What are these skills?

So when I started playing new music I never thought about the wide range of skills one would need to develop that fall outside the standard playing of the horn. I am not talking about extended techniques or interpretive dance. I am talking about the nitty gritty things that have to happen when you perform some of this music.

For those that have followed the blog, or know me know I do a great deal of works with electronics. So as a point to start from, let us start from there.

I was fortunate in my undergrad to have taken two courses with composer Laurie Radford, One course was called sonic arts, and it dealt with the recording and altering of sounds, and composing from that material. The second course was an independent study in Max/MSP dealing with live signal processing. These skills, which have included Max/MSP, various audio editing programs, sequencers, etc. have been a GREAT use to me in various ways. The most obvious is in performing works with electronics. That being said, I highly recommend hiring someone who specializes in this if you do perform these works, it just takes a great deal of stress and strain off of you, since you will have enough to worry about. Though, being able to draw on these skills is a huge asset in rehearsals and practise so you can become familiar with the sound world you will be performing in.

So that was one huge set of skills they don't teach to all musicians, if you get a chance take courses in those things, it is a ton of fun. Currently working on Grisey's Accords Perdus has called on another skill. That is being able to generate a click track for performance. It would be helpful to mention that the click track for the Grisey is not a simple track to make, though the process is simple, it can be time consuming. For those who want to make a simple click track Audacity is the best, it is simple to use (though limited in control). I generally use Ableton Live to make my tracks but since I was under a time crunch I went back to audacity for this one.

So this was just a quick post talking about little things... interviews are coming up soon, as are some in depth posts relating to some really cool things... trust me.

Make sure you check out the horn repertoire project, I have been adding to it lately since I have had a little time to do some research.

Until next time.