by Cecilia Roudabush Director of Education
Collaborative composing for band, orchestra or choir is something that would seem unfathomable to me if it weren’t for the City Symphonies work of MIT Opera of the Future Professor, Tod Machover. Hopefully, you’ve seen Hyperscore and understand the beauty of its simple design for the individual composer. However, if you are a visionary like Machover, all individuals who lead a musical ensemble would be clamoring to have their musicians compose together with Hyperscore, or as an arrangement of individual’s motives. Following that, the leaders would print the work in traditional notation using the export feature and, finally, perform their work for an adoring audience. What a challenge, and amazing experience, that could be!
If you took piano lessons, band, orchestra and/or choir like I did throughout my school years and into college, it was rare to play contemporary and diverse original works of music. As we learned in a July 2022 NPR online article featuring Dr. Rocque Diaz, Ms. Daria Adams and GSHARP, we should be playing original music from every culture and genre in addition to the Classics. I came across this 2014 Reddit comment thread when searching for a discussion on the benefit of playing the Classics of every genre and era as compared to composing and/or playing original work.
Stick with the Classics? Write original works? Collaboratively Compose?
Does anyone else like creating their own songs more than learning how to play other songs? (caveat–some of the thread commenters in this link use colorful language; I’ve included my favorite edited ones here)
“Don’t get me wrong, I like to learn songs whether its tab or someone teaching or my earz (sic), but I get such a thrill creating a tune that it makes me [happy?] more often writing songs than learning songs… if that makes sense. EDIT: discuss.” Astoundingly, this one simple comment from u/zamboniman06 brought a long discussion thread of 135 comments.
To argue the benefit of learning music that’s already been created, JeeBusCrunk wrote, that “Great songwriters like Billy Joel, Elton John, and Stevie Wonder think the Beatles are the most important thing that ever happened to pop music (I tend to agree), and I believe you’re doing a great disservice to yourself as a musician if you don’t truly understand why they feel this way (even if you disagree)”. Anonymous, however, simply stated the opposite point with the simple words, “I don’t really create the songs I write, I hear them”. Sounds like something John, Paul, Ringo, George and Wolfgang would have said! Similarly, many of my students have said that when they use Hyperscore they never really know what they’re going to do until they start composing and like what they’re hearing!
The joy of an original composition
Probably, my favorite Reddit thread commenter was alividlife. This person stated Hyperscore’s philosophy to a T:
“…I’ve noticed in writing my own material, as soon as I take it seriously, and try and write something “awesome”, it’s a struggle of frustration. What has been proving a better way, is to almost be joyful…
It’s just a matter of getting the basic idea.
Verse.
A Hook of some sort.
A chorus.
Then maybe a bridge.
…Keep it simple, and as it becomes refined, work on creating each part as a breathing whole. But ideally stick to the real simple fundamentals of harmony, and simple melody…I think a huge issue with creation in general, all art forms, is that inner-critic…Enjoy yourself, and your audience will appreciate you for it.”
Raise your hand for collaborative composing!
New Harmony Line is looking to emulate the work of Professor Machover with a visionary ensemble leader who is interested in collaborative composing, guiding their musicians to create and perform an original work. Realistically, in today’s work world I wouldn’t know a single ensemble leader who would have time to run the unit then arrange the resulting piece. Thus, we are looking for freelance arrangers as well. Raise your hand if you are the visionary! Raise your hand if you are the arranger of that future collaborative piece! Then contact me, cecilia.roudabush@newharmonyline.org, and we’ll write about your work in the New Harmony Line News blogs to come!