{"id":6,"date":"2009-11-24T17:41:40","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T17:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amarts.ca\/jmblog\/?p=3"},"modified":"2023-04-23T23:06:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T23:06:52","slug":"what-we-do-and-why-we-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/24\/what-we-do-and-why-we-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Do and Why We Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jim McNeely<\/em><\/p>\n

(Adapted from keynote speech delivered 6\/12\/08 at the 2008 International Jazz Composers\u2019 Symposium University of South Florida, Tampa, FL)<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you, Chuck Owen, for inviting me to be a part of this terrific event. I look out and recognize a good number of you. It\u2019s good to see both faces that I know and faces that are new to me. We\u2019ve all come together for these three days, driven by our love of jazz and our love of composing. We\u2019re here to talk, to listen, and to hear music; to let our colleagues know what we\u2019re doing, and to find out what they <\/em>are up to. We\u2019re here to learn, and to be inspired.<\/p>\n

I would guess that most of us have beginnings as performers, playing in groups ranging in size from duos to big bands. We know that performing has a social aspect: you work together to achieve a group sound; you hang out after the gig; you travel together on the road. Composition, on the other hand, is typically a solitary activity; it\u2019s easy for all of us to get holed up in our individual studios, in our individual heads, with our pencils and erasers, with our keyboards and computers. And I dare say that this has always been one of the big attractions for me about composition. It\u2019s 2 am, I\u2019m alone in my music room, there\u2019s paper all over the place; the ideas are flowing, I\u2019ve found a little countermelody that is so unbelievably <\/em>slick; I\u2019ve got my little universe where I am God, and this note will be <\/em>a Bb, I don\u2019t care what the rules say; and I smell the eraser, and I\u2019m in the zone, and that glass of whatever that I poured 3 hours ago remains untouched because I\u2019m so into this piece! I\u2019m completely one with my inner geek, I\u2019ve hit that point where the little fire in my gut has been lit, and I say, \u201cDamn, I can\u2019t wait to hear this! This is gonna be great\u201d; and there\u2019s no one else there, and I don\u2019t have to talk to anybody!<\/em><\/p>\n

Paradise! <\/em>But before I start to sound I live like the Unibomber\u2014I do <\/em>have a wife and three kids, and we\u2019re all normal enough\u2014let me also say that it is important for composers to get together and talk to one another, whether in individual settings of teacher\/student or mentor\/prot\u00e9g\u00e9, or a workshop (such as the one I direct at BMI in New York), or a salon, or informal \u201changs\u201d. We discover how others may have solved problems that we grapple with; we can get inspired to try some new direction; we might discover new music to listen to, or to analyze, that might open new doors for us; and sometimes, articulating your own point of view to someone else simply helps to clarify it in your own mind. So with this symposium we have the mother of all \u201changs\u201d for jazz composers!<\/p>\n

Many Questions, a Few Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n

In preparing these remarks I started to articulate questions that I might try to answer. I found that certain questions led to more questions, and sometimes the answers are hard to nail down.<\/p>\n

What is jazz composition? Is it composing jazz, or jazzing (jassing) the compositional process?<\/p>\n

In its early days, \u201cjazz\u201d was a verb; it was primarily a process applied to existing forms of music. You played a song\/rag\/blues and you jassed <\/em>it, with improvisation and a new kind of rhythmic feel. So maybe as jazz composers we\u2019re jassing <\/em>more established compositional technique? Or, maybe we are composing frameworks that allow jazz to happen?<\/p>\n

Jazz is largely improvised, right? How do you compose improvisation? Is that even what we do when we compose jazz? What is composition, anyway? And what\u2019s the difference between composition and improvisation? Between composition and arranging?<\/p>\n

When I was in music school at the University of Illinois back in the late \u201860\u2019s and early \u201870\u2019s, one of the never-ending debates that raged was whether improvisation and composition were the same, or two facets of the same process, or different processes; or was one better than the other, or more legitimate? No one really won this debate, of course; a proponent of any one viewpoint simply proceeded as if he or she were correct, and dismissed the others. One of the wiser souls I encountered back then was the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl. He proposed that, instead of arguing about the relative merits of composition and improvisation, we regard a piece of music as a model<\/em>. This model contains certain elements that are created ahead of time, and other elements that are created during the performance. When you think about it, every piece of music has a balance between the two. An Indian raga, a Brahms symphony, and a jazz performance of \u201cI\u2019ve Got Rhythm\u201d all have certain pre-determined elements that must be there in order for the result to be called that particular piece, and not something else. Other elements are determined in performance, by the performer. With the Brahms symphony, almost every element was determined years ago by Brahms himself; the spontaneous elements may be the conductor\u2019s choice of tempo, or the length of a fermata, or an issue of balance; with \u201cI\u2019ve Got Rhythm\u201d, certain of Gershwin\u2019s original elements must be there. But the jazz esthetic allows for most of the musical details to be created in the act of performance.<\/p>\n

And arrangement vs. composition. The processes exhibit many similarities, yet are quite different. <\/span>An arrangement is a process applied to an existing song; the song is the main character of the drama; the piece is all about the song. A composition may or may not have a recognizable song. Characters might be a melody, a phrase, a player in the ensemble, or a texture. A character might be developed beyond recognition; may enter into conflict with another character; may well die before the piece ends. An arrangement is a portrait of a character; a composition is the dramatic development of one or more characters. Still, the line between the two can be very vague, especially in the hands of a master. Billy Strayhorn\u2019s arrangement of \u201cArtistry in Rhythm\u201d, or Gil Evans\u2019 arrangement of Kurt Weill\u2019s \u201cThe Barbara Song\u201d; Bob Brookmeyer\u2019s \u201cMy Funny Valentine\u201d, or Bill Holman\u2019s \u201cJust Friends\u201d; these all straddle the line. The song to be arranged has become the main character of the drama; all are tremendous pieces of music.<\/p>\n

As jazz composers, are we therefore creating pre-determined structures that contain points-of-departure for improvisation? Does this, by itself, mean that a piece could be called a \u201cjazz composition\u201d? And what makes a piece a \u201cjazz composition\u201d anyway?<\/p>\n

We\u2019d most likely not call Brahms\u2019 Symphony #2 a jazz piece. Why not? And what about \u201cI\u2019ve Got Rhythm\u201d? Or \u201cDolphin Dance\u201d? Is jazz composition simply music that is written by jazz musicians? Or played by jazz musicians? When Sonny Rollins played \u201cI\u2019m an Old Cowhand\u201d, did it become a jazz composition? Is \u201cLush Life\u201d a jazz composition? If you play it note-for-note just as Billy Strayhorn wrote it–verse and chorus–and don\u2019t improvise a single note, is it still a jazz composition? Is a piece\u2019s jazz nature determined more by the perfomance than any intrinsic quality? Is Thad Jones\u2019 \u201cDon\u2019t Get Sassy\u201d jazz as played by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra? As played by a horrible junior high school band? Or if it were to ever be played by Marilyn Manson?<\/p>\n

And all of this leads us both forward to and back to that most fundamental question: \u201cWhat is Jazz?\u201d No, I\u2019m not going there today!<\/p>\n

So, what is it that we all do that makes us jazz composers? I would propose several things. We generally\u2014although not always\u2014employ rhythmic language developed through jazz performance. This applies not only to \u201cswing\u201d, but to melodic phrasing, accents and articulation. We generally\u2014although not always\u2014use drums and bass in the way that they function in a jazz group: laying down a rhythmic and harmonic foundation over which everything else happens. We generally allow room in our music for improvisation\u2014mostly by individuals, sometimes by groups. We consider the balance between the pre-composed and improvised to be a central issue of what we write. Finally, we write music that sounds like we have listened to jazz, and have played jazz, and heard a jazz piece at one time and said, \u201cI want to write like that!\u201d That\u2019s very vague and personal, I know, but the boundaries between what is jazz and \u201cnon-jazz\u201d are vague and personal. And, frankly, the more we venture beyond those boundaries, the stronger we are when we return to the jazz center.<\/p>\n

We also speculate. Stravinsky said that one of the main jobs of a composer is speculation. <\/span>We ask \u201cWhat if?\u201d and follow our instincts searching for an answer. I think that this is important, especially in an era in which many people seem to be asking \u201cMay I?\u201d or \u201cIs it in the tradition to…?\u201d I\u2019m certainly not advocating weirdness or rebellion for its own sake. But jazz, like any art form, is fluid, and it grows and enriches itself through the efforts of speculators, both performing and composing, whose inner voices demand that they try a different path. Sometimes that speculation leads you outside of other people\u2019s boundaries, where you go at your own risk. It takes courage to follow your speculation. Sometimes the speculation takes you down a dead end road, sometimes it succeeds. But the alternative is stagnation.<\/p>\n

My Own History<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started my own speculations around the age of 15. I suppose my first big question was \u201cWhat if I wrote a big band arrangement?\u201d I was in my second year at Notre Dame High School for Boys, just outside of Chicago. I\u2019d chosen that particular school because they had a \u201cstage band\u201d. The director was a priest named George Wiskirchen, and he is one of the main reasons that I stand up here today. He was a Basie fanatic; he\u2019d gotten to know Frank Wess, and was able to get a few charts from the Basie book into our library. I must have indicated my desire to write an arrangement to my father; he bought me a copy of the Russ Garcia book. I devoured it! Then I found the lead sheet to an Ernie Wilkens blues, and decided that I\u2019d arrange it for the school band. Fr. George was very encouraging about the whole endeavor. I finished the arrangement, copied out the parts and brought it in to a rehearsal. They started to play it. Wow, those sax voicings sounded great! Russ was right, you don\u2019t have to put the root at the bottom. Hmm, it\u2019s hard to hear the melody in the tutti. Maybe I screwed up. Hmm, that shout chorus with those slick eighth-notes-inside-quarter-note-triplets never seems to come together. In listening to the rehearsal I realized that some of the chart sounded good, and some of it didn\u2019t. I resolved to continue doing the good stuff, and to find different approaches to the parts that didn\u2019t work. This is essentially the process that has driven me to this day. Put it on paper, listen honestly; pat yourself on the back for the good stuff, fix or get rid of the bad; then go on to the next piece.<\/p>\n

I remember that at some point in my late teens DownBeat <\/em>would print reproductions of pencil big band scores in the middle of the magazine. I don\u2019t remember whose charts they were, but I remember that the ledger lines excited me. And they looked like a lot of work went into them. That excited me, too. I was such a geek, that while my school friends were checking out other kinds of centerfolds, my big turn-on was the ledger lines in a lead trombone part!<\/p>\n

So I wrote a lot more for my high school band. By my senior year, my best friend Nick Talarico and I were writing marching band shows. Wiskirchen had a 6-line template that we would use; we\u2019d write the arrangements, then he would copy out the parts. I used to play saxophone, and one time he wanted a chorus of \u201cShe\u2019s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage\u201d, segueing into Coltrane\u2019s version of \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d, with me squawking away on soprano sax. You don\u2019t just call up Alfred Music and buy that kind of stuff off the shelf! This was also my first experience of writing to a deadline. Little did I know how twisted and neurotic my relationship to the deadline would become later in my life. It was during my senior year that I also heard Thad Jones\/Mel Lewis on Daddy-O Daylie\u2019s radio show. I realize now that a little flame had been lit inside me.<\/p>\n

In 1967 I entered the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, because they had a great big band, led by John Garvey. I was pretty intimidated about writing for them at first. There was a grad student there named Jim Knapp who was composing and arranging music that, for me, remains some of the most beautiful writing I\u2019ve ever heard. Jim is still quite active in Seattle; he\u2019d thankfully left the U. of I. in the early \u201870\u2019s. I finally got my courage together to write for the band. In addition, I was a composition major, and wrote a lot of chamber music combining contemporary classical and jazz elements. I also took seminars in Persian classical music and African music with Bruno Nettl. I started learning about how jazz wasn\u2019t the only music to included improvisation, and that there were other ways to generate improvisation besides playing on chord changes. All in all, those were very ear-opening years!<\/p>\n

Moving to New York in 1975, I was pursuing a career as a pianist. I wasn\u2019t writing for large ensembles, but I was writing tunes for quartets and quintets, and made a couple of recordings featuring mostly my own music. I figured that I\u2019d spent a number of years as a student, playing in big bands, and now wanted to concentrate on smaller groups. But I always felt that Thad and Mel was the best big band, with the hippest writing, and an important role for the piano. So when Mel asked me to join the band in 1978 I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t immediately start to write for the band. While Thad was there, I was intimidated; here I was playing great music written by him, and Bob Brookmeyer, and who was I to try to jump into that pool? But after Thad left in early 1979, I once again got my courage up and wrote an absolutely dreadful chart for Mel\u2019s band. I was pretty discouraged, but Brookmeyer, who had come in as the band\u2019s musical director, was very encouraging\u2014he pointed out a couple of sections that worked pretty well, and said that I should write another one.<\/p>\n

I did, and it was okay. In fact the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra recently recorded it for their most recent CD. The third piece I wrote for Mel, \u201cBlue Note\u201d, worked pretty well, and Mel\u2019s band recorded it in 1986.<\/p>\n

It was around this time that my long, fruitful relationship with the big band scene in Europe began. It started with UMO in Helsinki; in \u201987 I began a seven-year stint with the WDR Big Band in Cologne. That band was my real workshop group, and I learned an incredible amount from them. I\u2019ve also worked with the great Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra in Holland, and spent five years as chief conductor of the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. Currently I am artist-in-residence with the HR Big Band in Frankfurt. These are all great ensembles; most of them have been around for 40+ years, have a number of terrific players, and have been a great resource for Americans like myself, Maria Schneider, Bob Brookmeyer, John Clayton, Bill Holman and many others. You simply cannot talk about the current state of the modern big band without including these groups, and I wish that the American jazz press would wake up to that fact.<\/p>\n

By about 1993 I was a minor celebrity around Stockholm and within the listening area of the WDR in northwest Germany, but hardly known as a writer in the US. When I started to write arrangements for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, I began to get a reputation on this side of the Atlantic. In 1996 I\u2019d rejoined the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and they asked me to write an album for them. The resulting CD was called \u201cLickety Split\u201d. It helped both the band and me. By this\u00a0time I was writing a lot. I remember in 1998 I was in the middle of two projects: a George Gershwin retrospective for the Danish Radio, and a Chick Corea concert with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. In one month I wrote 270 pages of big band score. It was an exciting, exhausting, exhilarating time. Someone later asked me, \u201cWhat did you do when you got stuck?\u201d I thought about it and realized that I never got stuck; I simply didn\u2019t have time! Composition and arranging are essentially decision-making processes. We can get stuck when we have the luxury to put off making a decision. <\/span>If the deadline is imminent, we make a decision, living with its consequences, and move on.<\/p>\n

The Process<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much of the music I write begins with a question. Sometimes it\u2019s about a musical detail: \u201cWhat if a unison \u201cE\u201d grew into a chromatic explosion?\u201d \u201cWhat if I constructed lines in which each successive interval was a half-step larger or smaller?\u201d \u201cWhat if a song repeats over and over, getting more chromatic and intense each time?\u201d More, though, it begins with an image: \u201cWhat if a big band started to melt in the middle of a line?\u201d \u201cHow would a tenor player react if he felt lost in the middle of a solo?\u201d \u201cWhat if Mel Lewis came back?\u201d \u201cWhat would it sound like if a band fell down a flight of stairs?\u201d \u201cWhat would loud sandpaper sound like?\u201d If not a question, there might be a one- or two-word description of the piece: \u201cmoving rondo\u201d, \u201cburn\u201d, \u201cexhaustion\u201d, \u201cexuberance\u201d, \u201cchewy\u201d, \u201cahhhhhh\u201d, \u201cglow\u201d, \u201cvulnerable\u201d, \u201chelp me\u201d.<\/p>\n

The speculation is the first step in what I call the \u201chigh level\u201d, conceptual issues. If I am writing for a specific group I keep them in mind. Each group with whom I work a lot has its strengths and weaknesses; time feel and timbre; lead trumpet sound and collection of soloists. If I\u2019m not familiar with the sound of the group I write for, I create one in my head. It\u2019s better to connect the piece to some kind of \u201cvirtual\u201d ensemble, rather than none at all.<\/p>\n

I decide how long the piece will be, if only in a general sense. I decide on the \u201csurface sound\u201d of the music\u2014this is more or less \u201cwhat a dog hears\u201d\u2014high, low, loud, soft, rough, smooth, dense, open, screechy, woofy. I also decide on issues like the harmonic palette, and timbral palette (open brass, flutes and mutes). I decide on who will play solos, and where they will occur in the piece. For larger pieces I make a time line to indicate the length of the piece, and indicate certain events along the line. I also decide on the general shape of the piece. I will admit that much of what I have written conforms to the ideal defined by Ray Wright in \u201cInside the Score\u201d\u2014that a piece usually peaks at somewhere around 80-something % through the piece. But it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.<\/p>\n

At the same time I start to work with the \u201clow\u201d level issues: specific musical ideas. These might be a motive; a vamp; four bars of a progression; a three-note group, a chord voicing; or anything else that might occur to me. Sometimes I walk into my studio, thinking about the sandwich that I just ate, or the conversation I just had with my wife; anything but music. Then I sit at the piano, put my hands on the keys and hear what comes out. I try to hear the result with the same un-connected ears that the other six billion people on earth have, not my own ears.<\/p>\n

At this point there is a list of \u201cdon\u2019ts\u201d I refer to:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Don\u2019t judge your idea as good or bad. It is neutral; a gift. Write it down. \u2022 Don\u2019t start by telling yourself that you are going to write <\/span>the greatest piece of your career. This is one of the best and quickest ways to kill the music. \u2022 Don\u2019t worry about who might be playing this idea. If there is an instrumental or ensemble sound associated with it, great. If not, great. Either way, you\u2019ve got something happening.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Don\u2019t worry about whether <\/em>this idea will fit into the piece. It either will or it won\u2019t. Right now you need to see how to develop the idea, and see where it leads you. \u2022 Don\u2019t worry about where <\/em>this idea will fit into the piece. As you work with it, you may find where it goes. If you don\u2019t, put it aside. \u2022 Don\u2019t think that every idea must be put into the piece. \u2022 Don\u2019t take your original ideas at face value. Work with them. I think if them as physical objects, like pieces of clay. They can be stretched, cut up and recombined, rolled into different shapes, flattened, thinned, and replicated. Imagine being a kid playing in a sandbox. If, after all of that, you decide to go with your original idea, at least you do it knowing what some of the other possibilities are. \u2022 Don\u2019t get wrapped up trying to obey all the rules. If a rule doesn\u2019t serve you anymore, make up a new rule.<\/p>\n

I start to work with my ideas, and develop them. Make some melodic lines; extend progressions; transpose vamps. Whatever I can think of. I never say \u201cno\u201d to a possible variation or development or re-working of an idea. I just write it down. My goal is to create enough material so that I can throw most of it away. What remains is something that I absolutely believe in. It\u2019s not perfect, not \u201camazing\u201d. But I believe <\/em>it.<\/p>\n

As the low level starts to develop, the high level starts to get more defined. Details of the form and shape begin to emerge. One of my big concerns is to take my time getting to the first solo. When you are young and starting out, it is a laborious process just to score the \u201chead\u201d of the arrangement. So, BAM, next thing is a tenor solo; after the painstaking task of writing voicings and making orchestrational decisions, it\u2019s such a relief to just write some slashes! But I believe that the first solo should start only when the music is ready for it. As writers we are exercising a lot of control over all elements of a piece, and with the first solo we relax some of that control. Wait until the time is right. It might occur before there\u2019s any written music; it might not occur until five minutes into the piece. But make sure that the time is right.<\/p>\n

At this point I also begin to think of myself as a kind of playwright. I\u2019m creating characters, and thinking about how they might develop through the course of the piece. Besides the many jazz and classical composers who have inspired me, I would also have to pay tribute to writers like William Shakespeare, August Strindberg and Tennessee Williams. So many of Williams\u2019s plays are set in the south\u2014\u201cOrpheus Descending\u201d, for example. You can feel the humidity dripping off the willow trees. The men drink a lot and don\u2019t work much, and the women, at the primes of their lives, have resigned themselves to their lot. Halfway through the first act enters Val, \u201cThe Young Stud\u201d, from some far-off place. Said stud upsets the balance that has been agreed upon by the local folks; the women shoot him surreptitious glances and have vapors, and the men start looking for their shotguns. The resulting tension and resolution drives the rest of the play. When tickets to a Broadway play hover around $100 a head, you don\u2019t pay that kind of money to see people sitting around a table having a pleasant conversation about the weather. Give us conflict! And so it may go in music. Let the piece go on for a while, then introduce a new, unexpected character into the mix, and see what happens!<\/p>\n

So as the high level becomes more defined, and the low level develops, I\u2019m usually ready to start sketching, which is where I make most of my decisions about voicings and orchestration. I still use pencil and paper. I\u2019ve tried \u201creal composing\u201d on the computer, but feel that it gets in the way. I end up looking at a picture of the music. Pencil and paper are physical, tactile substances that give me more of a feeling of being connected. Besides, for me it\u2019s more fun to erase than to hit \u201cdelete\u201d.<\/p>\n

Technology and Computers<\/strong><\/p>\n

I use Finale for writing my scores now, mostly for the incredible convenience of editing, archiving, and sending via e-mail. But I still have some reservations about it. As with any tool, we have a tendency to adapt our behavior in order to use the tool more easily. With pencil and paper, we can draw almost any shape imaginable. Yet certain shapes are still difficult on the computer. With pencil and paper, all of us older folks learned how to make a good drum part, with relative ease. Those of you who know me, know that I could spend the next half hour kvetching about the drum parts I see in students using Finale or Sibelius. One of the problems is that we use these programs to tell the players what is easiest to say via the software, and not what really needs to be said in the score or in the part.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a bigger issue, and I\u2019d like to share with you an excerpt from an article I read on the plane flying down here. It\u2019s from the latest Atlantic Monthly, in an article by Nicholas Carr entitled \u201cIs Google Making Us Stupid?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter\u2014a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.<\/p>\n

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche\u2019s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. \u2018Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,\u2019 the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his \u2018\u201dthoughts\u201d in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018You are right,\u2019 Nietzsche replied, \u2019our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.\u2019 Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzche\u2019s prose \u2018changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m sure that Nietzche wasn\u2019t the first person to notice that the new technology fostered a difference, not only in his output, but also in his thinking. This is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing. But therein lies a problem. A tool may make certain things easier; make us more productive; give us greater insight and flexibility. On the other hand, that same tool, especially if not used properly, can hinder us from expressing well many of those creative things we might do better without the tool, and ultimately limit us. <\/span>A chain saw, when used properly, can be a useful, powerful tool. In untrained hands, however, it can cause horrible damage. In other words: if you, as a professional composer, are going to use Finale or Sibelius, learn how to use the program, and learn it well. Look at the user manual. Seek help from more experienced users. Apply the same standards to software as you would to your musical instrument. It is <\/em>your musical instrument! Would you show up at a gig not knowing how to finger an F#? It\u2019s simply not enough to say, \u201cGee, this trumpet doesn\u2019t let me do that!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another computer-related problem is that we now have the ability to play back, and play back, and play back, ad infinitum. You can make the flutes sound as loud as you\u2019d like, and you can make that fourth trumpet player play his double high \u201cG\u201d at pianississimo. Trombones can play without taking a breath, and everyone is perfectly in tune. Better yet, all of your intricate interlocking rhythms are performed with no problem at all. The problem is that some inexperienced composers are convinced that this is the way their music must sound at the first read-through. Worse, a few get really angry when real humans can\u2019t play the music as precisely and perfectly balanced as their computer. We all must learn how to get through that first read- through. You may have a piece that you have lived with for months, and played back over and over on the computer. But the human players see only dots on a page. It\u2019s going to take them time to assimilate all of the information on the paper, and if it is notated poorly or unclearly, all the worse.<\/p>\n

What Are We Doing, and Why Do We Do It?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, here we are\u2014all jazz composers. Why do we do it? I\u2019m sure that each of us has our own reasons. But music is a universal human phenomenon. Every culture has music to accompany religious rites and secular ceremonies. And many cultures have an \u201cart music\u201d: music that may have had utilitarian origins but is now performed for a listening audience. People want to hear music. They are drawn to it. And contrary to the attitudes of many school boards and politicians, music is an important, alternative way in which humans communicate and connect. And music needs composers. Performing musicians need someone to give them at least that \u201cpoint-of-departure\u201d, if not an entire score. Ever since the days of Jelly Roll Morton, jazz musicians have realized that the more players there are in a band, the more important it is for someone to organize the music and the players\u2019 roles in that music. Sometimes we function as the ones who say, \u201cHey, guys! Here\u2019s a melody for you to play together!\u201d Or, \u201cHey, I\u2019ve got an idea! First the clarinet plays a solo, then there\u2019s a two-bar drum break!\u201d And so forth. Jelly Roll seemed to have the idea that music was better if it was interesting; <\/em>if it had dramatic twists and turns. What a concept! \u201cWithout breaks you don\u2019t have good jazz\u201d, he said. And so on through Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, up to today.<\/p>\n

We composers play a crucial role in human musical culture; and as jazz composers we play a crucial role in the most important musical form to have emerged in the 20th <\/span>century. At a minimum we help entertain listeners, giving them an artistic pause in their daily lives. And we give performing musicians \u201csomething to play\u201d, so that they can sound good. We may even give them a little employment. But at our best, we challenge listeners to put aside their preconceptions, and offer them a chance to enter our world and hear something that they haven\u2019t heard before. We inspire listeners to feel something that they haven\u2019t felt before. At our best we challenge performers to stretch; to reach a little deeper for something they haven\u2019t done before, and inspire them to a higher level of performance. I firmly believe that to compose music, and to do it well–jazz or otherwise–is a most noble profession.<\/p>\n

We are all blessed to be musicians. We spend a great deal of our time doing something that we love, and that many other people would love to do, but can\u2019t. We earn the bulk of our living from activities that many people consider a hobby, or something they\u2019d love to do once they\u2019ve retired. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder about the larger social contexts of our lives. It is one thing to get \u201cin the zone\u201d as a composer; it is something else to hide one\u2019s head in the sand and avoid living the rest of one\u2019s life. Bob Brookmeyer once said to me, \u201cSociety doesn\u2019t owe you a living just because you have musical talent.\u201d So it\u2019s not enough to just write music. You need to think about the larger context: responsibilities to your family, to building your career. Remember, Bach was a musical genius who continues to inspire today. Bach also always made sure he had a gig, and a good one at that. He had a lot of mouths to feed! There is also a multitude of ways to get involved in the many other aspects of life: charitable, political, social, artistic, and so on. It\u2019s not enough to simply write a tune, call it \u201cGeorge Bush Is An Idiot\u201d, and think that you\u2019ve done your job. Writing a dynamite big band piece, in itself, will probably not bring peace to the Mideast, justice to Darfur, or reverse global warming. But it could get some people thinking; might start an argument; and might even spur the composer to take some further action to help the cause. It may take some time, but music can make a difference. We can make a difference (\u201cYes, we can!\u201d)<\/p>\n

In Closing<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have a lot of music on tap for the next three days. I\u2019m looking forward to the evening concerts, of course; but I\u2019m really looking forward to hearing what all of you have brought to this event. I\u2019m hoping to be surprised, challenged, soothed, and inspired. And by the end of Saturday I trust that we will all be fueled and fired up to go back to our own studios and take it to the next step. In the words of Billy Strayhorn: \u201cEver Onwards and Upwards!\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jim McNeely (Adapted from keynote speech delivered 6\/12\/08 at the 2008 International Jazz Composers\u2019 Symposium University of South Florida, Tampa, FL) Thank you, Chuck Owen, for inviting me to be a part of this terrific event. I look out and recognize a good number of you. It\u2019s good to see both faces that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-mcneely.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}