Would You Pay $2,000 for a Domain Name?
I just purchased the domain name "ThorGunter.com" a couple of days ago, which I'm really excited about. There was some thought put into this as well as discussions with valuable friends regarding the name of the new site. I did quite a bit of searching around, and "ThorMusic.com" was technically "available", but only in the sense that the domain name was bought by some other company, and in return they are selling it for upwards of $2,000. I would have liked "ThorMusic.com" but I'm not going to pay $2,000 for it. The company also offers an installment plan where you can pay $200 a month or so for the domain name (you know, like a car payment). ThorGunter.com was available for a cheap price though, so ThorGunter.com it is! I considered ThorteinnGunter.com but was cautioned that people would have trouble remembering it and/or being able to spell it correctly when typing it into their browser.
For the time being, the new domain name re-directs to the Arctic Melodies website that I've had up for a few years. The next step is to design the new website. There was some decision-making and discussion also about whether I would use a template or try to design (or hire someone to design) the site via a Website editor or HTML coding. I won't go into boring details about what I decided to do, but I will say that for now I often can't even press the right buttons on my microwave, let alone figure out HTML coding.
Why The New Site, And What's On It?
The why has to do with the name "Arctic Melodies". The original intention behind this name was for it to be used as an independent record label, which I would use to publish my own music. And I can still do that. However, most successful soloists, from what I understand, use their own name as the brand name of their music. George Winston (American solo pianist) is just "George Winston" in concert, nothing else, and his website is, simply, GeorgeWinston.com. I think this is a better route to go as far as people remembering who I am. The "Arctic Melodies" label, which I may or may not keep, will just sort of be hanging out in the background. A name like "Arctic Melodies" also makes it sound more like a "company" where it's not just me but a bunch of others running the joint. People can get confused.
As far as the content of the site, some of it will definitely be the same as that of the Arctic Melodies site, but the new one will be more geared towards booking live concerts and providing information on CD's and music downloads. The other "services" that Arctic Melodies provides (piano lessons, piano accompaniment, lyric writing, etc.) will still be on the new site but probably not as obvious. Out of all the music students I had for the piano lesson services, only one of them found me on the Arctic Melodies website, and that was still after he first saw an ad for my lessons at The Music Connection. For most of my students the information about my lessons originally came from word-of-mouth.
I haven't provided a time frame or a date yet for when the website will be up and running, but I'm hoping soon, maybe in a few weeks. I already know how I want it designed and organized, so it's now just a matter of designing the webpages and arranging a photoshoot or two. Once it's up and running, my main task will be to fill the "events calendar" with actual events. That means taking time to promote myself locally.
New Recordings and the "Colors" of Instrumental Sounds
Again, I won't be getting into too many technical details about recording equipment or software, but I will be (and have been) re-recording some of the pieces from Heart of Storms as well as other songs that will be downloadable. After that there's the submission to CD Baby and then making sure all of this is available on iTunes. Many of the steps I'm taking are the result if ideas I got from reading the book How to Successfully Promote Your Music on the Internet, which I bought online from the author, David Nevue, who now makes a living doing exactly what I'm planning to do. I've read the book cover-to-cover and picked it apart to the last detail. I'm like one of these obsessed Biblical scholars that knows everything about the Bible, to the very last passage and very last verse -- but with that other book instead of the Bible.
Okay, getting back to the recordings. In addition to using a track for the piano parts, I sometimes add tracks that feature strings or other background instruments. I'm primarily a pianist, but some people know that I'm deeply interested in using other instruments, and one day writing a piece for a full orchestra. Yes, that's a lofty goal, and no I'm not ever going to back down from that goal. I used multiple instruments in very short pieces that I composed for the indie sci-fi film Terminal Glitch, directed by Joshua Siegel. Most of those pieces, though, also featured a piano track that blended in with the other instruments.
When it comes to piano being blended with background instruments I like to use the analogy of music as it is compared with a painting. A composer who writes music for a full orchestra is like a painter, and each instrument is like a different "color". French horns, flutes, violins, percussion instruments and clarinets all sound different and have different "flavors" of sound, just as the colors red, blue, orange, green, purple and turquoise all look different and have a different feel to them when certain colors are painted together or mixed.
When it comes to me using just a piano in a song, it's like doing a sketch with just pencil. A composer who writes solo piano pieces is like that sketch artist. But sometimes (often, actually) I like to experiment by using the other "colors". In Heart of Storms there will be some background tracks, mainly strings, but that's probably about it. Other albums will feature pieces where a piano and the sounds of a full orchestra are featured. One of the most satisfying creative experiences I've had is when I worked on the soundtrack for Terminal Glitch. The music clips are mostly just a minute or two long, but wow was it fun! I used brass (trumpets) in a piece for the first time, and I blended this with the timpani (kettle drums), strings, cellos, and piano on top of that. Sometimes it's just fun to play with "multiple colors" instead of just "sketching", although the piano is still my primary instrument and I will always use that as the main feature in my pieces. And I will always write solo piano pieces as well.
Did I Mention That A Song Is Like A Painting?
This analogy of music compared to art, by the way, is great for teaching music composition to kids. I tell students to imagine a painting of a woman standing in a field of trees. Or I'll just point to a painting if there happens to be one in the room. The woman in the painting would obviously be the "subject," and the field of trees can be thought of as the background. Music is often written the same way. The melody is the "subject" of a song, and the other notes (i.e. the bass notes or other patterns that are often played with the left hand for the piano, etc.), are the "background". The melody should "stand out" a little bit from the background, the same way that the subject in a painting should stand out a little bit. The background is there to support the subject. This is why the background in a piano piece should often be played slightly softer than the main melody (often played by the right hand). This analogy seems to work well with students I've had in the past, and even young kids seem to understand it to a significant capacity. If anything, it ties nicely into a famous quote by Leopold Stokowsky, who said that "A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Why Music is Incomplete Without a Background Story (Part 2)
"It's About Love" Is Not a Specific Topic!
Aside from introducing The Lost Enemy as a nearly-completed novella for exposure purposes, my reason for mentioning it as a supplement to three of my upcoming piano albums was to assert that story-telling and literature is deeply ingrained in music. I would even go so far as to say that music without a background story is not just incomplete but down-right inadequate. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but anytime I listen to a piece of music, regardless of the genre, whether it has lyrics or not, the following questions always come to my mind:
1) What, specifically, is this piece of music really about?
2) Why did the composer/songwriter write it?
3) What was the composer/songwriter feeling or thinking when he/she wrote it?
With regard to #1, I usually tend to be far more interested in a song if there's a specific meaning or background story behind it. I lose a lot of interest in a song when the composer responds with any of the following, or anything like it:
1) It's about sadness.
2) It's about a river.
3) It's about sticking up for yourself.
4) It's about a woman I fell in love with.
I'll be brutally honest. The four examples you see above are completely boring to me. Examples of songs that perk my interest and that I find fantastic are ones like these:
1) It's about a woman grieving the loss of her daughter, who got caught up in a rip tide at a beach one day and drowned.
2) It's about the feeling of humility I had one day when I visited a river to escape the stress from my job, and I came across an enormous waterfall, and the waterfall was so massive and so loud that the roaring sound was like the waves of an ocean.
3) It's about a time when I was in an abusive relationship, and after a huge fight I couldn't take it anymore and so I stormed out of the house and ran breathlessly in a random direction, in the middle of the night, and while I was running I could feel my tears blending in with the pouring rain. I then felt a huge sense of relief, knowing that I had just stood up to my abusive partner and left him for the very last time.
4) It's about a woman I met when I was at a house with a bunch of friends, and when the electricity went out they had to light a bunch of candles to see, and while we sat around a table and played cards I could see the candles reflected in the woman's eyes. While my friends were chit-chatting, I was completely oblivious to everything that was going on because I was so captivated by the candle-like glow in her eyes and how beautiful she was that night.
Now those are stories! Specific stories and experiences like these are what make the music meaningful. It doesn't really matter if it's fictional or true, or just partly true. What matters is that they are relatable and imaginable. This is the sort of stuff that, when you combine it with a well-written piece of music, can bring a person to tears. I'm a complete snob when it comes to this combination. Maybe even too much - I don't know. But I'm generally not that interested in a song if it doesn't have this specific of a story behind it. If the song is still well-written, my response will often be, "Well that's very nice, the music is very pretty, BUT... what's it really about?" I like to know a little something about the composer/songwriter, even if it's just about a brief feeling, emotion or experience. I think a lot of people like knowing this, because it's relatable.
Being Raised to Ask, "What's the Song About?"
I think this "story-behind-the-music" snobbishness that I have stems from how I was raised. And by that I mean how I was raised musically. I had quite a bit of exposure to different genres of music growing up (classical music, classic rock, 70's/80's, progressive rock, to name a few), but one of the things my father used to show me is what the music is really about. A great example is the famous band Pink Floyd, which I was exposed to a lot. In 1982, Alan Parker finished directing Pink Floyd: The Wall, a film that was based on the album with the same name. The film depicted the actual story behind the album. The story, by the way, is fantastic. It involves a deeply disturbed boy whose father died while fighting in World War II. It has children launching a revolt against an oppressive school system, with "Another Brick in the Wall" as the background song (and the kids are being fed into a meat grinder, which is an outstanding use of symbolism). It also shows the effects of an overprotective mother, among other things. The fact that these topics are dark, relatable and autobiographical are partly what I think made this album so popular. It has substance. What's more, the music itself is high-quality, original, and it stands out because it's different from the mainstream music of the time (as well as today's popular music, for that matter). This kind of combination is what good music is. The artistic quality of the animation in the film adds to this also. I could go on and on.
My assumption that a musical piece should always have a story behind it goes back even further, though. I remember being as young as ten, maybe younger, and my father was listening to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, a popular collection of classical music. At first I thought it was just a random collection of nice-sounding songs with violins, cellos, and a harpsichord, and I figured that the music was written just to make it "sound nice." But my dad pointed out that in one of the movements (the classical music equivalent of a "song") there was a story behind it, and what he told me was this:
The song is actually about a group of hunters on horseback, and they're chasing a fox because they're trying to hunt it. The fox is terrified and is trying to run away as fast as it can. Every time the orchestra plays, it represents the horsemen with their rifles chasing the fox. Every time the solo violin plays, it's the fox running away. (In the song, the solo violin and the orchestra go back and forth, alternately). Towards the end of the song, the solo violinist plays again but he slows down dramatically. This is the part where the fox gets so tired from running that it slows down and can't run anymore. The horsemen then shoot the fox, pick it up, and ride into the sunset.
When my father told me this, it completely changed the way I viewed the song. There was a mix of fascination and a deep sympathy for that poor fox (even though this is probably fictional). The song now had meaning. It actually made sense and was about something, and it was no longer just a random progression of pretty notes. Nowadays I expect all songs to have something attached to it that could be seen as at least somewhat meaningful, and if it doesn't, I consider the song to be incomplete.
I don't mean to say that music "isn't worth listening to" if it doesn't have a background story; I will still listen to it and enjoy it if it's well-written. Franz Schubert's famous piece Ave Maria, for example, is religiously-charged, but I still listen to it even though I'm not religious, simply because it's a gorgeous song to listen to. There still is nothing wrong with listening to a piece of music for the sheer beauty of it, and even in a song long Ave Maria one can appreciate any of its aspects (i.e. the song is also connected to the epic poem The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott).
Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940)
Another great example of how music is connected to literature is the 1940 release of Walt Disney's Fantasia, a film that features animated episodes and/or stories that are set to classical music. One of the most dramatic pieces in the film is Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. If you just listen to the music itself, you might think it's merely a collection of loud instrumental music with lots of dramatic melodies, cymbal crashes and loud brass progressions. But if you listen to it in conjunction with the story set in the film, you realize that it's about a grotesque monster terrorizing a village. If you research it further, you'll discover that the monster's attack takes place at a gathering of witches (called a "Witches' Sabbath") during a traditional summer solstice celebration that takes place in Russia. Mussorgsky was Russian, and so his music often reflects traditional Russian literature. Again, knowing the story and/or some of the history behind the music can make a difference, both in the enjoyment of the piece as well as the appreciation of the music itself. Not to mention the enormous amount of effort that the composer must have put into a piece like Night on Bald Mountain. Watch a piece like that being played on YouTube and ask yourself how long you think it took to compose a piece like that, and you will begin to really appreciate the amazing amount of work and patience that some of these classical composers put in.
One of the stories from Fantasia that also sticks in my mind is a piece called The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The music was written by a French composer named Paul Dukas, and the story behind it is based on an 18th-century poem by Johann Goethe. The story starts with the portrayal of a "sorcerer", a sort of wizard who clearly has supernatural powers. He uses these supernatural powers because of a magical "hat" that he wears. He has an apprentice, and the apprentice's mind-numbing job is to repeatedly fetch water in a pail. This apprentice is seen performing this boring task over and over, and at one point in the film he is temporarily left unsupervised. He's expected to perform this same job while the sorcerer is gone, but the apprentice gets so bored that he decides to try on the sorcerer's hat and play with his magical powers. This soon leads to complete chaos as the apprentice loses control. The situation gets completely out of hand, and in the midst of the chaos the sorcerer returns and catches his apprentice in the act. The music that accompanies this story is also very catchy, with a melody and a motif that "sticks in your head," timed perfectly with the animation in the film. What's especially brilliant about it is that there is absolutely no dialogue in the episode, yet it's very easy to tell exactly what's going on by the characters' actions, their body language, their facial expressions and by the changes in the music.
Again, I could go on and on with this. The connection between story-telling and music goes back in history for hundreds of years, and as someone who was brought up to be educated about it, it's just hard for me to imagine music without a story, an image, or a background experience of some kind.
Grassy Hikes, Freezing to Death, and Alcoholic Mothers
Having played the piano for a long time now, all of my compositions have always been "about" something, mainly because it never occurs to me to write music "just because". I write it to express something, or because something happened, or because some story inspired me, or because I saw something in a movie or a documentary that fascinated me, or because something sad, amazing, wonderful or tragic took place in my life. Sad events, such as break-ups, or deaths, are great inspiration for writing music. However, it's important in my opinion that the topics are specific, and not just about "being sad from a break-up". A composer is also free to exaggerate the experience when writing the song. Or just flat-out make up a story. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, just as a novelist is permitted (and often expected) to write a bunch of fiction that comes out of thin air.
In my case, every song I've written has either a story behind it, both true and fictional, or it conveys some experience I had. I wrote a piece called "Gales in the Summer Grass", which is simply about a time when I was walking in a field of grass, and a warm gusty wind erupted and caused the grass to ripple. It also made a sound similar to that of wind-swept trees. That's it. A few songs, like this one, are just about brief experiences like these and they don't necessarily have to have the beginning-middle-end formula of an actual story.
Other songs I've composed, however, are far more specific. After watching the movie Into the Wild, for example, I ended up composing a song called "Freezing by Sterling's Brook," and it's about a man who gets lost in the wilderness, collapses next to a river, and freezes to death. Yes, it's dark and a little depressing, but it has substance. It's juicy. It's something that makes people feel something in their chest. That's what you want. A topic such as "It's about being sad" has absolutely no effect on most people (although the music itself could very well be breathtaking if it's well-written).
The story of the man freezing to death is fictional, while the film Into the Wild is based on real events. An example of a song based on a true story is a piece I wrote called "Midnight in the Sleet." It's about a kid who decides to run away from home because of his alcoholic mother, and he ends up missing for several days. He is then found sleeping in the corner of a building and shivering during the night. I wrote this piece because it's based on real events, and the kid who ran away from home was one of my neighbors, and a close friend. This obviously affected me enough to write a song about it. Again, substance.
That's Your Song Title? Really?
Keeping in mind the argument that "specific stories are good stories" for music, I tend to make very specific song titles as well. I cringe at titles like "My True Love." That kind of a title, to me, is just too general. Tell me something about her! Something like "The Glitter in Anaya's Hair" is much better. We don't have a clue who Anaya is but it's still good -- it makes us wonder who she is and it opens up our imagination, making us picture what she might be like when we try to imagine this character.
Titles like "Ocean" or "Stars" are okay, but they're general too and to me a tad mediocre. "Ocean at Sunset" is better, although it's very cliché. Something like "Ocean's Wrath on Kodiak Island", on the other hand, is outstanding. That's because it's specific and it's an actual place. Again, we might not be familiar with the name of the island but that doesn't always matter. It's specific and it also describes the ocean. Yes, personifying the ocean ("Ocean's Wrath...") is a bit cliché as well, but I still like it.
I don't judge a book by its cover, though. The American pianist George Winston did actually write a song called "Stars" and it's actually a great piece. I just think that "Stars in the Skies of ____________"(enter name of a place here) would be better.
An example of an actual title that I think is great is a song called "The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter," which is a solo guitar piece by William Ackerman. Notice how specific the title is. It immediately makes you wonder who this daughter is, and right away we know her father's profession. It doesn't really matter that we don't know why it's important that her father is a bricklayer (or in what way his daughter is "beautiful") - what's important is that the composer clearly wrote the piece based on a feeling and/or experience he had that probably involved a real situation, and real people. That's what makes the piece powerful, and that the music happens to be intricately written and beautiful to listen to as a result. This also suggests that the composer was probably thinking about her when he wrote it.
Wait... Jurassic Park Has Dinosaurs?
Needless to say, the little experience I have (and definitely want more of) in composing soundtracks for movies has a lot to do with this pickiness that I have for substance behind a piece of music. So far I've been involved in three independent film projects that I wrote soundtracks for. This only contributed to the effect I have when I watch movies in general. When I watch regular Hollywood films in the theater, for example, I am sometimes distracted from the plot because I'm so busy enjoying and picking apart the music in the soundtrack while watching it. I had to watch Jurassic Park twice because I was so captivated every time I heard the beautiful melody in that soundtrack by John Williams. I had to watch it a second time to follow the plot. I often joke with people and tell them that eventually I realized the movie had something to do with dinosaurs.
So the next time you've written a song and you want to play it for me, you'll have a better idea of what I'm asking when I say "What is it about?" I like to know what really affects people, what makes people smile, what makes people cry, what people deeply care about. I like hearing other people's songs, what they're about and why people wrote them. Life is rich with experiences, often with intense ones, and communicating them through a blend of music and story-telling is a really enjoyable and beautiful way to do it.
Aside from introducing The Lost Enemy as a nearly-completed novella for exposure purposes, my reason for mentioning it as a supplement to three of my upcoming piano albums was to assert that story-telling and literature is deeply ingrained in music. I would even go so far as to say that music without a background story is not just incomplete but down-right inadequate. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but anytime I listen to a piece of music, regardless of the genre, whether it has lyrics or not, the following questions always come to my mind:
1) What, specifically, is this piece of music really about?
2) Why did the composer/songwriter write it?
3) What was the composer/songwriter feeling or thinking when he/she wrote it?
With regard to #1, I usually tend to be far more interested in a song if there's a specific meaning or background story behind it. I lose a lot of interest in a song when the composer responds with any of the following, or anything like it:
1) It's about sadness.
2) It's about a river.
3) It's about sticking up for yourself.
4) It's about a woman I fell in love with.
I'll be brutally honest. The four examples you see above are completely boring to me. Examples of songs that perk my interest and that I find fantastic are ones like these:
1) It's about a woman grieving the loss of her daughter, who got caught up in a rip tide at a beach one day and drowned.
2) It's about the feeling of humility I had one day when I visited a river to escape the stress from my job, and I came across an enormous waterfall, and the waterfall was so massive and so loud that the roaring sound was like the waves of an ocean.
3) It's about a time when I was in an abusive relationship, and after a huge fight I couldn't take it anymore and so I stormed out of the house and ran breathlessly in a random direction, in the middle of the night, and while I was running I could feel my tears blending in with the pouring rain. I then felt a huge sense of relief, knowing that I had just stood up to my abusive partner and left him for the very last time.
4) It's about a woman I met when I was at a house with a bunch of friends, and when the electricity went out they had to light a bunch of candles to see, and while we sat around a table and played cards I could see the candles reflected in the woman's eyes. While my friends were chit-chatting, I was completely oblivious to everything that was going on because I was so captivated by the candle-like glow in her eyes and how beautiful she was that night.
Now those are stories! Specific stories and experiences like these are what make the music meaningful. It doesn't really matter if it's fictional or true, or just partly true. What matters is that they are relatable and imaginable. This is the sort of stuff that, when you combine it with a well-written piece of music, can bring a person to tears. I'm a complete snob when it comes to this combination. Maybe even too much - I don't know. But I'm generally not that interested in a song if it doesn't have this specific of a story behind it. If the song is still well-written, my response will often be, "Well that's very nice, the music is very pretty, BUT... what's it really about?" I like to know a little something about the composer/songwriter, even if it's just about a brief feeling, emotion or experience. I think a lot of people like knowing this, because it's relatable.
Being Raised to Ask, "What's the Song About?"
I think this "story-behind-the-music" snobbishness that I have stems from how I was raised. And by that I mean how I was raised musically. I had quite a bit of exposure to different genres of music growing up (classical music, classic rock, 70's/80's, progressive rock, to name a few), but one of the things my father used to show me is what the music is really about. A great example is the famous band Pink Floyd, which I was exposed to a lot. In 1982, Alan Parker finished directing Pink Floyd: The Wall, a film that was based on the album with the same name. The film depicted the actual story behind the album. The story, by the way, is fantastic. It involves a deeply disturbed boy whose father died while fighting in World War II. It has children launching a revolt against an oppressive school system, with "Another Brick in the Wall" as the background song (and the kids are being fed into a meat grinder, which is an outstanding use of symbolism). It also shows the effects of an overprotective mother, among other things. The fact that these topics are dark, relatable and autobiographical are partly what I think made this album so popular. It has substance. What's more, the music itself is high-quality, original, and it stands out because it's different from the mainstream music of the time (as well as today's popular music, for that matter). This kind of combination is what good music is. The artistic quality of the animation in the film adds to this also. I could go on and on.
My assumption that a musical piece should always have a story behind it goes back even further, though. I remember being as young as ten, maybe younger, and my father was listening to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, a popular collection of classical music. At first I thought it was just a random collection of nice-sounding songs with violins, cellos, and a harpsichord, and I figured that the music was written just to make it "sound nice." But my dad pointed out that in one of the movements (the classical music equivalent of a "song") there was a story behind it, and what he told me was this:
The song is actually about a group of hunters on horseback, and they're chasing a fox because they're trying to hunt it. The fox is terrified and is trying to run away as fast as it can. Every time the orchestra plays, it represents the horsemen with their rifles chasing the fox. Every time the solo violin plays, it's the fox running away. (In the song, the solo violin and the orchestra go back and forth, alternately). Towards the end of the song, the solo violinist plays again but he slows down dramatically. This is the part where the fox gets so tired from running that it slows down and can't run anymore. The horsemen then shoot the fox, pick it up, and ride into the sunset.
 |
| Antonio Vivaldi |
I don't mean to say that music "isn't worth listening to" if it doesn't have a background story; I will still listen to it and enjoy it if it's well-written. Franz Schubert's famous piece Ave Maria, for example, is religiously-charged, but I still listen to it even though I'm not religious, simply because it's a gorgeous song to listen to. There still is nothing wrong with listening to a piece of music for the sheer beauty of it, and even in a song long Ave Maria one can appreciate any of its aspects (i.e. the song is also connected to the epic poem The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott).
Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940)
Another great example of how music is connected to literature is the 1940 release of Walt Disney's Fantasia, a film that features animated episodes and/or stories that are set to classical music. One of the most dramatic pieces in the film is Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. If you just listen to the music itself, you might think it's merely a collection of loud instrumental music with lots of dramatic melodies, cymbal crashes and loud brass progressions. But if you listen to it in conjunction with the story set in the film, you realize that it's about a grotesque monster terrorizing a village. If you research it further, you'll discover that the monster's attack takes place at a gathering of witches (called a "Witches' Sabbath") during a traditional summer solstice celebration that takes place in Russia. Mussorgsky was Russian, and so his music often reflects traditional Russian literature. Again, knowing the story and/or some of the history behind the music can make a difference, both in the enjoyment of the piece as well as the appreciation of the music itself. Not to mention the enormous amount of effort that the composer must have put into a piece like Night on Bald Mountain. Watch a piece like that being played on YouTube and ask yourself how long you think it took to compose a piece like that, and you will begin to really appreciate the amazing amount of work and patience that some of these classical composers put in.
 |
| An animated depiction of the villain from Night on Bald Mountain, from the Walt Disney production Fantasia |
One of the stories from Fantasia that also sticks in my mind is a piece called The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The music was written by a French composer named Paul Dukas, and the story behind it is based on an 18th-century poem by Johann Goethe. The story starts with the portrayal of a "sorcerer", a sort of wizard who clearly has supernatural powers. He uses these supernatural powers because of a magical "hat" that he wears. He has an apprentice, and the apprentice's mind-numbing job is to repeatedly fetch water in a pail. This apprentice is seen performing this boring task over and over, and at one point in the film he is temporarily left unsupervised. He's expected to perform this same job while the sorcerer is gone, but the apprentice gets so bored that he decides to try on the sorcerer's hat and play with his magical powers. This soon leads to complete chaos as the apprentice loses control. The situation gets completely out of hand, and in the midst of the chaos the sorcerer returns and catches his apprentice in the act. The music that accompanies this story is also very catchy, with a melody and a motif that "sticks in your head," timed perfectly with the animation in the film. What's especially brilliant about it is that there is absolutely no dialogue in the episode, yet it's very easy to tell exactly what's going on by the characters' actions, their body language, their facial expressions and by the changes in the music.
Again, I could go on and on with this. The connection between story-telling and music goes back in history for hundreds of years, and as someone who was brought up to be educated about it, it's just hard for me to imagine music without a story, an image, or a background experience of some kind.
Grassy Hikes, Freezing to Death, and Alcoholic Mothers
Having played the piano for a long time now, all of my compositions have always been "about" something, mainly because it never occurs to me to write music "just because". I write it to express something, or because something happened, or because some story inspired me, or because I saw something in a movie or a documentary that fascinated me, or because something sad, amazing, wonderful or tragic took place in my life. Sad events, such as break-ups, or deaths, are great inspiration for writing music. However, it's important in my opinion that the topics are specific, and not just about "being sad from a break-up". A composer is also free to exaggerate the experience when writing the song. Or just flat-out make up a story. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, just as a novelist is permitted (and often expected) to write a bunch of fiction that comes out of thin air.
In my case, every song I've written has either a story behind it, both true and fictional, or it conveys some experience I had. I wrote a piece called "Gales in the Summer Grass", which is simply about a time when I was walking in a field of grass, and a warm gusty wind erupted and caused the grass to ripple. It also made a sound similar to that of wind-swept trees. That's it. A few songs, like this one, are just about brief experiences like these and they don't necessarily have to have the beginning-middle-end formula of an actual story.
Other songs I've composed, however, are far more specific. After watching the movie Into the Wild, for example, I ended up composing a song called "Freezing by Sterling's Brook," and it's about a man who gets lost in the wilderness, collapses next to a river, and freezes to death. Yes, it's dark and a little depressing, but it has substance. It's juicy. It's something that makes people feel something in their chest. That's what you want. A topic such as "It's about being sad" has absolutely no effect on most people (although the music itself could very well be breathtaking if it's well-written).
The story of the man freezing to death is fictional, while the film Into the Wild is based on real events. An example of a song based on a true story is a piece I wrote called "Midnight in the Sleet." It's about a kid who decides to run away from home because of his alcoholic mother, and he ends up missing for several days. He is then found sleeping in the corner of a building and shivering during the night. I wrote this piece because it's based on real events, and the kid who ran away from home was one of my neighbors, and a close friend. This obviously affected me enough to write a song about it. Again, substance.
That's Your Song Title? Really?
Keeping in mind the argument that "specific stories are good stories" for music, I tend to make very specific song titles as well. I cringe at titles like "My True Love." That kind of a title, to me, is just too general. Tell me something about her! Something like "The Glitter in Anaya's Hair" is much better. We don't have a clue who Anaya is but it's still good -- it makes us wonder who she is and it opens up our imagination, making us picture what she might be like when we try to imagine this character.
Titles like "Ocean" or "Stars" are okay, but they're general too and to me a tad mediocre. "Ocean at Sunset" is better, although it's very cliché. Something like "Ocean's Wrath on Kodiak Island", on the other hand, is outstanding. That's because it's specific and it's an actual place. Again, we might not be familiar with the name of the island but that doesn't always matter. It's specific and it also describes the ocean. Yes, personifying the ocean ("Ocean's Wrath...") is a bit cliché as well, but I still like it.
I don't judge a book by its cover, though. The American pianist George Winston did actually write a song called "Stars" and it's actually a great piece. I just think that "Stars in the Skies of ____________"(enter name of a place here) would be better.
 |
| George Winston |
An example of an actual title that I think is great is a song called "The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter," which is a solo guitar piece by William Ackerman. Notice how specific the title is. It immediately makes you wonder who this daughter is, and right away we know her father's profession. It doesn't really matter that we don't know why it's important that her father is a bricklayer (or in what way his daughter is "beautiful") - what's important is that the composer clearly wrote the piece based on a feeling and/or experience he had that probably involved a real situation, and real people. That's what makes the piece powerful, and that the music happens to be intricately written and beautiful to listen to as a result. This also suggests that the composer was probably thinking about her when he wrote it.
Wait... Jurassic Park Has Dinosaurs?
Needless to say, the little experience I have (and definitely want more of) in composing soundtracks for movies has a lot to do with this pickiness that I have for substance behind a piece of music. So far I've been involved in three independent film projects that I wrote soundtracks for. This only contributed to the effect I have when I watch movies in general. When I watch regular Hollywood films in the theater, for example, I am sometimes distracted from the plot because I'm so busy enjoying and picking apart the music in the soundtrack while watching it. I had to watch Jurassic Park twice because I was so captivated every time I heard the beautiful melody in that soundtrack by John Williams. I had to watch it a second time to follow the plot. I often joke with people and tell them that eventually I realized the movie had something to do with dinosaurs.
So the next time you've written a song and you want to play it for me, you'll have a better idea of what I'm asking when I say "What is it about?" I like to know what really affects people, what makes people smile, what makes people cry, what people deeply care about. I like hearing other people's songs, what they're about and why people wrote them. Life is rich with experiences, often with intense ones, and communicating them through a blend of music and story-telling is a really enjoyable and beautiful way to do it.
Why Music Is Incomplete Without a Background Story (Part 1)
The title I used for this blog post (above) is exactly what it looks like: a definitive claim that I'm making about music. I decided to make this the topic of today's post because I am in the finishing stages of a narrative poem I wrote, which has now morphed into prose and has turned into a novella. It's a result of working on this project for about six years and refining it, again and again, not out of dissatisfaction but more out of sheer joy and the fun of playing around with it. The point I want to make about this, though, is that this started out as a music project, and not as a literature project.
Why I Decided to Create a Villain
The idea, originally, was that I would record a piano album of about 10 tracks or so, and in the CD case would also be a collection of poems. There would be one short poem for each track (song) in the CD. The origins of this idea are rooted in nothing more than the fact that I have always believed that story-telling, poetry and literature should be deeply ingrained in music. I'll be touching more on that in "Part 2" of this blog post.
In any case, after I had thought about the "One poem per song" idea for the CD, I then thought, "How cool would it be if the poems all connected and told a story?" Many of the songs I've written are about my memories of living in Iceland, and so my first thought was to have the poetry collection be about a young man who takes a trip to Iceland to "embrace his roots".
This was intended to be the foundation of this project for quite some time... until another idea was pitched to me. And I have to give credit where credit is due, obviously, because I don't know if this next idea would even have emerged without an old friend, but my buddy Samuel DeLong observed one day that the current version of my story was too "bland", too uneventful, that it was missing something. I distinctly remember him saying, "You need a villain. You need a bad guy." Sometimes a story just needs a little spice. And I think he was right.
The Story's Initial Development
I spent weeks contemplating this, and I asked myself, "What possible 'bad guy' could there be in a place like Iceland?" Then one day it hit me: A young man goes back to Iceland to seek revenge against his childhood bully.
This became the central conflict that would drive the plot of this story. There are SOME autobiographical elements to this in the sense that, yes, there was a bully who used to pick on me when I was a kid, but the severity of the bullying and the victim's anger in the story are both grossly exaggerated in order to make the story more dramatic. When I taught middle school English a few years ago I was involved in the school district's safety committee, and I participated in anti-bullying programs that helped reduce bullying incidents on elementary and junior high school campuses. It was my way of trying to "give back" to the community and responding (in some therapeutic way) to those experiences I had as a kid. Either way, I figured that returning to one's homeland to seek out an enemy could be a cool plot for a story, and so it stuck.
The six or so years that I've worked on this project have involved not only the revising and re-arranging of the story itself, but also composing, re-arranging and morphing the music that goes with it. Throughout this process, the story went from 10 poems to a total of 33 poems (what can I say? I added stuff. You know, a love interest, another character, a couple of sub-plots, etc. So sue me ;) ) As a result, I had to dig up, re-arrange, and/or compose a total of 33 piano pieces to go with these individual poems. As you might imagine, 33 songs is a lot to try to fit onto one CD, so I had to make the album span over 3 CD's, like a "trilogy", the first one containing 10 tracks, the second one containing another 10, and the third one containing 13 tracks. By now I'm guessing you can see why it has taken a while to put this project together. (And by the way, the only way I can describe my experience in doing all of this, is WOW was it fun!).
Poetry to Prose
At some point, after proofreading the draft of the poetry collection several times, I began to have mixed feelings about the poetry itself. Poems can be fun, but to me they can sometimes start to sound "hokey" if there is too much of it. This seems to be a common reaction. Poetry can be beautiful if it's well-written and not clichéd, but at the same time, some people feel that too much poetry can start to sound pretentious, especially if the poems follow a lot of the traditional formats and devices (such as rhyming and a constant overuse of meter, making it sound like a Dr. Seuss book). In response to this, I first experimented by alternating back and forth, having one chapter (or "song") be a piece of prose while the next one be a poem, and so forth. But that just seemed confusing. So I ended up taking the entire manuscript and morphing it into prose. The end result is an 80-page novella containing 33 chapters, each chapter being associated with a song on the CD's. There is still poetry "embedded" within the prose, though, which makes for a new and interesting style that I've never tried when it comes to creative writing.
I do plan on releasing all three CD's some day, and publishing the novella. My idea regarding the combination of these two art forms is that I would provide excerpts of the novella in the leaflets of the CD cases. The listeners, if they want, can read the excerpts as they're listening to the songs. I can't fit the entire novella into the CD cases because it's too long (I've checked). Even if I divide the novella up into the three parts to make them fit each CD, it would probably still be a little too much. Those who have the three CD's will just have to read the excerpts and buy the novella if they want to read the entire story. :)
FYI, I don't plan to stop writing poetry when it comes to other projects. It can still be fun, inspirational and effective when used in small doses.
Another end result of this project is not just that it turned into a novella, but, because it used to be a collection of poems, the prose itself is unusual. Whether or not it's a "good" or "bad" unusual remains to be seen, as I am just now starting to have others read it to give me some constructive feedback. But the fact is that the prose is very "flowery," poetic and metaphorical, and somewhat archaic-sounding, because of what it used to be. The title of the novella is The Lost Enemy. And no, I'm not telling you how the story ends. No spoilers!
Now, believe it or not, my reason for even revealing any of this is partially to make a point about the importance of story-telling and its vital connection to music. Hence the title above. And given the length of this blog post I will announce this as the conclusion of Part 1. If you're interested in more information about why I believe story-telling and literature is so crucial to music, then go to Part 2. I figure that if you've read this much of the blog then you are interested enough in the subject. Either that or you have way too much time on your hands.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 2
Why I Decided to Create a Villain
The idea, originally, was that I would record a piano album of about 10 tracks or so, and in the CD case would also be a collection of poems. There would be one short poem for each track (song) in the CD. The origins of this idea are rooted in nothing more than the fact that I have always believed that story-telling, poetry and literature should be deeply ingrained in music. I'll be touching more on that in "Part 2" of this blog post.
In any case, after I had thought about the "One poem per song" idea for the CD, I then thought, "How cool would it be if the poems all connected and told a story?" Many of the songs I've written are about my memories of living in Iceland, and so my first thought was to have the poetry collection be about a young man who takes a trip to Iceland to "embrace his roots".
This was intended to be the foundation of this project for quite some time... until another idea was pitched to me. And I have to give credit where credit is due, obviously, because I don't know if this next idea would even have emerged without an old friend, but my buddy Samuel DeLong observed one day that the current version of my story was too "bland", too uneventful, that it was missing something. I distinctly remember him saying, "You need a villain. You need a bad guy." Sometimes a story just needs a little spice. And I think he was right.
The Story's Initial Development
I spent weeks contemplating this, and I asked myself, "What possible 'bad guy' could there be in a place like Iceland?" Then one day it hit me: A young man goes back to Iceland to seek revenge against his childhood bully.
This became the central conflict that would drive the plot of this story. There are SOME autobiographical elements to this in the sense that, yes, there was a bully who used to pick on me when I was a kid, but the severity of the bullying and the victim's anger in the story are both grossly exaggerated in order to make the story more dramatic. When I taught middle school English a few years ago I was involved in the school district's safety committee, and I participated in anti-bullying programs that helped reduce bullying incidents on elementary and junior high school campuses. It was my way of trying to "give back" to the community and responding (in some therapeutic way) to those experiences I had as a kid. Either way, I figured that returning to one's homeland to seek out an enemy could be a cool plot for a story, and so it stuck.
The six or so years that I've worked on this project have involved not only the revising and re-arranging of the story itself, but also composing, re-arranging and morphing the music that goes with it. Throughout this process, the story went from 10 poems to a total of 33 poems (what can I say? I added stuff. You know, a love interest, another character, a couple of sub-plots, etc. So sue me ;) ) As a result, I had to dig up, re-arrange, and/or compose a total of 33 piano pieces to go with these individual poems. As you might imagine, 33 songs is a lot to try to fit onto one CD, so I had to make the album span over 3 CD's, like a "trilogy", the first one containing 10 tracks, the second one containing another 10, and the third one containing 13 tracks. By now I'm guessing you can see why it has taken a while to put this project together. (And by the way, the only way I can describe my experience in doing all of this, is WOW was it fun!).
Poetry to Prose
At some point, after proofreading the draft of the poetry collection several times, I began to have mixed feelings about the poetry itself. Poems can be fun, but to me they can sometimes start to sound "hokey" if there is too much of it. This seems to be a common reaction. Poetry can be beautiful if it's well-written and not clichéd, but at the same time, some people feel that too much poetry can start to sound pretentious, especially if the poems follow a lot of the traditional formats and devices (such as rhyming and a constant overuse of meter, making it sound like a Dr. Seuss book). In response to this, I first experimented by alternating back and forth, having one chapter (or "song") be a piece of prose while the next one be a poem, and so forth. But that just seemed confusing. So I ended up taking the entire manuscript and morphing it into prose. The end result is an 80-page novella containing 33 chapters, each chapter being associated with a song on the CD's. There is still poetry "embedded" within the prose, though, which makes for a new and interesting style that I've never tried when it comes to creative writing.
I do plan on releasing all three CD's some day, and publishing the novella. My idea regarding the combination of these two art forms is that I would provide excerpts of the novella in the leaflets of the CD cases. The listeners, if they want, can read the excerpts as they're listening to the songs. I can't fit the entire novella into the CD cases because it's too long (I've checked). Even if I divide the novella up into the three parts to make them fit each CD, it would probably still be a little too much. Those who have the three CD's will just have to read the excerpts and buy the novella if they want to read the entire story. :)
FYI, I don't plan to stop writing poetry when it comes to other projects. It can still be fun, inspirational and effective when used in small doses.
Another end result of this project is not just that it turned into a novella, but, because it used to be a collection of poems, the prose itself is unusual. Whether or not it's a "good" or "bad" unusual remains to be seen, as I am just now starting to have others read it to give me some constructive feedback. But the fact is that the prose is very "flowery," poetic and metaphorical, and somewhat archaic-sounding, because of what it used to be. The title of the novella is The Lost Enemy. And no, I'm not telling you how the story ends. No spoilers!
Now, believe it or not, my reason for even revealing any of this is partially to make a point about the importance of story-telling and its vital connection to music. Hence the title above. And given the length of this blog post I will announce this as the conclusion of Part 1. If you're interested in more information about why I believe story-telling and literature is so crucial to music, then go to Part 2. I figure that if you've read this much of the blog then you are interested enough in the subject. Either that or you have way too much time on your hands.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 2
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Sound, Recordings, Live Shows, and a Mailing List
I performed at Wine Time Restaurant in Chico last Saturday, and had wonderful show - a group of delightfully fun and entertaining friends came and supported. I've played at this venue at least five times now, and for the first time ever during these shows, when I played last week, I had a bit of an issue with the sound, simply because there was such a large crowd that night (much more than usual) and I found myself struggling a little to be heard of over the chatter. I normally just use a mini-amp and a mic that attaches to the speakers on my digital piano, and that's normally more than enough. So, as a result, I may invest in a PA and/or a soundboard for these types of situations (especially if I'm going to start playing in larger venues), so if any techno-savvy folks out there have recommendations, they are always welcome!
I recently moved, and I now have a TINY place of my own (as opposed to living with roommates) and will be using that to test some of my recording equipment. Aside from a little laziness that I need to kick out of my lifestyle completely, the only reason why my recordings are not on iTunes or Amazon is because I am being picky about the sound quality. I've been given to understand, and completely agree with, the notion that quality recordings can actually "make or break" people's reaction to a person's music, even if it's subconscious. I've scheduled myself to start some of the sound testing and/or recording tonight, as well as tomorrow (1/17/06) before heading up to Quincy for a day to spend with my Dad. More YouTube videos will be uploaded too, and I plan to share them with friends, in hopes to spread the word. By the way, those of you who are spreading the word around already... THANK YOU!!! :)
I have to say I consider myself pretty lucky that I have friends who are "techno-geeks". If it wasn't for them, my current website would probably not be as fancy and slick as it is, and at this time I'm in the stages of planning to build (and building) a brand new second website, which will be used ONLY as an artist's website for my music, catered mainly to people who are interested in live performances and buying CD's. The current one is the official site for Arctic Melodies, which is a business that I started which offers many services under that one umbrella (including piano lessons). Speaking of live performances, for those who have been kind enough to listen to my music, I do offer "house" concerts if you have fans you want to invite. And yes, I can also come over just to visit!
I'm excited about prospects for 2016, even though I know it's going to be a lot of work, and a lot of self-educating with regard to technology. I've known for a long time by now that an Internet presence these days is one of the essential/key elements to success in this particular endeavor. That being said, my day job does get in the way, and that can be annoying. But this blog is a good way of keeping myself focused on the steps I need to take, and the more readers/subscribers I get the better! In future blogs I'll also be updating people on information about my Mailing List and discussion forums that I intend to start. I can get more into that in future posts, but for now I'll still make a point to say that, YES, people on this Mailing List would get discounts on CD's and live shows.
Thanks again for taking the time to read these posts. Feedback, thoughts, comments and questions, by the way, are always appreciated too!
Thorsteinn
I recently moved, and I now have a TINY place of my own (as opposed to living with roommates) and will be using that to test some of my recording equipment. Aside from a little laziness that I need to kick out of my lifestyle completely, the only reason why my recordings are not on iTunes or Amazon is because I am being picky about the sound quality. I've been given to understand, and completely agree with, the notion that quality recordings can actually "make or break" people's reaction to a person's music, even if it's subconscious. I've scheduled myself to start some of the sound testing and/or recording tonight, as well as tomorrow (1/17/06) before heading up to Quincy for a day to spend with my Dad. More YouTube videos will be uploaded too, and I plan to share them with friends, in hopes to spread the word. By the way, those of you who are spreading the word around already... THANK YOU!!! :)
I have to say I consider myself pretty lucky that I have friends who are "techno-geeks". If it wasn't for them, my current website would probably not be as fancy and slick as it is, and at this time I'm in the stages of planning to build (and building) a brand new second website, which will be used ONLY as an artist's website for my music, catered mainly to people who are interested in live performances and buying CD's. The current one is the official site for Arctic Melodies, which is a business that I started which offers many services under that one umbrella (including piano lessons). Speaking of live performances, for those who have been kind enough to listen to my music, I do offer "house" concerts if you have fans you want to invite. And yes, I can also come over just to visit!
I'm excited about prospects for 2016, even though I know it's going to be a lot of work, and a lot of self-educating with regard to technology. I've known for a long time by now that an Internet presence these days is one of the essential/key elements to success in this particular endeavor. That being said, my day job does get in the way, and that can be annoying. But this blog is a good way of keeping myself focused on the steps I need to take, and the more readers/subscribers I get the better! In future blogs I'll also be updating people on information about my Mailing List and discussion forums that I intend to start. I can get more into that in future posts, but for now I'll still make a point to say that, YES, people on this Mailing List would get discounts on CD's and live shows.
Thanks again for taking the time to read these posts. Feedback, thoughts, comments and questions, by the way, are always appreciated too!
Thorsteinn
Monday, January 4, 2016
Thorsteinn's Maiden Blog...
That being said, THANK YOU! for taking the time to read this post. I've had some success in booking live performances in Chico, and I plan to continue doing so - in the mean time, building an Internet presence is an equal priority. My account on this blogging site is one of the first steps in that direction, so in the weeks to come I will have more information on updates, performances, recordings, etc.
For those who may not know me (or only know me a little) I would be thrilled to get together and network, collaborate, talk about new ideas and projects, etc., as one of my many goals in the posting of these blogs is to be approachable.
For the time being, consider this blog an "introductory" post and just me reaching out and saying "Hi!" Info about gigs, website updates (www.arcticmelodies.com), discoveries of inspiring articles and/or music that I find, etc., will be posted soon. Hope to hear from you!
Oh and I guess we're officially in 2016 now, too. So... Happy New Year! :)
Thorsteinn
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