Result of my first public original music performance

I think I mentioned earlier that I was planning to have my ward perform a four part instrumental ensemble that I arranged for 'What Child is this?' A mixed result, at best. It was good to get over several hurdles which would be inevitable in any first actual arrangement that I wrote for someone else to play. Writing only for me over the years has allowed me to take too many shortcuts, such as keeping most of it in my head and not getting any music composition software learned. This flexibility has caused me to often say to myself things like, well if I chicken out I will go back to the easy version, so no need to write all this down, etc.

And it is always educational to work with others with their own opinions and creativity, especially at church. I often see this conflict in church-oriented activities: something seems important enough quality-wise to necessitate many many people spending many many hours working on it, but ultimately various other things turn out to be more important than quality. For instance, at church, people coming first will often have an impact. And of course I agree with that value, totally. In fact if the director hadn't believed in it he would have probably never let me do this!

In this case, to get a variety of musicians to participate, the director thought of having two people on each part, with one player quite a bit better than another to bolster the less advanced player and give them the experience. Again, I agree with encouraging less confident and involved musicians, but this particular way of doing it had some difficulties, at least in this case where it was my first official arrangement for others. I had to write the multi-part arrangement with parts on the one hand interesting and stimulating enough for the advanced player and simple and basic enough for a beginner. The goal to have two players per part also results, even in the best of circumstances, in big potential for shall we say, dissonance. I suggest that it would be more appropriate to give the less advanced players less complicated parts of their own, and that way if they totally blew them or didn't show up (as happened in various degrees) it wouldn't affect the rest of the ensemble too much.

So this quibble was very minor and only affected me because I was not too experienced. The director is a great guy, super talented (actually MEGA talented, he has a GORGEOUS voice among many things), and most of all to his credit here, he was absolutely fearless in working with me. Most people would have stayed far away from me altogether in this circumstance and not have shown the amount of confidence he did in having me write FOUR PARTS when I hadn't even done ONE before! In fact in most cases I would be grumbling about the exact opposite case, that someone hadn't given me a chance at all. But he totally did, and hid his likely nervousness pretty well. He probably would have gotten a more polished product had he done it himself but he rightly believed in delegation where possible, and it is probably related to his value in involving people of all levels of experience.

As a compromise we retained one set of unison players. It was not too bad, but it did have one effect I was worried about, in addition to messing with balance. It was good that not every part had dissonance problems but the fact that ONE of them was written for two players made it so that their part was much too loud (he was always telling them to scale back when they really should have been playing their own parts). And inevitably they were never exactly sounding like they were playing the right note. I actually went so far as to think I needed to change a C to a C sharp, when it turns out that I just couldn't exactly tell, after having them play it over and over for me, which of the two notes one of them was playing. Too bad because it made it so that the main part, written for the strongest player, instead had the most problems.

But I should be clear, I think that whatever frustrations I had with anyone else, ultimately my inexperience was to blame. My lack of it obviously showed, causing many small and medium issues that even if this was one major problem, kept it from being an obvious point of focus. It was my first time writing something for anyone but myself, as I said, and so was dealing with figuring out a program, printing (which is always a problem in our house) teaching people something that I wrote, and multiple other points for weakness. I certainly wasn't in a position to make everything happen the way I wanted it, and the director, an extremely great and talented guy, was just dealing with me the best way he could, I am sure.

But overall, it went ok, for a ward sacrament number anyway. The rest of the numbers were kind of your basic choir numbers with the piano, which IMO leave the audience wondering 'hey, why aren't we singing this too?' Definitely it went well enough for its purpose, threw in some interest and variety, and at least gave some great instruments to look at, including an awesome string bass. The bass player I was very lucky to get to be involved in my humble and confused affair.

And I actually stayed to play myself. From the beginning I couldn't tell whether my original flute player was going to be involved by the end of it. She was probably nervous playing something written by someone she knows can't write music! At first said she said she would definitely do it. Then a bit later she said she MIGHT(depending on a number of factors including whether she ended up being too busy...) Yikes! IMO, leaving others in somewhat of a lurch for their Christmas Sacrament Meeting music is something I would only do if I were having serious problems. But on the other hand, this is not really a person that HAS serious problems (she's very together, unlike me) and maybe this is one of the ways she avoids having them! A bit later on she reported that she was having some problems with the music but that she was getting a handle on it. Hearing that I nearly insisted that we schedule a practice at whatever time convenient to her, and we all planned around it. She was the only one not there, but she said that she was getting a handle on her part. The day before the performance, though, she let me know she couldn't play it.

Oops. Good thing I had decided to stay in town, because the ensemble would have been pretty light and left in the director's lap had I not. But we both really wanted her involved, again we shared the goal of including as many instrumentalists on various levels in the ward as possible, and I felt guilt that again my inexperience could have been having the consequence of making her not sure of her confidence level with the music and not adequately supervising her progress. So I asked her to play the melody, to which she agreed. But that meant that neither she nor I had played through our parts much at all before the performance. I worked to the last minute having to fancy my part up at the last minute to something appropriate for my skill level. The part I spent two months on for another flutist (an interesting experiment that I have yet to see through to its conclusion), I ended up playing myself WITHOUT EVEN practicing it or hearing how it was supposed to sound! Ironically, this is very much like things I have written for myself! I was still scribbling on a staff from after the sacrament right up to our number. (I remember doing the same thing when I wrote a part for myself to play at Slade's mission farewell)!

Sigh. Of course my vanity makes me wonder whether in the opinion of those in the audience the performance reflected on my abilities as a still embryonic arranger of music, and hope that even so, I get more chances to improve on the process. Slade said it was clear that there was a problem 'somewhere in the strings' and that while he had heard how it was supposed to sound and loved it, I am sure not everyone would give me that credit. (The problem in the strings was NOT (and I just corrected this because my first version had a typo making it not clear ENOUGH) you, Dr. A, and I am FAIRLY sure would be the ONLY one reading this of any of the participants, particularly those who are WAY to busy to read my blog!.)

Just in case anyone else sees this, I want to make it clear that the very most central issue I have taken away from the entire event is my disappointment that I wasn't able to do a better job for everyone I worked with. I was clearly a beginner, not even with beginner's luck, and with the obvious issues that will always be there any time a group of people do anything, in addition to the minorly unique aspects of the situation that I mention here. It was my job to better account for all those circumstances. But in spite of everything, I am very glad that everyone gave me a chance and took a risk with my lack of experience. I think that if I had had more experience OR talent, or whatever, I could have worked it out so there weren't any problems or conflicts with artistic vision, schedule, skill level, or ANY of it. I take full credit for not being able to make it work better.

I guess in the end, it was good for me to deal with my beginner's issues in a forum that didn't have serious consequences of any problems, and in theory tends to be forgiving with people's obvious amateur status. We are all by definition amateurs any time we do anything in sacrament meeting. I learned a lot, and do hope that I can have those things I learned pay off for everyone, including those musicians that if they had more experienced people than me leading them would indeed, as the director hoped, build on their abilities and go on to bigger and better things than ward sacrament meeting numbers written by amateurish members!

Kids' music interests

I posted about Drake composing, but I realized also that maybe some of you aren't up to date on what the kids are doing in general in their music. It does tend to change a bit.

Drake played saxophone for two years in upper elementary school but wasn't really happy with it. And I swear I am not one of those parents that thinks my kids need to be classified as advanced or are obvious musical prodigies (that is one of the reasons that I accepted his one teacher's word for not classifying him in fourth grade. It seemed a bit strange since it wasn't consistent with his history, but I took her word for it fairly easily. Turns out I shouldn't have, and I posted about it on my other blog).

And in the case of Drake and music, I was interested to see whether any of my interest in music would reflect in my kids, and for a while I thought it wasn't. I could tell by his singing that he had a pretty good ear, but it just seemed that in band he wasn't taking off. And that was fine with me at least if it was fine with him.

But turns out I should have known that the circumstances were not exactly letting him shine. In about a month after he switched to trumpet this year he had surpassed what he had learned on the saxophone, and is motivated enough to even practice, which might have been the problem.

Archer and Chase have shown music interest a bit earlier. It was hilarious when at about three they had memorized the libretta to Les Mis. So of course I am encouraging their singing, which surely ends up more profitable for boys than girls--so many fewer of them want to sing than girls. They both auditioned for and got solos in their choir last year. And in this case (fourth grade being the oldest) they are ALL sopranos, so they WERE competing head to head with all the girls! Things will be even easier for them when they can be lower parts. They might be waiting a long time, but...

Archer, consistent with his devil-may-care confidence level, has chosen flute as his instrument in band. I told him that it tends to be a girly instrument and that there are often tons of them, making it hard to be first chair or anything. But he was unfazed. I should maybe consider it a compliment that he wanted to play flute because I do. And Archer may have his gender to advantage even in fluting. I remember that though there were rows and rows of girls playing the flute in band when I was a kid, it was usually a boy that was first chair in the state. Anything physiological gives the edge to men, I am afraid. Even if in the case of playing the flute men only enjoy perhaps finger dexterity/strength and breathing capacity--it does give an edge.

Chase has switched to viola and is continuing to make slow steady progress, consistent with his personality (and like his dad). The other two boys tend to follow bursts of their inspiration to accomplish things (like their mom), but Chase is slow and steady. And because that is what usually wins the race, it is probably fine.

Sadie was the only first grader that was invited to be in her school choir this year, so though girls' competition for singing opportunities are quite cutthroat, there is always room at the top, and Sadie might just wind up there, who knows. She tends to be so dang lovable that people want to let her do things that the rest of us have to scratch and claw our way into.

Overall, the kids like music. We are working on some songs to post on youtube so that all of you can enjoy with us the fun that can come from just enjoying it as a family.

Drake is a budding composer

Drake composed his first original tune last night. It isn't bad!

It is interesting to me that I have just discovered that I have this skill but didn't ever know it, and I have no idea whether the reason I didn't know it was that I assumed I couldn't. I assumed that that was something 'other people do,' so I never tried.

The only thing that gave me a partial clue was that my brother is good at it. I am not as good as he is but I am much better than I ever suspected in my wildest dreams. My ward is doing one of my pieces in the Christmas Sacrament Meeting this year, so that will be exciting.

Hopefully encouraging my kids from a young age will help them develop the ability if they indeed got it from me, but the older I get the more I suspect that that child prodigy assumption--that either someone is good at something from a very young age or they don't have a chance at all--is not as true as we think. My parents did encourage my music very enthusiastically so it is possible that I did have relevant early training and it is still evolving, but the point is that whatever component that judging from my own abilities and those of my immediate family IS somewhat genetic are actually still evolving. The fact that I never thought of actually composing in my childhood or teens is maybe somewhat limiting but not definitive.

I have been impressed that Stephanie, for instance, has taught herself piano so she could teach it to her kids. No reason why not, and I think it makes a lot of sense to do that. Actually now that I think of it I am not exactly sure if she knew how or not but I know she has been polishing her skills and she wasn't too sure of her ability of a music teacher. I was actually inspired from her example. I had tons of music training and have lots of current skill but I didn't think I could teach my own kids. Because she has done it I tried and it is going fine. They are probably learning almost as much as they would from an experienced piano teacher, and my guess is they are learning about as much as they will eventually retain.

However she said the other night that she thinks her skills are more in line with art/drawing, and that she was sorry she hadn't been trained as a child. I think obviously she should go for it! IMO the whole child training assumption limits what skills adults think they can pick up, so maybe that compounds the evidence that we think we then see for the necessity of childhood exposure.