I end up rather conspicuous, hunched over large manuscript paper with my automatic pencil and straightedge. I suppose it’s natural that some would be curious and come over and ask me what I’m doing. The first question is usually, “Are you writing music?”.  I’m always tempted to say something snarky like, “No, I’m scrambling eggs,” but I never do. I just say yes, which is in almost every case enough to elicit awe-struck bulging eyes or a “wow….”. It reminds me just how few people there are that actually do this (not composing – but specifically writing notes on staves).   I think, if the guy at the table next to me were sketching designs for a building, I’d feel the same way. It wouldn’t matter whether it were any good. I’d just be amazed to see someone with those faculties at work, because they’re so mysterious to me.

The usual follow-up is, “What kind of music do you write?”. This is a tricky on for me. How do I explain what I do to the (probably) uninitiated? “Classical,” to most people, means Mozart. “Electronic” means Ace of Base. “Experimental” means nothing, except perhaps the vulgar stereotype of the performance artist wearing scuba gear and angel wings and peeing on the American flag while reciting Shakespeare sonnets in binary code. Give me a minute or two, and I can explain it pretty well, but I feel that that’s giving them more than they bargained for. I usually end up just telling them in very broad strokes about the piece I’m currently working on, often no more than the instrumentation. Again, this tiny piece of information is met with wows and impressed expressions. (I wish it was this easy to impress audiences and my peers).

In any case, today, it was an elderly woman who asked me the above questions. I explained that I was working on a piece for 3 drumsets and electonic sounds, to b played in the Make Music NY festival next month.   Her response: “It’s not that metal, is it?”. I assured her it wasn’t metal, and she said, “Good. That stuff’s just too much. No one wants to hear that.” I smiled. She asked when the concert is, and then said she’d try to come. I really hope she does, although if so, I may feel compelled to lower the threshold on my limiter.  No one wants shouts of “Keep it down!” during a premiere.

I’m very grateful to know, though, about Anestis Logothetis, who’s score is the canvas for the piece below.  Beautiful score.  I want to get my hands on a copy.

The following image is a page from my newest piece, Study no. 1, for amplified acoustic guitar.

This is my first real foray into the world of graphic scores.  I have long been making unconventional scores, but they’ve always been essentially staff-based.  The Study uses a kind of staff, but the horizontal lines are not staff lines, but rather the strings of the guitar.  On the left are the tuning pegs, on the right the sound hole and bridge.  Time is not represented in the score – events are instead defined by space.

I didn’t jump right into this notation.  I tried more traditional ways of expressing the sounds I was making and the ways I was making them, using the horizontal dimension to represent time, and filling it with symbols to represent the different sounds, but I found that ultimately not to be really expressive of the piece.  When I hit upon this, it seemed actually to represent the sound much better, and sacrificing control over the order of events seemed a very small price to pay (that would be the micro-order – the above is page 5 of 6, and the pages do have to be played in order).

Also, it’s fun to play with colored pencils.