Early on in my career, I made the mistake of writing a lot of very melodic music for performers who were more predisposed to Berio than to Berlioz. Despite everyone\u2019s optimism and best efforts, these projects were usually stressful and rarely among my most successful.<\/p>\n
I used to think, perhaps narcissistically, that it was exclusively the job of the players I was working with to make my music sound good\u2014that I should write whatever my little composer heart saw fit and then leave it to them to figure it out. We are, after all, taught in class that Bach is God and that musicians are the vessels through which the deity speaks. These early projects, however, taught me that in the real world the reverse is often true, and that it\u2019s a huge part of YOUR job, if not literally the entire job, to write something that will make the players you are working with sound great. Ideally if you are successful in doing that, you will make yourself sound far better in the process as well.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot that can go right and wrong when collaborating with musicians in pursuit of the above. However, I\u2019ve found for myself that there are a lot of consistent questions to ask and methods to employ along that winding road to hopefully making \u201cGood Art\u201d that can increase one\u2019s chances of staying the course. Ultimately a lot is common sense and falls under a consistent umbrella: you will never be wasting time by really getting to know your players, writing for them specifically, considering the specific parameters of the project, being sure of what you want to do while remaining open to input and creative detours, and experimenting with techniques to make all that happen.<\/p>\n
For me the solution to the above, besides planning well early on, has been to workshop music I\u2019m working on extensively with musicians while learning to be a good collaborator\u2014a lifelong undertaking in itself.<\/p>\n
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Before getting there, however, there are a lot of obvious questions to be asked about who I\u2019m writing for, what their aesthetic comfort zone is and how it relates to my own, what the circumstances of the performance\/session are, how many rehearsals you get, whether it\u2019s a pick up group or not, as well as the most interesting one: is this a player(s) who wants to be challenged or not? Some musicians will get bored if you\u2019re not writing something that stretches them. Others may feel best about music that\u2019s easy to keep alive in their fingertips. No one wants to put the time in to play something well that they don\u2019t feel “fits them.” For me the most exciting things always happen when you\u2019re working with players you can push a little beyond their comfort zones and who can push you past yours.<\/p>\n
I am a huge believer in workshops if you can do them, because they\u2019re really the best way to get into the weeds with a piece of music and collaborator(s). If you\u2019re writing something good, you can file that away and develop it. If you are writing something stupid, they\u2019re a great chance to pretend that never happened and course correct. Overall they\u2019re invaluable opportunities to try things on your “growing edge” while getting to know the strengths, styles, and limitations of the people you\u2019re working with and figuring out how to mold your writing to their hands. This does not mean sacrificing your voice, so much as playing with how it can be bent and expanded and trying things that you don\u2019t already know how to do, which I\u2019ve found always leads to better and more interesting pieces than I could have written alone with Sibelius. Ideally you meet each other part way, with a piece that sounds like you, but is tailored to the performer.<\/p>\n
For workshops to be successful, I\u2019ve found that doing three is best. One with early sketches, one about 1\/2 – 2\/3 of the way through the composing process, and one when you are almost finished to fine-tune. They are always short (musicians are busy), I record them, and in planning for them, aim to be over prepared but leave space for sounds and ideas that are unexpected to emerge. A balance between order and chaos.<\/p>\n
The order side is easy: parts need to be clean, any technical electronic elements must be road-tested, and the writing must be well-developed\/written enough that players can feel the bones of what you are trying to say. And you should have some idea of how you want to structure and lead rehearsals, since some material is invariably better approached “cold” than others. I try to start with something easy that I know will work. You should also be as sure as you can that you\u2019re writing idiomatically, since no matter how keen you are to expand the possibilities of the harp, if your harpist is tap dancing all over the place because she needs to be some sort of eight-footed octopus to cover her pedal changes (I know, I know, harps only have 7 pedals), you\u2019re both going to sound like garbage. And not in the cool Shirley Manson way.<\/p>\n
Facilitating the unexpected is harder and in itself an endlessly broad subject, but to get there some of the things I try include:<\/p>\n
Giving players a few looping musical \u201ccells\u201d from the piece to improvise with, or perhaps leaving some holes or incomplete endings in musical phrases (ones that feel as though they could be jumping off points), then asking them where it “feels” (excuse the flowery language) like it wants to go. Even if they\u2019re not improvisers, musicians obviously have a deeper and more intuitive grasp of their instrument than you do and sometimes just hearing where their hands wander naturally can give you a sense for how to better tailor your writing to their instrument and personal playing style, while still keeping it within your own language.<\/p>\n
Coming in with specific techniques that you are interested in exploring that feel as though they could fit the music you are writing, even if they\u2019re not developed, has also proven useful for me. Sometimes I\u2019ll have the earliest sections of a piece formed, and then ideas for some more bombastic moments later on that I don\u2019t yet know how to pull off. Putting some half-realized stabs at them on a page to give the general sense (something like the rough under-painting a painter might do), and then honing the details from there with a great player\u2019s input has proven productive.<\/p>\n