Below is an explanation/essay I wrote for a course last summer (2006) called Alternative Texts for Young Adults (part of the english education requirement). It was an amazing course. What's more is that I was able to bring my subject area of music into the mix, and thus composed and recorded a work called Mechanics of Understanding as my final project. Listen to it at www.myspace.com/ipushyoupull
For my alternative text I decided to write and record a piece of music (titled “Mechanics of Understanding”) that discusses the inability of language to reflect certain forms of meaning. The basic idea, which I first stumbled upon in Don McKay’s “Vis à Vis : Fieldnotes on Poetry and Wilderness,” is that along with literature goes a literary way of understanding the world; the idea that a name is only a reflection of the true meaning in a thing.
I decided that my piece would be in two movements. The first movement starts with a reference to 12 tone composition, a technique in which material is generated from tone rows. A town row consists of 12 notes (every note within an octave). When the tone row is employed in a piece it ensures that each note is be stated once before any are repeated. The idea behind 12 tone composition is that it places no importance on one note or another, creating an entirely non-tonal piece (a piece of music in which there is no grounding; where you can’t expect which note will come next). In a way, 12 tone composition is an attempt to remove any associative meaning from notes and their relationships to one another by refusing to favour their traditional use. However, in my piece I have the series/tone row morph into a tonal melody (one in which it is relatively easy to predict which note will be next because they follow an understandable pattern and have a traditional relationship to one another), which suggests that our ears are always listening for tonality. The purpose of the first movement is to question whether there is any inherent meaning in sound (whether it is learnt as we grow or is inherent regardless of what we learn). Paralleled with the piano part I have indistinguishable (I hope!) sounds, and at the end the original, un-modified recording is played, thus giving context to sound that previously had none.
The second movement begins with words. Most of the words are arbitrary (I simply recorded my flatmate Katie talking about her weekend), but two sections are intended as nods to other works (intertextuality). The words “ice cream” (spoken by my friend Justin) were first used to teach a person how to sing in musical The Music Man (“See! Singing is just suspended talking!”), and the phrase “There once was a little girl” refers to a piece by Hildegard Westerkamp which follows the levels of understanding her daughter experienced in relationship to sound as she grew up.
The words “my, my beautiful face,” are slowly turned into sung notes, which then fade into the beginning of the melody. The idea is to show a transformation from words to the meaning (AKA music) behind them. The song starts out with an exploratory melody, which slowly becomes more persistent and gains momentum. I purposefully cut the ending short, in the attempt to make listeners realize that they are getting caught up emotionally in the momentum of the piece. Whether this reflection actually takes place (consciously or subconsciously) depends on the listener.
Looking back on the writing and recording process I realize I used many different approaches. I have about two pages of sketches outlining basic ideas and themes I wanted to see in the piece. The notes for the 12 tone section I planned out on paper beforehand, the piano part for the second half of the first movement was just something I came up with while doodling on the piano, and most of the music for the second movement was written on a computer music writing program called NoteWorthy late at night. Then, while recording I changed and added some parts as I went. Afterwards I added in the recordings of speaking and of my flatmate’s kitten Patches purring (though I had planned to do this from the beginning). I found it easier to shape the words and purring sounds around the music rather than the other way around.
The actual recording was, for the most part, frustrating. I spent about 7 hours on recording and editing, and the end product still seems sub-par. When commenting on this to a friend, she said that it was the musicians curse; nothing ever sounds as good as it did in your head. I think it would have helped if I knew how to play the bass beforehand (or if I could have hired a bass player) and if I hadn’t had my wisdom teeth out recently, because my flute playing was not as polished as I would have liked it to be due to lack of practice. In addition to these problems I experienced the exhilarating rush of losing entire tracks due to silly computer mistakes (“What do you mean I didn’t save?!”), which then had to be recorded again. In fact, I realized late on Sunday evening that I had accidentally deleted a track during the editing process, but it was after the reasonable hours for flute playing in an apartment, so what it would have sounded like will forever be mystery.
The literary practice I noticed that came into play most was simply having an understanding of the conventions of music. When explaining the concepts of the piece to two fellow music students, my explanations clicked and it took no time at all, because we’ve all had identical schooling for the last two years. But when explaining the piece to my classmates and friends it took slightly longer and I worried that they missed out on some of the insights when listening to it. When playing the piece for some of my friends later, I discovered that my self confidence became intertwined with their responses to the piece (some of which were polite, but unfavourable).
If I were to teach this sort of alternative text to a classroom, I would really try to help the students keep it simple. I’d do this first by breaking down the instruction; talking about recording, theory, and orchestration (which instruments to use) separately. I would also assign, or encourage students to pursue composing, pieces that are short in length and simpler in form, and I would consider having multiple due dates so that students don’t get rushed at the end and feel they are sacrificing the validity of their work because of time constraints (as I did). Opportunities for varied processes would also be high on my list; computer music programs, improvisation, playing it out at the piano, group collaboration, and plenty of in class and out of class time. I would also encourage students to create a short “Artist’s Statement” to go with their piece (similar to the beginning of this essay for me), so that they can describe what they are attempting to achieve in their piece, though I don’t know if this would be mandatory, because in a way it is forcing language onto a non-language specific art form, and I think we need to recognize the validity of having a work stand on its own as well. Finally, I would provide lots of rich performance opportunities to those students who wanted them, because I find after I finish recording something I want to show it to everyone. Because our self confidence does often become entwined with our art works, I would also encourage a healthy classroom attitude towards listening to other people’s works, setting up ground rules beforehand if necessary.
I decided that my piece would be in two movements. The first movement starts with a reference to 12 tone composition, a technique in which material is generated from tone rows. A town row consists of 12 notes (every note within an octave). When the tone row is employed in a piece it ensures that each note is be stated once before any are repeated. The idea behind 12 tone composition is that it places no importance on one note or another, creating an entirely non-tonal piece (a piece of music in which there is no grounding; where you can’t expect which note will come next). In a way, 12 tone composition is an attempt to remove any associative meaning from notes and their relationships to one another by refusing to favour their traditional use. However, in my piece I have the series/tone row morph into a tonal melody (one in which it is relatively easy to predict which note will be next because they follow an understandable pattern and have a traditional relationship to one another), which suggests that our ears are always listening for tonality. The purpose of the first movement is to question whether there is any inherent meaning in sound (whether it is learnt as we grow or is inherent regardless of what we learn). Paralleled with the piano part I have indistinguishable (I hope!) sounds, and at the end the original, un-modified recording is played, thus giving context to sound that previously had none.
The second movement begins with words. Most of the words are arbitrary (I simply recorded my flatmate Katie talking about her weekend), but two sections are intended as nods to other works (intertextuality). The words “ice cream” (spoken by my friend Justin) were first used to teach a person how to sing in musical The Music Man (“See! Singing is just suspended talking!”), and the phrase “There once was a little girl” refers to a piece by Hildegard Westerkamp which follows the levels of understanding her daughter experienced in relationship to sound as she grew up.
The words “my, my beautiful face,” are slowly turned into sung notes, which then fade into the beginning of the melody. The idea is to show a transformation from words to the meaning (AKA music) behind them. The song starts out with an exploratory melody, which slowly becomes more persistent and gains momentum. I purposefully cut the ending short, in the attempt to make listeners realize that they are getting caught up emotionally in the momentum of the piece. Whether this reflection actually takes place (consciously or subconsciously) depends on the listener.
Looking back on the writing and recording process I realize I used many different approaches. I have about two pages of sketches outlining basic ideas and themes I wanted to see in the piece. The notes for the 12 tone section I planned out on paper beforehand, the piano part for the second half of the first movement was just something I came up with while doodling on the piano, and most of the music for the second movement was written on a computer music writing program called NoteWorthy late at night. Then, while recording I changed and added some parts as I went. Afterwards I added in the recordings of speaking and of my flatmate’s kitten Patches purring (though I had planned to do this from the beginning). I found it easier to shape the words and purring sounds around the music rather than the other way around.
The actual recording was, for the most part, frustrating. I spent about 7 hours on recording and editing, and the end product still seems sub-par. When commenting on this to a friend, she said that it was the musicians curse; nothing ever sounds as good as it did in your head. I think it would have helped if I knew how to play the bass beforehand (or if I could have hired a bass player) and if I hadn’t had my wisdom teeth out recently, because my flute playing was not as polished as I would have liked it to be due to lack of practice. In addition to these problems I experienced the exhilarating rush of losing entire tracks due to silly computer mistakes (“What do you mean I didn’t save?!”), which then had to be recorded again. In fact, I realized late on Sunday evening that I had accidentally deleted a track during the editing process, but it was after the reasonable hours for flute playing in an apartment, so what it would have sounded like will forever be mystery.
The literary practice I noticed that came into play most was simply having an understanding of the conventions of music. When explaining the concepts of the piece to two fellow music students, my explanations clicked and it took no time at all, because we’ve all had identical schooling for the last two years. But when explaining the piece to my classmates and friends it took slightly longer and I worried that they missed out on some of the insights when listening to it. When playing the piece for some of my friends later, I discovered that my self confidence became intertwined with their responses to the piece (some of which were polite, but unfavourable).
If I were to teach this sort of alternative text to a classroom, I would really try to help the students keep it simple. I’d do this first by breaking down the instruction; talking about recording, theory, and orchestration (which instruments to use) separately. I would also assign, or encourage students to pursue composing, pieces that are short in length and simpler in form, and I would consider having multiple due dates so that students don’t get rushed at the end and feel they are sacrificing the validity of their work because of time constraints (as I did). Opportunities for varied processes would also be high on my list; computer music programs, improvisation, playing it out at the piano, group collaboration, and plenty of in class and out of class time. I would also encourage students to create a short “Artist’s Statement” to go with their piece (similar to the beginning of this essay for me), so that they can describe what they are attempting to achieve in their piece, though I don’t know if this would be mandatory, because in a way it is forcing language onto a non-language specific art form, and I think we need to recognize the validity of having a work stand on its own as well. Finally, I would provide lots of rich performance opportunities to those students who wanted them, because I find after I finish recording something I want to show it to everyone. Because our self confidence does often become entwined with our art works, I would also encourage a healthy classroom attitude towards listening to other people’s works, setting up ground rules beforehand if necessary.
