Studio Techniques Master's submissions

So earlier today I posted my main Composition assignment for the semester; here's what I ended up doing for my Studio Techniques portfolio. First up, a piece of generative music for classical guitar and electronics:

Next I had to record two guitar performances, warts 'n' all, and edit them as naturalistically as possible. These are two pieces I've been playing for a long time now: Roland Dyen's "Lettre Mi-longue" and Vincent Lindsey Clark's "Tango Esta Noche".

The last piece is perhaps my favourite, a piece for strings and electronics based on a single bar of Takemistu's string quartet "Landscape 1".

I did also do a collaboraton with my son Frank, but as he's now got a distribution deal, I'm waiting for label clearance to put it up here (and, yes, that does feel like a very strange thing to be writing!)

Finally, here's my Commentary on the whole process, with some emphasis on the learning curve (or cliff face) I've faced with Ableton Live over the last few months.

Simon Hopkins · Eating The Medical Earth

 

Simon Hopkins · Tango Esta Noche

Guitar Quartet No 1

My main composition assignment for this semester's Master's course was a piece for small ensemble. Somewhat inevitably I chose to write for classical guitar quartet. The piece is in three movements: a limited indeterminacy/partly improvised opening based on Messiaen's harmonic approach; a second, more, er, accessible movement that quotes the Chinese folk song "The Moon Mirrored in the Pool" (and that heavily influenced by Leo Brouwer); and a final short, somewhat elusive coda. I'd love to rehearse and play the piece at some point with the Brighton Guitar Quartet, but for now I've had to record all the parts myself (which was arguably the hardest part of the whole process!)

Here's a score video:

Here it is as just audio:

simonphopkins · Guitar Quartet No1

Here's the score itself.

And here's the commentary.

Feedback very welcome!

Master's Update

Yep, my last update was in mid-Nov, so the "regularly blogging" my progress on the Music Master's programme at Surrey didn't exactly pan out. To be really honest, I knew the workload was going to be full-on, especially on top of, well,  running a company, but it's really been something else...

Anyway, I've briefly come up for air after an especially brutal few weeks, putting together a portfolio of work for the end of Semester 1. Once I've got the marked work back, I'll be posting it here. But in the meantime, here are the headlines on what I had to get done.

Composition

I composed, fully scored and recorded all the parts on an 8 or 9-minute classical guitar quartet, which I hope is something the Brighton Classical Guitar Quartet can perform live at some point this year. Plus a 2k word commentary, of course. This was by some margin the most challenging of all the recent work - indeed, one of the most challenging things I've ever undertaken musically, but it feels like where my future lies, in terms of research and my own practice. As I said in my commentary, what was especially gratifying was beginning to explore a compositional lineage from Messiaen through Takemitsu to Brouwer. 

Oh, and it involved turning the living room into a makeshift studio, of course.

Studio Techniques

I've pointed out before, that while I thought this would be the most straightforward of the modules, in many ways the toughest, principally as the Ableton Live learning curve has been so steep. That said, I think I'm pretty much a convert, despite still shaking off some of the last vestiges of the Logic paradigm. I turned in 4 pieces of music (accompanied by the de rigeur commentary, of course):

• The Water Knife - a collaboration with my son Frank, a Broadway Project-inspired piece built out of Boom Logistics samples and featuring a fine soprano sax solo by David Kaplowitz
• Eating the Medical Earth - A piece of "limited indeterminacy" composition, for double string quartet and electronics, based on a single bar from Takemitsu's 1961 Landscape 1.
• Antiphonal responses/In the congregation of leaves - a piece of "generative" composition for classical guitar and electronics.
• Two Classical Guitar Pieces - an exercise in precise and (I hope) seamless editing, "fixing up" my own recording of pieces by Roland Dyens and Vincent Lindsay Clarke. Here's one from the same "session" that I left out of the final submission:

Research Techniques for Practitioners

The last substantial piece of work was a 2k word paper looking at the issues and challenges around composing contemporary music for "serious amateurs". Or at least it started that way. In the event, it became more of a historical survey with some suggestions for further research around the topic. I'm especially grateful to Vincent Lindsay Clarke for taking some time out to be interviewed for the research.

I'm now a week or so out from a short recital as part of my Performance module; I'll be rolling out Reginald Smith Brindle and Piazzolla, and will report back on how that goes. 

And before I sign off... as regular readers will know, I've been tracking my listening across 2021 in a series of monthly Spotify playlists. Right then, here's the >60 hour aggregated version, capturing the whole year. Shuffle recommended!

Some generative music exercises

The "Studio Techniques" module of my Master's course at Surrey has been the most challenging so far, not least as the Ableton Live learning curve has been more like a cliff face. Oh, that and the fact that the course leader, Milton Mermikides chucks assignments at us at a fairly ferocious pace. Guess that's what I signed up for...

This Monday's lecture was all about generative music and was typically full-on... and diverse in its references. Out of the back of it, we had to recreate extracts Eno's Discreet Music and Music For Airports, and Terry Riley's In C. You can hear my attempts over on my Surrey Sketches Soundcloud playlist. 

I also made three new brief pieces of my own, all using Ableton's "follow" function to generate random music from pre-ordained material. Here goes...

"Tinted Glass" is based on some elements from an electric guitar quartet I've been working on for a while, an exercise in tintinnabulation, although a lightyear from Pärt harmonically or in general intent:

Anyway, I took cells from this, wrote them "by hand" as midi in AL and assigned them to some of the programme's electric guitar presets, which are a bit hokey on their own but kinda worked here, with a little bit of delay. Then used the follow function to randomise playback. It's all come out a bit more John Carpenter than I'd expected, but that works for me... 

Next up, I took the "distended" Bach chorale guitar part from my recent, er, sound art piece "Maraṇasati", chunked it up, transcribed to piano and again randomised using "follow". Oh, and played "live" with AL's rather lovely hybrid reverb while recording. I think it kinda works:

Finally... "Iloren" uses the piano parts from a brief dissonance contour sketch I did earlier in the semester, a composition class assignment. Again, I used the follow function in AL to generate the music, and did a fair bit of work with 'verb settings. The final master has brought the noise floor up a bit too much, although I do like the inadvertent tape hiss effect. I am a child of the 70s, after all. 

simonphopkins · Iloren

Maraṇasati" - a brief, if challenging exercise in musical form

So, first thing to say is that I'm going to stop apologising for how infrequent these updates from my studies at Surrey are. Turns out that doing a full time Masters on top of, you now, running a business, is a bit full on, and the meta-commentary stuff has become a secondary priority. Who knew?

Anyway, after three fantastic lectures on rhythm and harmony from Milton Mermikides as part of the composition module (many of my responses are available over on Soundcloud), we turned to the issue of form in a series of lectures from Cameron Graham which took in everything from Cassandra Miller to Kanye West. And all at a pretty deep level, I have to say. 

The challenge from these three lectures was to create a brief sketch responding to Cameron's ideas around form and to make a piece that took us well outside our comfort zone. So here's my response, a small sketch called "Maraṇasati". Here's the score:

(PDF here).

And the audio:

simonphopkins · Maraṇasati

And here's the presentation to go with it.

Maranasati presentation from simonphopkins

 

Finally, here are my notes with the submission, which might make some sense of it all:

Concept

• The piece is meant to respond to the three areas of form covered by Cameron.
• I consciously worked in ways I don't normally (I'll cover this more on Tuesday).
• The sketch is intended to be a brief audio horror story, a mash-up of an Emily Dickinson poem, a Bach chorale, and a song by the Floridian metal band Death.
• The spoken word poem gives the piece its form; the Bach has been reformed/distended (see below); riffs from the metal song have been variously "blurred" and backgrounded; occasional "spikes" of the original metal song violently break through the mix (you might want to listen back fairly quietly, as these "spikes" are pretty loud!)

Process

• Having come up with the concept - such as it is - I sketched the thing out by hand as a semi-graphic score.
• I went through the chorale a crotchet beat at a time, selecting which notes to use - and which register - with the help of an online random number generator.
• I then transcribed all the parts into Sibelius - with a lot of help from Milton. This was undoubtedly the longest part of the process.
• I finally assembled the whole thing in Logic. The guitar part was recorded in a single take and is unedited. The riff "blurs" were the result of, er, mucking around with random FX.
• As far as possible, I tinkered with as little as possible and stuck strictly to the original score.

Reflection

• It was a real challenge not to tinker and finesse.
• It's just not as creepy and horror-like as I'd intended!
• The guitar part was rushed and slightly lets it down.
• Finally, I literally have no idea whether the outcome is even vaguely successful, but doing it has been fun!

More soon, I promise!

(Many thanks to the excellent Fran Guy for the voice recording.)

"She Erases a Constellation" for flute and classical guitar

Yes, I know, the whole reporting-from-my-studies-at-Surrey thing isn't going so well, but I hope this post will show that I've been a tad busy. Today was the deadline for my first full assignment, a brief but complete composition for a small ensemble. I opted for a duo for flute and classical guitar:

There are eight pages of this stuff, so if you want to see the whole thing, here's a PDF of the score. 

I didn't get a chance to record the guitar part (I'm not even sure I could play it!), so the final audio is in midi. Not as good as I'd like it, of course, but it gives a fair impression of what the piece is meant to sound like. (The guitar midi had to be edited fairly painstakingly to get the over-ringing chordal effects where necessary.) Anyway, for what it's worth, here it is:

 

Finally, here's the commentary I had to submit with the piece, of interest to music theory nerds only!

 

“She Erases a Constellation[1]” for flute and guitar: a brief commentary

Simon Hopkins, October 2021

Process

Following Reginald Smith Brindle’s observations about the difficulty of starting with a blank page[2], I started with a simple sketch of the piece’s outline:

I then outlined the piece purely rhythmically, initially working with cells such as this:

The entirety of the agitato A section and much of the Tranquillo B section were written as rhythms only, according to the narrative structure outlined below. Different harmonic and melodic approaches were ascribed to “zones” of the piece. The melodic lines and chords were then written into this framework. I worked on paper with the first full draft, adding dynamics, expression and correcting errors in the scoring:

The scoring was finalised in Sibelius and the audio was rendered (in midi) in Logic X.

Structure/narrative

 The overarching narrative took its cue from the first movement of Leo Brouwer’s “El Decameron Negro”[3], especially in its juxtaposition of agitated and reflective passages. Essentially ABA in structure, the piece’s sections respectively move from rhythmic and harmonic dissonance towards a more congruent endpoint.

Analysis: rhythm[4]

 The piece employs rhythmic dissonance throughout. The opening (bb 1-11)[5] and duet in the Tranquillo (bb46-69) use radically different rhythmic groupings in the parts to render them apparently independent, somewhat influenced by Morton Feldman[6]. The guitar solo (bb70-92) uses guitaristic Euclidean rhythms in the style of John McLaughlin[7] and Roland Dyens[8]. The ostinato groupings in bb22-33 are obliquely inspired by the math-metal of Meshuggah[9] and Tool[10].

Analysis: harmony & melody

The harmony draws on a range of approaches The opening (bb1-10) is based on two whole-tone scales, and is polymodal from b9. The chords in bb11-17 are Lydian AITs based on the notes of the first AIT. The approach is modal in many places (eg. Lydian dominant and altered scale in bb18-30; Dorian #4 in bb54-67; Aeolian, Dorian and Lydian in bb68-90). Trichords are deployed extensively (eg. bb16-18 and bb54-67).

The melodies were mostly drawn instinctively from the harmony. The melody in bb 46-57 is based on a palindromic dissonance contour (IC: 16234543261); this is foreshadowed in the flute solo. The flute part in the recapitulation is in large part melodically inverted from its initial appearance.

Notation

I drew on Eliane Gould’s Behind Bars (2011)[11] for notation guidance. The guitar part is more closely annotated (see below); RH fingerings and string directions are given where necessary to avoid ambiguity but are indicative only[12].

Critical reflection

I’m broadly happy that the narrative objectives of the piece and the intended tension between dissonance and consonance (generically speaking) have been achieved. I would love to have worked with a flautist to explore the flute more idiomatically, and of course to have had the time to record the guitar parts properly[13]. Overall, I may have employed too many of the approaches discussed in the course so far, and in retrospect might have given a little more breathing space to fewer.

[1] The title is a line from the poem “Lore” by Kate Wakeling. There is no programmatic relationship between the poem and the music, although there is perhaps some relationship in the ambiguous tone: “Her gaze is thunder then a famine/her voice a hundred golden coins”.

[2] “Another important factor must be borne in mind when we begin a piece: too much detail at that stage can be a handicap.” Reginald Smith Brindle: Musical Composition (1986), p5

[3] See The Music Salon Blog (2012): http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2012/12/townsend-el-decameron-negro-i-el-arpa.html

[4] For a full breakdown of the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic approaches, see Appendix A: Annotated Score

[5] Observations about the opening A section apply to the recapitulation.

[6] See Samuel Andreyev: “Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion: Analysis” (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emeDjNSxsCs

[7] eg. Mahavishnu Orchestra: “Faith” (1975) https://open.spotify.com/track/3jobR8lLBgq4VZiqRcZhae?si=50c396dc7bd2405c

[8] eg. “Lettre mi-longue” bb33-35 and “Lettre à soi-même” bb6-14 (2001)

[9] See Jonathan Pieslak, "Re-casting Metal: Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Meshuggah"(2007) https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mts.2007.29.2.219?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

[10] See Rick Beato: "What Makes This Song Great? Ep.15 TOOL" (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScRG40_7zb0

[11] For flute: pp253-260; for guitar: pp373-389

[12] “My fingerings are offered only as suggestions throughout, but students are urged to consider the rationale behind them before throwing them out!” Gerald Garcia, introduction to “25 Etudes Esquisses” (1995)

[13] That being said, the midi part was edited painstakingly to emulate over-ringing chord voicings.

simonphopkins · She Erases A Constellation (midi Rendering)

Week one MMus roundup

I half predicted that my regular updates from my Sussex studies might not be all that regular. And so it came to pass. In my defence, last week was a little full on on many fronts, including the weekend workshop at Benslow.

Anyway, just a quick update. Monday’s Studio Techniques lecture was followed on Tuesday with two classes from this semester’s other main modules (performance aside): Composition and Research Training for Practitioners.

The latter lecture was given by composer Tom Armstrong and was effectively an introduction to the whole concept of creative practice as a form of research. We covered a bunch of high level concepts, including tacit knowledge, Donald Schön’s definition of practice, Robin Nelson’s work on knowledge and research, material thinking and practice as an instrument of research.

The first few weeks of composition will be taken by Milton Mermikides, and the initial lecture was all about rhythm, from overarching concepts like rhythmic dissonance through to specific approaches like the tresillo (and its double) and Euclidean rhythms. The works referenced touched on Hindemith and Meshuggah (yes, Meshuggah!) and all points in between.

In the meantime, I’ve already had some assignments. I thought I might keep track of some of my sketches here, so here goes. (Remember, for a while, these will be brief sketches; and the audio for the composition work will be all in Logic or Live for the moment, so a little bit hokey… )

This is an experiment with the 332 tresillo pattern, and is actually a reworking of a tune I wrote for Steve Morgan and I to play in Undercurrent. If I have the chance, I’ll rework the whole piece. 

simonphopkins · A Belief In False Futures, Tresillo Version (excerpt)

And this is a brief sketch using a constantly changing Euclidean odd metre.

 

simonphopkins · Euclidean Rhythm Sketch - Rough Midi Mix

Note the use of flute and viola in these sketches: I’m trying to work out how to write for a range of instruments I hope to use in this semester’s final assignment.

In the meantime, I’ve recreated the first 48 bars of Reich’s “Clapping Music” in Logic, writing in the midi directly as opposed to my usual method of playing parts in and then editing them.

simonphopkins · Sketch: Clapping Recreation (Excerpt)

I then took this as a framework as the start of a piece for two electric pianos. This piece may have legs; we’ll see. 

simonphopkins · Sketch: Clapping Pianos

Finally, here’s my first stab at using Ableton Live, a recreation, from memory, of the Floyd’s “On the Run”. I can see that Live is going to be a much faster and more improvisational tool than Logic, but Christ, it’s going to be a steep learning curve. Thanks to my son Frank for taking a couple of hours out to get me up and running.

simonphopkins · OTR Misremembered (bounce)

 

A welcome return to Gerald Garcia's guitar ensemble weekend

As I wrote in the summer, the last 18 months’ drought of opportunities to play music with others ended in a deluge from July onwards (to extend the shonky metaphor breaking point): Graham Devine’s Greenwich Guitar Festival, a somewhat truncated West Dean summer guitar festival led by Andrew Gough and Vincent Lindsey Clark, plus two Bach workshops organised by Stephen Gordon. Bringing up the rear was a fantastic weekend of ensemble work under the tutelage of the brilliant guitarist, composer and polymath Gerald Garcia.

The residential weekend was hosted by Benslow Music in Hitchin, and this was my second time in attendance. The format remained essentially the same. Gerald led the guitar group through four pieces in preparation for a final performance on Sunday lunchtime. Meanwhile, a group of singers (of various genres) worked on pieces for the same concert.

The guitar ensemble set comprised Gerald’s own arrangements of Bach’s “ Widerstehe doch der Sunde", the adagio from Mozart’s “ Serenade for 13 Winds" (K361) and a Vivaldi  concerto in Em (RV281), plus a lovely contemporary piece by the Australian composer Jane Darcey, “Pelicans in Flight”. Massive props, as the kids might once have said, to the Vivaldi’s soloists: Jay Huff, Greg Gomberg and Alison Bendy. I was very happy to be round the other end of the circle, mostly playing either bass or continuo parts. 

As ever, Gerald was encouraging and, er, exacting, and the results were impressive. The journey we made from our first rather stumbling attempts at the pieces on Friday and the final performance today was quite something.

Saturday night saw an informal concerts for singers and guitarists alike. I rolled out my party piece, Reginald Smith Brindle’s "El Polifemo De Oro" and played Vincent Lindsey Clark’s duet “Paraguaya” with Shaun Bullard, a fine guitarist with whom I’ve become good mates over the course of this summer’s guitar events. 

Many thanks to Gerald for all the time he’d clearly put into this, to Greg for organising, and to all the other musicians for their company. For the sake of my marriage, business and sanity I’m going to have to hang up my ensemble boots for some time, while I crack on with my studies at Surrey. But I’m sure I’ll be back.

Addendum. Gerald has asked me to post some of the snaps he took over the weekend...

Report from my MMus programme: Day 1

OK, let's be honest, as things heat up, I'm unlikely to keep up a day-by-day, blow-by-bow account of my studies at Surrey, but I might as well start off as though I'm going to. Just one class today - Milton Mermikides' Studio Techniques - and if I had any illusions about not being too, er, deep-ended, they were long gone after this first two hours. This should have been sure ground for me, but wow...

The session started off gently enough, with a half hour, millennium-and-a-bit overview of musical sequencing that took in, among other things: the 9th century Persian Book of Ingenious Devices, the Telharmonium, orchestrions, Conlon Nancarrow's player piano works, Daphne Oram, Raymond Scott, Stevie Wonder's work with TONTO, and the development of MIDI in the late 70s by Ikutaro Kakehashi  and Dave Smith. So far so good. Any history of music that takes in Nancarrow's analog cyborg blues and Stevie's "Maybe Your Baby" is good by me.

And then the hard work started, as we were plunged into a hands-on session with Ableton Live. This is a whole new world to me, and Live feels paradigmatically completely different to Logic, in which I feel a relative dab hand. And when I say "hands on" I mean it. We got straight into recreating Pink Floyd's "On the Run" and the opening bars of Steve Reich's "Clapping Music". Christ. "Hanging in there" barely does it justice. I now have a week to try and get up to speed and put something together based on these case studies. I guess that's what I signed up for.

More soon!

Another Bach ensemble workshop with Stephen Gordon

I was back in Lewes this weekend for the second of this summer's Bach workshops organised by the estimable Stephen Gordon. 

This time out we were working on the second Brandenburg Concerto. Steve has transposed the piece from F to G and ingeniously transcribed the solo parts for a range of non-standard classical guitars. The trumpet part was played on a soprano guitar (tuned one octave above standard) by Jay Huff; the flute part was taken by Shaun Bullard on a Quint (tuned one fifth above standard); the oboe part was played on a Requinto (tuned a fourth above standard) by Vince Smith. I played the violin solo part on a standard guitar (thank God). The ripieno was played on four standard guitars and Steve played the continuo part on a contrabass guitar.

Incidentally, the specialist instruments were made by the Coventry luthier Rik Middleton and sounded fantastic.

Given that we had just one day of rehearsal to get this all together, it came together pretty well, with the first and second movements sounding especially strong. If nothing else, it renewed my admiration for orchestral players who do this day in day out, which must take Herculean physical and mental stamina.

And as though that wasn't enough to get through, we took on Steve's lovely arrangement of Brahms' Theme & Variations from his Bb String Sextet. It was very tricky in parts (demi-semi quavers, indeed), but had a quite ravishing closing section.

Thanks to all the players for making it such an enjoyable day (I'm frankly in awe of what the soloists can do) and especially to Steve for all the hard work he must put into these days, and for his great musical insight. 

Right, off to Benslow Music in Hitchin next weekend for a couple of days' ensemble work with Gerald Garcia, and in the meantime, it's back to school for the first time in 27 years this week!