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Hi everyone
thought Id share an essay Ive just written on modular composition in case its of any interest here. Any thoughts anyone?
More about the Like Fxck event and the ongoing Project X team behind it can be found at: tribes.tribe.net/projectx please come by.
Modular Compositional Technique - Like Fxck
Brian Wilson has discussed the way he composes in terms of sitting at the piano and messing around until he comes up with something he likes, a little unit of music, which he calls "feels".
During the incredible spate of creative activity during which Wilson wrote what became the album Pet Sounds, the single Good Vibrations and the (then unfinished) masterwork SMiLE, Wilson perfected the art of piecing together this complimentary, yet disparate musical entities.
In the case of Pet Sounds – not only would these feels be moulded into a song, but by (for pretty much the first time in pop history) those songs were then arranged into an album which offered a coherent and holistic piece of art as a totality.
Good Vibrations is perhaps Wilson’s shining example of taking this technique to its limits in terms of the composition of one particular song, and paved the way for SMiLE in which the unit of the song was discarded altogether in favour of organising his many ideas and influences into one holistic work (actually in three movements) which is both a succession of individual parts, and a holistic, seamless whole. There is some degree of narrative structure, but this is not the aim, although a progression of some kind is very much in evidence.
Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the amazing comedian Reginald D Hunter perform five sets of comedy within a 48 hour period. This unusual state of affairs has to do with the fact that Reg was only at the Edinburgh Festival for a short visit (having performed full month long runs of the same show and been nominated for awards at each previous visits) and as well as being a big fan, we are close friends.
In the time that Reg has been performing he has developed a tremendous wealth of blocks of material – more than one liners or simple jokes – rather short pieces of story telling that each represent, challenge or illustrate a particular notion (or meme). Seeing him move from venue to venue, I was able to observe him exploring different paths through each performance, adapting according to his thinking at the time, the type of audience and so on (sometimes out loud) and selecting from his arsenal of modules, to create a flowing progress, at times, a discernable pattern (tho my preference in watching such work is to enjoy it rather than analyse it in the moment – the analysis comes later or not at all).
Another friend who’s work I much admire is Paul Provenza – an American stand up who has spent odd moments over the last few years filming many of the stars of the comedy world telling different versions of the same joke, ending up with over 100 hours worth of footage. The challenge for him then was to cut and edit – organise – these varied tellings into a movie, which in effect has thus become Paul’s own telling of the joke – on a macro scale. Interestingly he has recently been set the challenge of going back to the material to put together the DVD which I await with interest and he has further ideas for the future which will be made public in time.
The notion of modular composition is something which has developed naturally within me to some degree, as my own efforts at composing music have evolved over time. Some of the better parts of my recent work for piano have employed the technique, but I’ve been curious as to how to apply it on ever larger scales.
Lick Fxck represents my efforts to approach a live performance in this way, encompassing a variety of different participants, from many different disciplines, providing a framework within which we can combine those different elements in different ways.
Within each discipline, this works on a smaller scale, eg we have groups of visual artists now relishing the challenges of collaborating in an atmosphere of artistic freedom, to see what new things they can forge together. Likewise musicians that mostly tend to play within their own fields be it jazz, rock, classical, eastern or whatever, are find themselves thrown together in meetings to devise a piece within a piece that may have no more a title or theme than “Quiet ensemble 1” on the proviso that if it ends up being not so quiet, we retain the right to shuffle the programme which is in a constant state of flux.
Hopefully come the time of the first performance, these elements will have combined, via a process of what you might call “intelligent design” (!) (or perhaps “artistic design” would be more appropriate) into a five hour piece that will inevitably be performed in that exact state once only.
Well, if we can do in any tiny way for the gig what Wilson did for the album with Smile, then I’ll be Smiling for sure.
Rich
Xx
thought Id share an essay Ive just written on modular composition in case its of any interest here. Any thoughts anyone?
More about the Like Fxck event and the ongoing Project X team behind it can be found at: tribes.tribe.net/projectx please come by.
Modular Compositional Technique - Like Fxck
Brian Wilson has discussed the way he composes in terms of sitting at the piano and messing around until he comes up with something he likes, a little unit of music, which he calls "feels".
During the incredible spate of creative activity during which Wilson wrote what became the album Pet Sounds, the single Good Vibrations and the (then unfinished) masterwork SMiLE, Wilson perfected the art of piecing together this complimentary, yet disparate musical entities.
In the case of Pet Sounds – not only would these feels be moulded into a song, but by (for pretty much the first time in pop history) those songs were then arranged into an album which offered a coherent and holistic piece of art as a totality.
Good Vibrations is perhaps Wilson’s shining example of taking this technique to its limits in terms of the composition of one particular song, and paved the way for SMiLE in which the unit of the song was discarded altogether in favour of organising his many ideas and influences into one holistic work (actually in three movements) which is both a succession of individual parts, and a holistic, seamless whole. There is some degree of narrative structure, but this is not the aim, although a progression of some kind is very much in evidence.
Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the amazing comedian Reginald D Hunter perform five sets of comedy within a 48 hour period. This unusual state of affairs has to do with the fact that Reg was only at the Edinburgh Festival for a short visit (having performed full month long runs of the same show and been nominated for awards at each previous visits) and as well as being a big fan, we are close friends.
In the time that Reg has been performing he has developed a tremendous wealth of blocks of material – more than one liners or simple jokes – rather short pieces of story telling that each represent, challenge or illustrate a particular notion (or meme). Seeing him move from venue to venue, I was able to observe him exploring different paths through each performance, adapting according to his thinking at the time, the type of audience and so on (sometimes out loud) and selecting from his arsenal of modules, to create a flowing progress, at times, a discernable pattern (tho my preference in watching such work is to enjoy it rather than analyse it in the moment – the analysis comes later or not at all).
Another friend who’s work I much admire is Paul Provenza – an American stand up who has spent odd moments over the last few years filming many of the stars of the comedy world telling different versions of the same joke, ending up with over 100 hours worth of footage. The challenge for him then was to cut and edit – organise – these varied tellings into a movie, which in effect has thus become Paul’s own telling of the joke – on a macro scale. Interestingly he has recently been set the challenge of going back to the material to put together the DVD which I await with interest and he has further ideas for the future which will be made public in time.
The notion of modular composition is something which has developed naturally within me to some degree, as my own efforts at composing music have evolved over time. Some of the better parts of my recent work for piano have employed the technique, but I’ve been curious as to how to apply it on ever larger scales.
Lick Fxck represents my efforts to approach a live performance in this way, encompassing a variety of different participants, from many different disciplines, providing a framework within which we can combine those different elements in different ways.
Within each discipline, this works on a smaller scale, eg we have groups of visual artists now relishing the challenges of collaborating in an atmosphere of artistic freedom, to see what new things they can forge together. Likewise musicians that mostly tend to play within their own fields be it jazz, rock, classical, eastern or whatever, are find themselves thrown together in meetings to devise a piece within a piece that may have no more a title or theme than “Quiet ensemble 1” on the proviso that if it ends up being not so quiet, we retain the right to shuffle the programme which is in a constant state of flux.
Hopefully come the time of the first performance, these elements will have combined, via a process of what you might call “intelligent design” (!) (or perhaps “artistic design” would be more appropriate) into a five hour piece that will inevitably be performed in that exact state once only.
Well, if we can do in any tiny way for the gig what Wilson did for the album with Smile, then I’ll be Smiling for sure.
Rich
Xx
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