Survey results and some interpretation and thoughts

So, I am back again. I thought I would take this chance to share the results from both the initial, and the follow up survey with everyone. It should be noted I won't share the actual comments people made since I don't have permission to do such, but I will give a brief summary of the results.

First here are the results to the initial survey,

It is noted below that the results do not "add up" this is explained and corrected below.

For those keeping track the second survey began to explore the topic a bit more in depth. It should be noted as all data was collected anonymously it is not possible to know if respondents were consistent between the two. In hind sight this may have been something to consider, but, at the time since no controllable database was used, and anonymity was sought after this was the route that I had to follow. Here are the results to the second survey:

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So where does this put us? First I would have liked to get a larger sample size, but that is not really in my control, that being said I will open up a form that will be linked below if you want to anonymously leave your thoughts on the subject matter. If you want to comment directly feel free to comment here, or e-mail me your thoughts. OR GUEST BLOG. These things are very important when developing an article in my opinion, since often in music we rely on the objective comments of the author to express an idea. I would like a great blend of objective and subjectivity towards the overall product.

Second, If we look at the totals there is an error in the initial survey, there were 55 logged respondents, but of that 55, 5 submitted a form with no data, so the adjusted percentages are as follows:

• Have performed: 40%
• Studied/would like to: 8%
• Interested: 32%
• No interest: 20%

Now an initial comparison of the data provides some points of interest. The first area, which could be very coincidental is that 20% of people have no interest in this style of music, and 18% have never seen a work like this. We can go one step further to consider that of the 14% of respondents (second survey) 80% of them (or 11% of overall) have no interest in exploring this kind, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened with a larger sample source. Though, there are some consistencies, though they are hard to infer from a small sample.

Looking again at the responses in the second survey we can observe that the OVERALL negative impression that would lead to not wanting to explore this music is a total of 25% (11% have not seen chart, 14% have seen). This is again close to the results (+5%) of the original survey. Both of these are positive as the initial survey had no inquiry in to exposure beyond personal performance.

Now a few key points of the written responses are as follows:

• The success of the music seen appears to rely heavily on a few key points,
• First, the actual composition itself, is it effective and is there an inherit purpose to the piece.
• Level of the performer, there seems, based on responses, a lot less room for "faking" as the inherent style of the music requires a very active performer. 
• Not full of melodies, something needs to be there.
• Is it cohesive (compositionally and as a performance) unless the goal is to be not. Clarity in architecture.
• How well are the electronics used. The multimedia, when well done is full of  virtuosity, not an afterthought, or perceived therein to be one.
• Equipment used NEEDS to be high quality, and all bugs sorted out.
• Audience involvement, not necessarily in a cheesy educational way, but tools are needed to engage the listeners, especially those who are new, and could feel overwhelmed.

These highlight reoccurring themes in the survey responses, there are many other ideas, and thoughts that are all appreciated and will have great use. What struck me the most is the complexity of reception of this music. This is something I myself am trying to figure out as much as I can so it is good to see it is an active element of the environment that surrounds the field.

So, more will come as I interpret data, if you want to add anything feel free as I said to do it in the comments, or e-mail. If you want it to be anonymous, follow the link below.

Link to form

Again, thank you to all those who took time to fill these out they are serving me greatly towards constructing an article that should hopefully apply to the interests of many and not be self serving ;)

Please take this quick survey, and a mute project

Hey everyone,

As readers know I am working on an article, part of it involves some kind of ground work research mainly to help with the focus of the article, I am on the second phase of the survey, If anyone can take this quick survey it would greatly help. Just follow the link.

Link to Survey

As well, I have started building my mute that will be used for live electronics, the first phase is really a proof of concept I will throw some photos out now and follow up a bit later. The idea here is to get a high quality audio signal for processing since the silent brass and ebrass mute sound far to 1940 phonograph for use live.

Cork and base removed. Tuning sleeve removed and trimmed for maximum internal space for condenser microphone.

 Cork drying on.

Hole cut for microphone. Again compared to the silent brass/ebrass microphone I will be using the same set up I would use for regular amplification. The goal is a high quality signal.

 Hole covered and access maintained, three different bonds in place to keep rubber wall in place. Thank to bike commuting in Chicago so I have lots of old tubes that are no longer road worthy.

You get the idea.

Another collaboration!

I am excited to post that I will be working with composer Jordan Kusel on a work for amplified horn, live electronics, and reactive video. Should be a blast, coming to Chicago near you in 2015!

New exercise: One for the ears

One thing that I like to do is scale work with drones and a metronome. This past year I started working on scales that fall outside regular scales. For this post let us call Major, minor, chromatic, pentatonic, and whole tone our regular scales. They are mine, so for the next few moments that is how it shall be.

Now I started working more regularly on other scales to keep working out my ears and working new patterns into my practice routine, So I want to share them with everyone, I have found they are great for the ears, a nice change of pace, and is a great mental workout. Do things from many different starting pitches, transpose them around, and put them in different octaves. The goal for me was to get these into my bones so they are as comfortable to me as my regular scales. In addition to really working on my ears

So here is a rundown of the drill:

The scales are based around a few things, Symmetry, pitch sets, variations of pentatonic patterns from other musical styles, and finally my favorite, the enigmatic scale. Enigmatic scales are the powerhouse of building up the ears as you lose your perfect intervals and sense of tonic are not near by.

While doing this try them with drones, without drones, with a tuner, and without. An example of a way I use the tuner when working on these would be establishing my first pitch, then without using the tuner slowly playing the scale making sure to pay close attention to the integrity of the intervals. Then, when reaching the octave, establish the pitch then check into my tuner to see how the octave fared.

So here is a link.

Click me for scale fun!

The horn in the mix of a new world

So I have been busy working on many projects, lots of writing and other such things so this post comes courtesy of the collection on writings I have done before, which is for such occasions as this. A quick little insight into this to decide if you want to read any of it, the goal of this paper was to give some context to the horn in modern aesthetics in particular to modern music. As well as providing some historic information on it. My be up your alley, or may not be. If you think it is follow the link below. If not, off to the wide world of internet memes, cats, and trolls.

New place, same sounds: The horns emergence into modern aesthetic.

Drop me a comment, hit the +1 to let me know you were here.

The strange, the weird, the wonderful.

As the title of this post hints at, this one is going to be jumping into some strange and wonderful places. Some quick background before I start to give context to the oddities that will be here.

I am currently working on a work by Vinko Globokar for a concert. As with Globokar's music there is always an element of improvisation and a fantastic chance for colours. As time has been spent on the work the other three brass players and I have arrived with some great, complex colours and sounds.

Through the looking glass we go. All the techniques we used are common enough to not be totally obscure. That being said, a few of them are more common in music that deals with saturation or of music that shares in that aesthetic. So if you are a stranger to that realm this may seem pretty strange. Though this work is not a work in the style of saturation we decided based on the requests in the score that Globokar has made that some of these techniques would accomplish them. I'm going to have audio as well of the techniques in isolation. Now, I was back and forth on this as many of this techniques are part of what we can additive sound in that the interaction of them with other sounds is what creates the affect of the gesture. But, in the end I decide to hermetically isolate them here for your ears and interest... perhaps enjoyment?

So here is number one. Using a reed in the horn. This is more common than you may imagine, though the level of its success varies greatly. As I said this is more common than one may imagine, especially if you are dealing with composers who do compose in saturation.

Now.., I keep mentioning this word, saturation. So let me let me just put this here.



Alright so back to the reed in the horn thing. As you can see from the start of the video there was an oboe reed in play. The recordings I am posting are using a bassoon reed, you do get a different effect later this coming week I will follow up with an oboe reed for comparison, cause that's just the kind of thing I do.

Bassoon reed in horn:

The next technique I am using is one that as far as I know was pioneered by my friend, composer and hornist Max. Imagine now if you would a CD, you know those cool shiny circles from the 90s? Well what you do with that is by gently resting it in the bell you can create various buzzes and rattles. There is a similarity to stopped horn with it as well as playing into a snare drum but it is full of irregularities. You can alter it in many ways such as: pressure, amount of air allowed past the CD, amount of contact points, etc. Another similar procedure would be the use of a buzz mute. (Aluminum foil, and a straight mute...) This application, being the CD mute I use during a very loud section of the work, the idea behind it was to transition from the sound of amplified buzzing (using instruments or stopping mutes) back to the sound of unaltered horns. So we were looking for a sound that had both buzz and tone melded together.

Cd Mute:


The final one I want to put out here is a glass mute. There is already a great article out there by the Oil Valley hornist, but I will quickly touch on this. The glass mute, to my ear is similar to a straight mute with most of the resonance cut out. Though the kind of bottle used, thickness and quality of glass will ultimately effect the sound in the end. Glass mutes do get called for every so often, though usually they are not really optimized. Now what I mean by that is that the colour and timbre is very subtle so if the texture around it is thick, or... well there at all you are better off using something else. Now, Globokar presented a great opportunity to use this mute. One of the movements starts off with just me, on a pitch of my choice (from several options) and the indication "foggy" so I spent some time playing with registers, notes, mutes, techniques and it just hit me.. WAIT THE GLASS MUTE. The mute I used for the recording is a beer bottle, I also have a coke bottle (which I use in the Glookar deadens the sound even more) a few different beer bottles, and a champagne bottle.

Glass Mute:


So in the end what does this all mean? Why does it matter? These kind of questions are ones I ask myself constantly. For this moment these decisions, these sounds represent in my mind and through creative collaboration with my colleagues a means to best capture an idea and that create meaningful contributions to the overall work.

Contact Dermatitis and Brass Playing

Quick background here, About a year and a half ago I conducted some basic data collection and did a great deal of research to complete a research paper in my Masters degree which was based on Contact Dermatitis in brass playing. I was able to get a small survey done as well as collect some valuable insight from players willing to share their expereiences. Myself, I have mild ACD (Allergic Contact Dermatitis) so I wanted to know more, and invesitage the experience of others. It is later now, but I am going to release this paper for others to share, I had some time to let is sit, and reflect and ultimately decided I was happy with it and its content and would share it with others.


Click the link below to read it. It will also be found in the downloads tab.
Allergic Contact Dermatitis - That's Irritating

Happy Horning.
One more thing, I am writing an article at the moment and am still trying to get more survey results to have a meaningful sample. It is one simple question, found here. As well please if you have opinions etc, please contact me with them