Sunday, December 29, 2013

Happy New Year!

As 2013 draws to a close, I'm looking forward and back.  What happened this year?  What didn't?  What's in the works for next year?

For one thing, 2013 was the year I started this blog.  There are a lot of things I have to share that simply don't fit in a tiny FaceBook post.  That's as true now as it ever was.  One of my goals for next year will be to pick a better title; if you search "About Music" on Blogspot, you'll find a large number of blogs with similar titles.  I'll be looking for something a bit more poetic and descriptive, and will welcome suggestions.

My inaugural video went up on YouTube this year.  Hopefully there will be more, and better, to follow.

2013 was also the year of Moving Seven Ways, a set of seven short pieces for viola and claves.  They stay in first position throughout, which makes them good for intermediate students.  The viola part of one of them is entirely col legno, which will be challenging for those who haven't yet explored that technique extensively.

The number of my piano pieces inspired by poetry increased in 2013, with "Gəlir", a response to a poem by Nigar Rafibeyli.  There will be more to come; I discovered many fine poets in 2013, both from Azerbaijan and other places, and several of those poems are prompting musical responses.

Scenes from a Fantasy Novel is not based on poetry, but it's a set of ten short pieces with titles inspired by fantasy-novel kinds of scenes.  Still some editing to be done, but basically ready to intrigue and delight.

Piano four hands is a genre I started exploring in 2013.  Most of the pieces I've produced so far have been pretty lightweight: a chorale prelude, and a set of variations on "The Spanish Lady's Love", to name two, but more substantial fare will likely follow.

My biggest disappointment of 2013 was not finishing the string quartet.  It's getting closer, but there's still work to be done.

I did get a short piece for saxophone quartet finished, this one a chorale prelude on "Nun danket alle Gott".  My avid saxophonist uncle finally has something of mine he can play with his friends!  This was extremely long overdue, and it's great to have it done.  More saxophone quartet music is planned, in one form or another.


Apart from composition, 2013 was the year of Audacity.  I've been using it for some time for small tasks such as converting between file formats, but this year I started digging in and actually moving things around.  I've been wanting to produce some CD's for awhile, and this is a substantial step in that direction.

Which brings me to next year.  On Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at the Bloomingdale School in Manhattan, 7:00 PM, a concert of my work will feature cellist Caroline Stinson, saxophonist Javier Oviedo, and me.  This is a concert of unaccompanied solo pieces, including Strength and Beauty, inspired by portraits by Li Ming Shun, for unaccompanied cello, Sonata No. 1 for unaccompanied tenor saxophone, and piano pieces inspired by the poetry of Andrew Kreider.

In mid-June, I'll perform in a concert in Goshen, Indiana, but right now don't have much information about what will be on the program.  It's likely it will include Scenes from a Fantasy Novel, maybe some of the Goldberg Variations, and perhaps some of the pieces being worked on for the CD mentioned below.  But I'd also like to do some things with musicians from Goshen, and plans for those are still up in the air.

The home-recording work is leading toward compilation of a CD, likely to include keyboard music of Frescobaldi, Froberger, and J.S. Bach; more news as it happens.

In terms of composition, it's long past time for the string quartet to be finished, but of course these things don't always happen on cue.  More saxophone quartet music, and more music for piano four hands are in the works, with plans also for some wind ensemble music and a string orchestra piece for a youth orchestra in Washington Heights.

My musician friends are certainly laughing at this point, because they know too well how easy it is to decide you want to do something ... and how difficult it is to actually get it done!

Good wishes to all for a safe, happy, and healthy New Year!


Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Wikimedia Commons

One of my goals with this blog is to highlight underutilized resources that could be of benefit to musicians.  Today I'd like to write about a companion project of Wikipedia, and some opportunities for the right people to make a big difference ... maybe.

Wikimedia Commons is a huge collection of digital media (pictures, sound files, video, etc.) that are available for anyone to use, remix, and so on.  This doesn't mean there are no restrictions on using them, but the restrictions are considerably fewer than customary in this age of increasing digital rights management.  Most of the content is in the form of pictures, which is what is inspiring my post this morning.

One obvious thing this means for people looking for posters, CD booklet art, and so on, is a huge source of possibilities.  The data included with each file includes the specific restrictions that may apply to it; often this consists simply of crediting the artist/contributor, and releasing the copies/improvements under the same terms.  It's not clear to me whether, if you use a photo licensed as CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons, with attribution, share-alike) on the cover of your CD, you would have to release the entire booklet, the whole CD, or just the cover photo (the part containing the picture you used, with any modifications you made to it) under CC-BY-SA.  More information on Creative Commons licenses can be found here.  Note that I'm not a lawyer; if you want legal advice on the details of re-using other people's work, please get an appropriate professional to advise you.

Another intriguing possibility for musicians is contributing work.  The gallery for J.S. Bach contains recordings of a number of his works, but there are many gaps in the list.  Contributing a recording or two could be a way to market yourself to an audience that might not otherwise find you.  If you were the sole contributor, say, of recordings for most of the WTC Book II, you might gain some advantage from that.  Your user page can list your contributions, or whatever else it might be important for people to know; if you contribute a number of files, a category might be created for them.  I'm a bit wary, however.

For one thing, the point of Wikimedia Commons is educational, not promotional.  The kind of video you might want to release as an artist to showcase your abilities is not necessarily the kind of video you would make for educational purposes.  This is a bit of a judgment call, of course; there's a sense in which it's instructive to watch any performer in action.

Another consideration is cost.  If you are making recordings in your own home, using your own (relatively inexpensive) equipment, it may not matter so much to you whether you give away the results.  If you are recording in a studio at a cost of thousands of dollars, you'll want to think carefully about your return on anything you release.  If you decide to make a sample track available as a free download from your web site or through another online service, you would could remove it at any time.  You could set whatever restrictions you wanted on other people's re-use of your recording.

Not so Wikimedia Commons.  Once you've released something there, it's there for good.  If someone decides to use it in a way you detest, tough.  The recording you might release at the beginning of your career will remain there to haunt you at the pinnacle of your success.

Another possibility for a welcome contribution would be demonstrations of the capabilities of an instrument.  Someone who wants to hear what a violin sounds like (for example) can get a good basic idea from files like these, and there's less of a sense that you're giving away something of direct commercial value.  Demonstration videos showing a particular technique are another opportunity.  So are pictures showing the correct way to hold an instrument.

If you are a music educator, at any level, Wikimedia Commons is the place for you.  If you need a diagram showing the relationship of the keys on a keyboard to notes on a staff, find one here.
This is also a great place to contribute material you've developed that someone else might be able to use.  Because this material is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, your contribution will help teach people around the world.

If you simply want to watch and listen, there are things like these.

Happy holidays, regardless which ones you happen to celebrate!