestral parts and scores prepared according to guidelines established by the Major Orchestral Librarians Association.
- The quality of the score submitted is the primary evaluation criteria. It is therefore in the applicant’s best interest that the score be clear, accurate, and the best representation of the composer’s work.

If you’re interested just contact Mr. Sector at jims@albanysymphony.com, and he can send you the complete application & guidelines.

Or at least write the music for one?  Just a couple posts earlier we were talking about composer Chris Becker’s work with dancers. If this is always something you’ve thought about doing, and you happen to be in NYC, a fantastic opportunity is just waiting for you to respond:

Every year, the Joyce Theater Foundation presents “Free Advice”, a series of seminars for dance companies and choreographers spanning a wide range of management and presentation subjects. As part of their schedule this year, on Monday June 22nd at 6:15pm they’re hosting a Choreographer/Composer Meet and Greet, where they promise you can mingle with choreographers who are eager to work with composers, chat each other up, and trade work samples and contact information.

It doesn’t get any easier or better than this, y’all. But word from Joyce SoHo is that they’ve got way more choreograpers signed on than composers. So here’s your chance to take a chance, step up and represent our end of the artistic deal. It’s free, but you do need to RSVP with the little form on their webpage. Joyce SoHo is located at 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince. So put on your walking shoes and pack along some CDRs; you might just find your next big work waiting to happen.