4 Tips for New Composition Graduates

Students across the country are getting ready to walk across stages and receive their diplomas. Shortly after, they will enter the first stages of their professional lives. I have four tips to help make the transition from student to professional:

1. Create a web presence.

In our ever-increasing digital age, composers have to establish a web presence. Social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) should account for some of your online activities; you can use SoundCloud and YouTube to post audio and video of your pieces. More importantly, however, you must have your own website. People need to be able to navigate to a site where they can listen to your music, browse your list of works, read your biography, and contact you. You might feel like you don’t have too much to put on a website yet, but you can get creative with the content. For instance, have a blog in which you share your musical adventures, post pictures of events you’re attending or of landscapes you find interesting, or list any performing that you’re doing in addition to your composition activities. Stephanie Boyd, Jonathan Hannau, and Ed Frazier Davis are recent students of mine have put together some very nice websites (click on their names to view).

2. Join a performance rights organization.

Getting paid for performances of your music will eventually become an important revenue stream for you, so start registering your pieces now. Performance organizations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect performance royalties on behalf of composers and send you royalty checks. All three organizations allow you to join as both a composer and as your own publisher, which will earn you twice as much in royalties. As long as you self-publish your works, you will retain the publishing portion of all royalties. Check out all three organizations, learn what their similarities and differences are, and then apply to join the organization that suits you best.

3. Get to know New Music USA and the American Composers Forum.

New Music USA and the American Composers Forum are organizations whose mission is to help composers further their music and careers. Both offer numerous resources and opportunities that are useful for composers. For instance, New Music USA annually awards $1 million in grants for a wide range of projects, from funding concerts, commissioning works, and making CDs to basically anything project that you can imagine. New Music USA also publishes a digital magazine called NewMusicBox that features interviews with composers, articles on topics relevant to our field, and news within the music industry. The American Composers Forum maintains a fantastic list of opportunities that keeps composers up to date on various competitions, grants, and residencies. There is a fee to join the American Composers Forum, but it is worth the price of membership to gain access to their offerings.

4. Kick up your in-person networking.

Last, but certainly not least, in-person networking and building long-term relationships are vital to crafting and maintaining a career. Just as you’re creating a virtual presence, you need to have a live presence too. Challenge yourself to get out to a concert every week or two, and after each concert, shake hands with a few new people before you leave. If you find that you’re drawn to a particular performer or artist, follow up with them after the event, ask them out for coffee (social media is great for connecting with people!), and start brainstorming how you can collaborate together on a future project.

In the beginning stages of your career, no one will be better at selling your music than yourself. So be your own salesperson! The more you let people know who you are and what your music sounds like, the better your chances are at building a lifelong, fulfilling career as a composer.

CD Editing Sessions: Where the Magic Happens

James Ginsburg, Cedille Records producer,
demonstrates editing techniques.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in on an editing session with Cedille Records’ producer James Ginsburg and engineer Bill Maylone. The session was a demo being held for Bonnie McGrath and Bruce Oltman, who were the winning bidders of an auction item at Cedille’s benefit gala last fall. Ever since I’ve begun having my works professionally recorded, I have been very curious about the editing stage of the CD-making process. In a typical recording session, musicians will lay down track after track of a section of music, then move on to the next section and repeat this arduous process. Ideally, the musicians will cover every bit of music two or more times in order to provide some choices on which bit to select for the final recording. But sometimes the musicians will, for various reasons, record a segment four to six (or more) times. Which has made me wonder for years – how do producers choose which passages to use, and how do engineers patch it all together?

Jim invited me to attend the editing session since the piece they were demonstrating for Bonnie and Bruce was my String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations, which was recently recorded by the Avalon String Quartet for the record label. Jim and Bill explained the process that they go through with each piece that they record. Jim first listens through all of the recorded audio tracks while studying the score, and starts to make choices of which tracks to use for each passage of music. He aims to find the most effective tracks – which has the best beat alignment, or a particularly effective crescendo, or a beautiful tone, and so on. He marks these tracks onto the musical score, so Bill can see where to make the cuts. Sometimes Jim will tinker with splicing the audio tracks in various spots to see if he can find a pleasing mix; if he finds one, he marks the score to let Bill know the edit has been done.

A page of my String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations,
marked up for edits

Once Bill receives Jim’s score, he goes to work splicing the various audio tracks together. Bill makes these splices meld seamlessly from one into another by fading one track out while another fades in (the length of the fade can be adjusted – this can be very short or more gradual). Volume can also be altered to some degree as well, depending on the microphone placement that Bill has given the performers (for instance, in my piece, particular chords played by the entire quartet can get a little boost). Bill creates a seamless transition from one track to another; when he is happy with the results, he repeats this process with the next edit. Once Bill has finished this process for the entire piece, he and Jim adjust the amount of reverb (or echo) and make other final adjustments before they send the audio track onto the composer and performers for their feedback (at which point, they may have to revisit old tracks and repeat this process again, although hopefully to a much lesser extent).

What became apparent over the course of the editing session is that Jim and Bill are just as much artists as those that they record. The work that they do is so specialized, and they both have developed a very finely honed set of skills. These skills allow them to patch tracks together (sometimes consisting of just a second or two of music!) while retaining the musicians’ nuanced gestures and the overall character of the music. They know their software inside and out (ProTools for recording the tracks, SoundBlade for editing and splicing the tracks together) and can coax these programs to produce beautiful results, much like a violinist shaping a melody. They also have lots of patience and focus. This work is highly repetitive in nature and requires one’s listening skills to remain sharp. Jim and Bill exhibit the same care and patience in the editing process as I have seen them exhibit many times in recording sessions. I was particularly impressed with how well Jim and Bill work together – they are a well-established team that has been together from the very first CD they recorded twenty-five years ago for what would eventually become Cedille Records. Their symbiotic working relationship clearly shows in the quality of the music they produce.

As a composer, getting my works professionally recorded is vital, as this is a way to have a polished and permanent audio representation of my music. My appreciation and respect for what Jim, Bill, and all recording producers and engineers do have greatly deepened after experiencing how detailed, painstaking, and thorough their process is. When Jim and Bill work their magic, they bring out the best from the musicians and recorded tracks, and they make my music shine.

From left to right, Cedille donors Bruce Oltman and Bonnie McGrath,
producer James Ginsburg, and engineer Bill Maylone.

4 Strategies to Boost Your Composing Skills

Over the years, I have developed a few strategies to aid my composing process. While these strategies might not work for everyone, I have found them to be particularly effective, and offer them in the hope that composers can adapt them to suit their own needs.

1. One Minute a Day Challenge 

One of the biggest hurdles in starting a new piece is staring at a blank score page. That page can be quite intimidating! What if the notes I scribble down aren’t good enough? How can I possibly fill up the entire page with amazing, earth-shattering music? Self-doubt and high expectations can be real buzzkills. So years ago, I decided that whenever I start a new piece, I would write one minute of music a day for seven days. It doesn’t have to be a great minute of music, or even a good minute, but it has to be one full minute. Giving myself permission to compose without judgment is an essential point to the strategy. While the first few days are typically challenging (with some truly terrible ideas littering the page), I eventually produce solid ideas that have real potential. I also get increasingly focused on how to creatively use the instruments. By the end of the week, I look over all of the sketches, choose the best ideas, and officially start the composing process for the new piece.

2. Create a Road Map

When I was in high school, I had an economics class in which the teacher proposed a problem: two people in two separate cars want to drive from California to New York. One person hops in his car and just starts driving, randomly selecting highways as he goes. The other first studies a map, lays out a plan, and then drives. Who would get to New York first? Now, this discussion took place in the mid-1980s, so we didn’t have access to the internet yet to the extent that we do nowadays, nor were commercial GPS devices available, and a mobile phone (if a person could afford one) was the size and shape of a brick. The point of this exercise is that the person who took the time to lay out a plan (probably using an AAA TripTik!) had the better odds of arriving in New York ahead of the other who elected to just randomly select a route. I feel the same is true with composing. How can a piece have direction if you don’t have a road map of its formal structure? Once I have a general concept of what I want a piece to be (fast, slow, lyrical, sweet, dramatic, etc.), then I draw a graph for the work. The graph can show many elements – how many sections the composition will have, what characteristics each section will contain, how will the music grow and release tension, and so on. My graph often evolves over time – I might want to add or delete a section or change some characteristics – but I keep the graph in sight as I compose to ensure I know where the piece is headed.

3. Part Artist, Part Scientist

One of my favorite teaching strategies in working with students is one that I have been employing since my own graduate days: we should consider ourselves as part artist and part scientist. Composers need a creative spark to get a piece started. But once they’re composing, what happens when they aren’t sure of the best way to shape a phrase, or how can they move past a roadblock? Composers can’t help but be subjective about their work. So I propose that we become objective in moments that we are indecisive or find that we’re stuck. For instance, when I get stuck, I back up to a few measures before the trouble spot and begin experimenting by rewriting the passage at least two more times, each time leading to a different musical outcome. Within an hour or so, I then have three or more possible options to consider. Not only does this process usually unearth a new way to proceed, but it can also supply additional musical material that I can use elsewhere in the piece. This strategy also serves to bring home the point that there’s no one exact path that a composition needs to follow. Instead, there are several potential paths, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. My job as a composer is to discover the path that best fits the musical material at that particular juncture in the piece.

4. Adding Buffer Zones to Deadlines

When I was in college, I had the habit of finishing a composition only a few weeks before it was to premiere. While this is not an unusual pattern for students in school, it doesn’t bode well in the real world. Professional musicians expect to receive their parts six to eight weeks prior to a concert; large ensembles need even more time than this. I made these longer deadline adjustments rather easily, but a new issue became apparent: if I was composing a piece right up to its due date, I ran the risk of having to compose so quickly that I didn’t have the proper amount of time to make the piece do something original. Or, worse yet, life events would unexpectedly intrude on my already-scarce composing time, leading me to have to write even faster than I’m comfortable doing. It took a few bad experiences for me to realize that unless I did something different, I ran the risk of turning out a long string of half-baked works. This isn’t what I wanted for my career, nor for my own musical development. So I instigated a two-month buffer zone rule on all pieces: if a work was due August 1^st, then I had to be done with it by June 1^st. This strategy has been immensely helpful. Sometimes I’ll have an unexpected event crop up in my life that takes away from the time I thought I’d have to compose; the buffer zone provides me with enough extra time to still do a good job composing the piece. Better yet, if I finish a piece two months early, then I can get a jump start on the next piece.

Ultimately, each composer needs to find strategies that best fit his or her own writing habits and schedule. Once you identify weaknesses in your composition process, explore various options to increase your productivity while giving you ample time to write exactly the piece you want.

How "Flight of Icarus" Became a Collaborative Project

Some pieces are very straightforward – they don’t have much of a backstory, nor do they easily lend themselves to collaborative experiences. Some, however, do. In 2012, I wrote a saxophone quartet named Flight of Icarus. From the beginning, I knew this would be a very unique piece. The piece is already taking on a life of its own, which I am greatly enjoying!

Origins

With the Capitol Quartet at the premiere.

Several factors played a role in the crafting of my piece Flight of Icarus. When David Stambler and the Capitol Quartet commissioned the piece, David told me they’d like a piece that’s really “out there.” That’s just the kind of thing a composer likes to hear – I can get really experimental! I started out by brainstorming a list of sounds that saxophones could make. Several ideas sprung to mind - air tones, pitch bends, flutter tonguing, multiphonics, and microtones. Then I asked myself, which sounds could be developed into more than just a passing effect? While creating this list, I kept thinking about one of the very first works I ever composed. It was a saxophone quartet called Soaring Eagle. While I remember only a few measures of the piece, the concept of soaring was still captivating to me; it seemed that air tones and flutter tonguing could lend themselves to the sound of beating wings, while pitch bends could emulate the call of birds. 

Also around this time, I set Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem Not They Who Soar for choir (click here to read the poem). The main motive of my choral setting contained two rising perfect 5ths, which I thought would sound just as glorious on saxophones as it did with singers. So I asked David if I could quote a section of the choir work in the saxophone piece (he was fine with it). 

Additionally, I’ve had a longtime interest in Greek mythology. The idea of soaring and the sound of beating wings could be put to great use in the tale of Deadalus, the architect and engineer, and his son Icarus. On the island of Crete, Daedalus had built a maze for King Minos. Minos imprisoned a Minotaur (a half-bull, half-human creature) within the maze and annually sacrificed Athenians to the creature. Angered by this, Deadlaus helped another king to successfully navigate the maze and kill the Minotaur. When Minos sent his army after Deadalus, he and his son Icarus affixed wings crafted of wax and feathers to their backs and took to the sky. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too low, so the waters would not weigh down the feathers, nor too high for the sun to melt the wax. Icarus, however, was so elated with the thrill of flying that he drew too close to the sun. The wax melted, and Icarus fell to his watery demise. Icarus’ ascension towards the sun became the first movement (titled Icarus Ascending). In addition to using air tones, flutter tonguing, and pitch bends in this movement, I also incorporated multiphonics to depict Icarus’ fall to the ocean. For the second movement (titled Deadalus Mourns), I employed microtones and pitch bends to illustrate Deadalus’ grief over the death of his son.

Because of the large amount of effects used in the piece, I needed far more interaction with the musicians than usual. In particular, Capitol Quartet member Christopher Creviston spent a lot of time playing effects over the phone for me, as well as sending me photos of his suggestions for how to notate sounds that I wanted. The Capitol Quartet premiered Flight of Icarus in March of 2013.

Expanding Icarus into a Multi-Media Collaboration

In the spring of 2014, Mark Engebretson of the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet contacted me and said they planned to program the piece later in the year. Mark asked if he could share the piece with a few other artists to see if there might be interest in turning the performance into a multi-media event. This sounded great to me, and soon after, filmmaker Michael Frierson and choreographer Jan Van Dyke (of the Van Dyke Dance Group) joined the collaboration. Jan brought two female dancers from her company in to Michael's studio at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to do some filming. I asked both artists for their thoughts on how they developed their component of the project:

From the left: filmmaker Michael Frierson, choreographer
Jan Van Dyke, and the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet

Michael Frierson:

The most interesting aspect of the Icarus story for me is actually his father Daedalus who was an engineer of sorts and seemed to have a knack for invention, including the Labyrinth where the Minotaur was kept and of course the wings he built to escape from Crete. The historical footage I included is from a WWII test of a rolling explosive device called the Panjandrum.  I had kept that footage in my mind since 1987 when I first saw it -- it's unforgettable footage that shows a piece of technology destroying itself. The footage seemed to mirror Daedalus' doomed experiment with wings:  they both seemed to carry the idea of a failed reliance on technology. Placing the dance elements against the footage was a choice of convenience -- a graduate student had built a large paper "room" in the television studio on campus for another project, and projecting the footage on that surface for the dancers to interact with seemed the simplest way to combine the two.

Jan Van Dyke: 

As the choreographer, I knew in advance that my work would be edited sharply, chopped up, timing changed, background altered, not necessarily shown with the music I had worked with.  As a result, I responded with movement that seemed to represent emotion -- hope, surprise, despair, waiting, tension, etc. including an effort to portray a relationship between the two dancers. Michael then worked with the material I provided, putting it to the music which was already set.  It was a real collaboration in one sense, since I did have a say in what Michael was doing, but the music was a given and my work did not relate to that in any linear way except in mood.

Michael created a video component for the first movement in which two female dancers and the Panjandrum are both presented onscreen (click here to view the video). For the second movement, Michael had a still image of the Panjandrum visible while the same two dancers now appeared onstage; they slowly worked their way from one side of the stage to the other. Jan focused on repetitive movements for the dancers; their movements ultimately climaxed in one dancer subjugates the other by pushing her down to the ground. I found Michael's and Jan's additions to be quite captivating, with each collaborator’s own interpretation of Icarus adding another layer of meaning to the original story. 

Screen shot from Michael Frierson's video for movement I. Icarus Ascending.
Click here to view the video.

As a composer, seeing one of my works reinterpreted through other artists' eyes is always an amazing and fulfilling experience. I look forward to seeing what new meanings future ensembles and collaborators add to the story of Icarus as more groups take up the piece!

Building Relationships at Cabrillo Festival

For two glorious weeks each August, many of the finest musicians from around the country and beyond gather in Santa Cruz, California to perform exclusively new music under the baton of Maestra Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Festival. Several composers are invited each year to have their orchestra works rigorously rehearsed and performed by this impressive collection of talent. This past summer, I was invited to participate in the second week of the festival for a performance of my work Thunderwalker. I found myself in great company, surrounded by my former teacher Michael Daugherty, my former student Clarice Assad (also a former student of Daugherty), German composer Detlev Glanert, and young composers T.J. Cole and Gabriella Smith. John Adams came as well on the evening of a performance of his new saxophone concerto, performed by Timothy McAllister. Violinist Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg also joined us; she performed works by Daugherty and Assad.

Cabrillo Festval 2015. From left to right, Detlev Glanert, me,
Michael Daugherty, T.J. Cole, Gabriella Smith, Marin Alsop,
and Clarice Assad. Photo by R.R. Jones.

One concept that repeatedly came to my mind throughout the week was the importance of relationships. Just about every aspect of the festival is informed and impacted by them. For instance, several members of the orchestra have annually played in the festival for up to ten or more years, some who have repeatedly stayed with the same host family. The festival cultivates relationships by opening almost all rehearsals to the public, curating pre-rehearsal talks and panel discussions with musicians and composers, holding a lunch for composers and audience members, and hosting a champagne and cake reception after the orchestra’s final concert in Santa Cruz. Many residents are very devoted in their attendance of all events, both free and ticketed, and frequently talked with the artists throughout the week.

I had a conversation with Executive Director Ellen Primack after the festival in which she shared a number of insights into Cabrillo’s philosophy. Ms. Primack emphasized that building long-term relationships with composers is an essential element in programming; the festival is helping composers evolve musically as well as to help promote their music through performance. A survey of the composers they’ve programmed since Maestra Alsop became Music Director in 1991 backs up Ms. Primack’s statement: Christopher Rouse has been programmed 18 times, Michael Daugherty 15 times, John Adams and John Corigliano each 13 times, as well as multiple performances of works by Aaron Kernis, Jennifer Higdon, Kevin Puts, and James MacMillan, among many others. Cabrillo is supporting the younger generation of composers too, with recent and upcoming commissions for Gabriela Smith and Anna Clyne, respectively.

A pre-rehearsal panel discussion about
mentorship involving Michael
Daugherty, Clarice Assad, and myself.
Photo by R.R. Jones.

Ms. Primack also pointed out how vital Cabrillo’s relationship is with the Santa Cruz community. The host families are essential for the festival to exist, as are having members of the Santa Cruz community invested and personally engaged in the festival’s activities. Santa Cruz is, after all, a beautiful seaside town, with the festival occurring in peak tourist season. Ms. Primack noted that the festival has cultivated an educated audience who want to develop their critical listening skills and feel connected to Alsop and the festival participants. The range of experiences—from the up-close-and-personal hosting of musicians and artists, to the behind-the-scenes open rehearsals where they can witness music be sculpted and see the musicians they host onstage, to the final performances—provide Santa Cruz residents with a strong sense of involvement and ownership that is invaluable and enriches both the festival and community.

I had a fabulous week at Cabrillo. Afterward, while reflecting upon my experiences at the festival, I realized that these same types of relationships are key to a composer’s career. Winning awards gives you a temporary boost; commissions help to pay your bills. But to have a longstanding career, you need to meet people, get to know them, swap stories over a good meal, go to the movies, hang out at coffee shops, play music together, and brainstorm ways to collaborate on new projects. Marin Alsop, Ellen Primack, and their dedicated team have worked hard to engage their audience and to build loyalty so that not only will audiences return summer after summer, but will also host families, spread word of the festival to others, and financially support its operations. Composers can learn plenty by observing all aspects of Cabrillo and applying as much as they can to how they run their careers.

With the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra and Maestra Alsop after the performance 
of my Thunderwalker. Photo by R.R. Jones.