Talking. About music.
0I hate public speaking.
This is nothing new to anyone who has known me for more than three minutes, and I’ve certainly gotten better at it since I’ve been in Oklahoma, but I still avoid it every chance I get. I’m usually fairly quiet when I’m around new people, and I don’t usually say much in class (I maintain that I got through my thesis defense because the committee was surprised that I actually spoke).
But one of the things that composers have to do is talk. Especially about their music. Especially to other people. Not that we’re good at it. But it still falls into the category of things we have to do.
And so, with 2012 being a year where I’m focusing on personal growth, I decided to take an open slot at this month’s Oklahoma Composer’s Association Norman Salon concert (OCANS?). The OCA salon concerts are a casual performance and Q&A session with the composer, and a good time is usually had by all. So I took Creatures from the Black Bassoon and played it for a group of composers and musicians and music lovers, fielded questions and comments about the piece, and then went out for milkshakes.
And it was awesome.
It’s interesting how an audience can pick out things that you haven’t noticed, or hadn’t intended. Of course, I’m new to all manner of electronic music, so hearing the audience reaction (and mine) was enlightening. It was fun. I want to do it again.
There’s something empowering about talking about one’s own music. Like, I can’t be contradicted. No one can tell me “You weren’t thinking about the complex relation between polyharmonic tetrachords, you were thinking about Batman.” I ran into the same thing when I conducted Peter and the Wolf at Drury. “I have an orchestra. AND I’M UNSTOPPABLE.”
So yeah. I’d like to do it again.
And besides, I could really go for another milkshake.
Prepared piano/Unprepared pianist
0As I was driving through the southern parts of Missouri and Kansas over break, thinking about everything I wanted to write this semester, I kept coming up with ideas for prepared piano (which was kind of unfortunate, since I was really needing to think of ideas for solo clarinet, but more on that later). Amongst all the ridiculous ideas (of which I have many), I came back to a phrase I’ve wanted to use as a title for a while, which involves the juxtaposed ideas of prepared piano and unprepared pianist. The immediate problem with that idea is that no one wants to hear an unprepared pianist on unprepared piano so it would stand to reason that no one would want to hear the same unpreparation on a prepared instrument. During the drive, I figured out how to make the piece work.
Pianists are saved from many of the pitfalls of wind instruments. Reed issues, wrong partials, everything having to do with intonation, stuff like that are not really problems (Of course, pianists have their own issues, like having to keep track of ~10 notes instead of 1, moving their instruments, all the mechanical voodoo that makes hammers strike keys, etc). But usually, assuming your piano is in tune, and is operating normally, if you hit an E-flat, something resembling all other piano E-flats come out.
Usually.
And that’s where our “Unprepared Pianist” part comes in. No one sits down at a piano to play a well-known piece, and expect anything other than piano noises to come out. And so, this piece I’m working on for prepared piano, is part prepared piano, part unprepared (or unexpectant) pianist, part Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor, part theatre, and part ridiculous.
Maybe next week I’ll go into the process of writing it, but here’s how it is right now, without the theatrics added. In fact, this is merely Jennifer Tripi playing the aforementioned nocturne on a prepared piano.
Nocturne for Prepared Piano and Unprepared Pianist by kylevanderburg
And for kicks and giggles, here’s Tripi playing Paradisi’s Toccata in A on the same piano.
Workspace Upgrades
0In the last installment of my adventures in workspaces, we were introduced to the new desk. Of course, all those pictures were taken in Poplar Bluff (where the post was written), and since then I’ve actually moved the desk to Norman (with a detour to Kansas to visit Amanda). But when we last saw the desk, it was…intact. Complete. When it arrived in Norman, it looked like this:
Or, perhaps to better see how it’s folded,
So after getting the desk out of the car, getting it up the stairs to the apartment, and getting the office rearranged how I think I’ll like it (mostly with the help of Steven Eiler), I have a new workspace. So here it is.
The new desk gives me a larger working area (which will be great when I have to move everything off of it so I can use oversized staff paper), and moving the black bookcase closer to the desk makes paperwork far easier. There’s not much new to say about the speakers and monitor, other than they work. Of course, with the new desk where the old desk used to sit, I had to move the old desk across the room. As it’s L-shaped, there aren’t a lot of great places to put such a desk. I played around with the idea of putting it next to the new desk and having an oversized work area, but I instead opted to put it across the room, allowing me to have two separate work areas.
Of course, this necessitated the moving of the keyboards to where the bookcase was, which meant the bookcase had to go where the black bookcase was, which meant the black bookcase had to go next to the L-desk. The Lesk, if you will. The Lesk also gives me room to put the laptop and tablet so they’re out of my way while working on the desktop.
And that’s the new setup. What do you think?
A rock I am.
0Friend and fellow ridiculous composer Steven Eiler has embarked on a project to learn and record a different song each week, so when he asked me to join him this week, how could I refuse? I grabbed the closest piece of sheet music to my desk (which so happened to be Simon and Garfunkel’s I am a Rock, for reasons I won’t explain), a bass, and a banjo, and headed over to Château Eiler for some extended recording. This is what emerged:
Deskbuilding!
0I’ve written/posted pictures about my workspace before (most recently, here), but through this semester I’ve been thinking about increasing my desk space. This all started when I was working on the Thesis, and had to move my dining room table into the office to handle the oversized staff paper. My current L-shaped desk is fine, but I’ve been thinking that I’d really like to have a dedicated computer desk. Like a writing desk. A mission-style writing desk. Since I’ll be moving around for a while until I’m settled, something portable. How about something that folds? A folding, mission-style writing desk. That’s cheap.
No one makes that desk. So in the great Vanderburgian tradition, I decided to design it myself. Luckily, while I was back home for Christmas, dad and I were able to build it. Here’s how that adventure went. It all started with a basic plan.
Basically, the desk is built in panels. The back panel, about four feet in length, is attached to the two side panels, which are about two feet in length. These side panels are hinged to the back, and fold in to save space while traveling. The skinny part of the top is attached to that back panel, and the dark line across the desktop is a piano hinge that allows the top to be folded down.
The basic measurements I decided on for the desk are 30” tall, 4.5’ wide, and 2.5’ deep. So how does the building process begin? With a sheet of mahogany plywood.
I’m going to skip some of the pictures, because cutting boards isn’t all that exciting, but they’re all over on in a flickr set. We decided to build the panels out of 1×6 hard rock maple, which dad had stored in the old car shop (that’s right, the Vanderburg family compound includes a woodworking shop, an upholstery shop, an automotive shop, and a classic car shop, where mine and dad’s mustangs spend their time). For some reason, our collection of maple was in the classic car shop. Here’s one of the side panels, disassembled, with the slats cut.
And here’s a picture of the slats glued to the top and bottom boards. We used dowels for these. Guess who got to drill all the holes for the dowels?
And here’s what it looks like with the sides glued on. We used a biscuit joiner for the joints here. Fun tip: If you don’t hold onto a board properly when using a biscuit joiner, it is within the realm of possibility that the board will fly across the shop. Not that this…actually…happened…more than once.
Multiply this by two, and you have your sides. The back, on the other hand, requires a bit more wood, but overall is the same. We decided on 10 slats in this one instead of 5. Here’s some wood:
And here’s what it looks like all clamped together and waiting to dry.
We tried several different colors of stain (on scrap wood), because someone wanted them to match his dining room chairs, without knowing what stain we used on those chairs. We ended up mixing a color that’s close enough. Here’s a picture of the three panels, stained (the third panel is hiding behind the rightmost slat on the back. They’re standing on end because the laws of physics don’t apply in Poplar Bluff. Or, they’re wired together in a delicate balance. Your pick).
Add a coat or two of varnish to all of that, and of course, to the desktop (with trim added to the edges), and it’s ready to assemble. Here’s the desktop.
I don’t have any pictures of the assembly because it was essentially screwing piano hinges to everything, and usually required all four hands. But here’s how it turned out:
I unfortunately don’t have a picture of it folded (yet), but I’ll include that when I load it into my car.
So overall, I have a desk for almost-free. The only things we had to buy were 2 4-foot piano hinges (one of those was cut in half and used for the two leg-back joints), and 50 screws for the top hinge (because somehow the half-inch screws that were included went all the way through the half-inch wood). Overall, it took around 56 man-hours to complete. I’ve left out a lot of the measurement errors, equipment problems, and a lot of time waiting for the glue to dry. And of course, it helps to have a fully-stocked woodworking shop.
Once I return to Norman, I’ll be reworking my office, and I’ll hopefully have something moderately interesting to write about that process.
Go give Wikipedia some money. No, really.
0I donated to Wikipedia earlier this year (like I did last year). If you use it often, send some money their way. It takes a lot to run something that large.
-Kyle
——————-
Dear Kyle,
Here’s how the Wikipedia fundraiser works: Every year we raise just the funds that we need, and then we stop.
Because you and so many other Wikipedia readers donated over the past weeks, we are very close to raising our goal for this year by December 31 — but we’re not quite there yet.
You’ve already done your part this year. Thank you so much. But you can help us again by forwarding this email to a friend who you know relies on Wikipedia and asking that person to help us reach our goal today by clicking here and making a donation.
If everyone reading this email forwarded it to just one friend, we think that would be enough to let us end the fundraiser today.
Of course, we wouldn’t turn you down if you wanted to make a second donation or a monthly gift.
Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff.
Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 470 million different people every month – with billions of page views.
Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.
When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission, and leave waste to others.
Thanks,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder
Looking forward, looking back
0Every December 27th for the past several years, I have spent the day reflecting on the past year, what went wrong, what went right, and what I was going to do about it, creating a sort of “state of Kyle Vanderburg.”
But that’s not what’s going to happen this year. Starting this year, my focus will be less concerned with where I’ve been, and more concerned with outlining where I’m going. And it will chiefly be concerned with my professional life and NoteForge than with my personal life. So let’s get started.
Operations in 2011 were focused on a few large ideas. First was putting out the fires from 2010. 2010 was a weird year, and efforts were made throughout this year to fix all of that. Second, and less vague, was simplification. NoteForge’s website got a makeover, I let go of some domain names (such as Vandermusik and vdbg.us), and I worked toward unifying the NoteForge-created technology. This simplification idea led to the idea of streamlining as much of the NoteForge operations as possible, allowing for more time to do what I’m supposed to: Write music. With that in mind I wrote (and then re-wrote) SPADE, the Score and Parts Automated Download Engine, and conceived and produced HOE, the Hammer Opportunity Engine.
So as things stand, I have a self-hosted, multiuser, robust composer management system built to
streamline submissions to calls for scores (HOE),
Automate the delivery of digital scores (SPADE),
Sell products,
Keep the website and calendar updated,
And it’s all based on proprietary NoteForge technology, running on a custom-configured modular server instance named Anvil.
I have a highly brandable company that isn’t locked into music publishing (Ex, it’s not named “NoteForge Publishing).
I have the very beginnings of a recording studio.
I have the infrastructure to run all of this.
And I have a catalog of works.
So where do we go in 2012? Here’s what I’m thinking:
Continue developing Hammer-Based technology.
Anvil will require system updates (Apache, MySQL, PHP), which will be installed in March, July, and November. Also, I will be investigating the move to a different server platform.
Hammer, HIT, HammerSP, and others will continue to be developed. Immediate plans for Hammer include a bug reporting engine, with invoicing and other functions to be determined. These upgrades and cosmetic updates will be released in Hammer 2.2.
I’ll be partnering with Jennifer Tripi, and we will be coding a music-teacher specific integration of Hammer named Keys, which will be based on a fork of Hammer 2.1. Methods for licensing this technology will be explored, but currently the technology is covered under VBIPA.
Renew domain names and revise usage.
By the end of 2012, NoteForge domains should be primary domains, and KyleVanderburg domains should be used for branding purposes. Current URL shorteners, the NoteForge CDN, Analytics, etc. are based at kylev.net. These will need to be moved to ntfg.co.
The majority of my domain names will need to be renewed this year, with the following dates:
KyleVanderburg.Net 2/24/12
NoteForge.Com 7/7/12
KyleV.Net 6/9/12
Vandromeda.Com 10/21/12
Ntfg.co 6/1/12
KyleVanderburg.Com 11/1/13
I’ll be keeping these six domains for the time being, for branding purposes. Vandromeda is currently unused. Perhaps the KV names should be on odd years and NF names should be on even years.
Move away from Google/Reevaluate the NoteForge Email System
NoteForge/KV.net currently use Google Apps for mail purposes. I’d prefer to move to an exchange server or to a self-hosted solution. This will likely involve moving to Office365, Microsoft’s hosted solution.
For the time being, KyleVanderburg.Net serves as the primary mail domain. I’d like to change this to NoteForge.
Shift current cloud services to Windows Azure, and shift more of NoteForge’s data to the cloud.
Currently, I use Amazon AWS as storage for various files (personal archives, QUART files, sound backups, Anvil backups). To achieve platform unity, this information will be moved from AWS to Azure.
NoteForge Hosted sites currently use AWS as asset storage. This will need to be changed.
Eventually, via the NoteForge Stovepipe project, selected Hammer/Anvil functions will be moved to Azure.
So that’s the plan for 2012. Let’s do this.
Working from Home
0Of course, it being Christmas vacation and all, I’m back in Poplar Bluff juggling family engagements, taking care of those things I can only do during those 4 weeks I’m in PB, and trying to actually get some work done. And finally, after 4 years of college and 2 years of grad school, I’ve finally figured out how to get a decent workflow going. Which is good, since I want to complete a lot of stuff this week.
I’ve mostly been working on the Pipe Dreams Band Orchestration this week, and I’m nearly halfway done with my first pass of orchestration. And it’s going…better than expected. In addition to that, I’m thinking of my Missouri piano piece, my upcoming Kansas piano piece, and my prepared piano work.
But, for the time being, I thought I’d show off the workspace that I’ve built in my basement.
I think most of this is self-explanatory. The speakers are my Mackie MR5MK2′s and the mixer is an Alesis Multimix8USB, all from Oklahoma, the piano and the drafting table belong to my parents, and the ridiculous green bass on the wall is a Vanderburg original.
As far as what I’m doing here? Wait and see…
New Piece: Creatures from the Black Bassoon
0I finally finished my first electroacoustic piece! (for those of you who aren’t familiar with the genre, it uses recorded sounds as a basis instead of traditional notation and instruments. Wikipedia has plenty to say on the subject). This new piece, Creatures from the Black Bassoon, uses bassoon sounds to create a variety of animal-like characters. The form is more or less based on the golden section, with a number of contrasting “windows” in the sound.
Here’s what it sounds like:
This piece was composed with Pro Tools 7 LE (Steven Eiler’s copy), 8 HD (OU’s copy), and 10 (my copy), with processing by DigiDesign/Avid’s usual audiosuite plugins, GRM Tools Classic and ST, and Sonnox Oxford Reverb.
Those of you familiar with my music (both of you) will notice that this is pretty much unlike anything I’ve written. After all, if I’m wanting to be an acoustic composer, why switch to electronic music? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, marketability. Most academic job listings for composers now require some sort of electronic background, and if I’m looking to get a job in academia, this can only help (Will I get a job in academia? Do I want to? That’s another blog post). Secondly, the process of creating this piece has been valuable in learning how to use Pro Tools (an industry standard) and has allowed me to listen to (and think about) sounds in a new way. This is similar to my work with New IMPROV! Century Ensemble, where any sound is fair game. And of course, there’s also the value in having an 8 1/2 minute long piece of music that requires no performers.
So what’s next? Prepared piano? Instrument and tape? Pipe Dreams for wind ensemble? We’ll find out.
Pipe Dreams, take…4?
0Back during my last semester at Drury, I needed something for the annual composer’s recital (because there’s no way that the Mass was going to get played), so I wrote this short piano piece. Carlyle said it’d work better as a percussion ensemble, so I rewrote it for that, hijacked the “percussion methods” class going on that semester, and had it performed. And people loved it.
So I set that aside, moved to Oklahoma, and…picked it up again and revised it. I added a couple of movements, and somehow managed to get the third movement played by the K-State percussion ensemble (my first validation as a real composer!)
And for the past couple of years, I’ve largely left it alone. I’m still not comfortable with the percussion writing (I think the difficult parts are too hard and the easy parts are too simple for an ensemble to play it), and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with it.
And that’s when I decided that Pipe Dreams needs to be a band piece.
Well, at least that third movement, the first part that I wrote. It’s a lot of fun. It’s short(ish). It’s catchy. It’s the closest I’ve come to Steven Eiler in terms of melodic genius. And it needs to be played more often.
So that’s my plan over Christmas break.