June 23, 2006
New piece – preview
If you’re hopelessly bored — and if you’re checking this blog with any regularity, you probably are — check out the PDF of the first two full-score pages of the new piece. Thanks to Newman for his notation advice.
June 22, 2006
New tune
There’s no title yet — AEJ is working on that — but the new piece is essentially done. This is the piece that was due on March 1. I first pushed it to April 1, and then, once mid-March hit, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to write anything good in time, so I delayed it until fall. (One of AEJ’s title suggestions was simply “Late.”) I don’t think I’ve ever had this much difficulty writing a piece. You’ll notice that I almost never mentioned the piece here on the blog because the process was so slow and labored.
The first draft is done, as of last night, meaning there’s something happening — a close approximation of the final product — for the entire seven minutes. I think it’s pretty good. I kind of have the “this is the best thing I’ve ever done” feeling, but I think I have that for most pieces, and quickly realize that any given piece, in fact, blows.
Now I need to score it. I wrote it into a full score, which I almost never do, so it’s basically orchestrated, but a lot of things are for MIDI playback, not real people. The big climax currently uses 12 trombones and 16 French horns, for example. Cool if it’s for the Texas All-State band, but not so realistic in the rest of the world. There are also several percussion place-holders, like a tam-tam scrape where it’ll actually be bowed. So the next several days will be spent creating the full score.
On paper, this thing looks really easy, and would pass for a “Grade 3.” (That basically means not-good-high-school-band level.) It’s almost entirely 8th-notes or slower, and basically in 4/4 the whole time. It’s loaded with exposed delicate solos, though, and some of the dense harmony is going to be a bitch to tune. In other words, it could sound really, really bad if a bad band plays it. With a good band, though, I’m optimistic. Fortunately, the schools in the consortium are great, and one of them — James Logan High School — may be the best high school band I’ve ever heard. (It’s really their fault that the piece is this hard.)
I’m off to pour some coffee and get crackin’. After literally months of self-doubt about where this was going — and countless days spent thinking “maybe I should just transcribe an old piece” — the hard part is done!
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Congratulations on getting to this step of this piece, John. I can't wait to hear it. Hopefully, not on the marching field.... (You know how I am about your pieces out on the marching field.)
~C
Remember, the key to a good MS band piece is the title. Usually they contain three words. The first, is a color. The second word, typically is something in nature. And the third word could be a noun of some sort. For example:
Blue Ridge Saga
...or maybe "Red Lion Tango" perhaps?
(I literally could not resist that one...)
Congrats. I wish I were on that end of this piece I'm working on. I'm still at the "every idea I have sucks" stage.
Lookin' forward to hearing it, MackDaddy!
Daniel, I'm sure you're aware that Blue Ridge Saga is a Swearingen piece...
Looking forward to hearing it as well, John!
BRILLIANT STEVE!! JUST BRILLIANT!!!
And yes Kevin... I was hoping someone would get the joke.
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June 18, 2006
Chopping Mall
If you enjoy campy 80’s horror, you must see “Chopping Mall.” A horror movie filmed in 1986, they packed a fantastic amount of brilliance into those 77 minutes. The movie is about three new incredibly high tech (for 1986) security robots designed to patrol an LA shopping mall at night. They seem awfully expensive for this job, and curiously over-weaponized for scaring away teenagers, with their tazers, mechanical claws, explosives, and the ability to shoot laser beams out of their “eyes.” Essentially, they’re military-grade killer robots, programmed not to hurt anybody, so they’ll be safe for mall security. For some reason, though, they’re called “Killbots.” You can see where this is going.
The movie is set in LA (or rather a mall in LA), where it almost never even rains, but out of nowhere one night, there’s a crazy lightning storm. No rain, just insane lightning. Oh no! What will these sudden power surges do to the robots and the mall computers with which they share an interface?! It won’t turn the computers (which control the doors, locks, and elevators of the mall) evil, will it?
I was shocked when it did. But what could it matter, having security robot go bad after the mall closes? Well, I’ll tell you. It just happened that that very night, there was a party at the mall furniture store. An AFTER-HOURS PARTY! With TEEN-AGERS (presumably) who worked in the store. The furniture store aspect was brilliant, because otherwise, how would these kids have sex? If they have a party in the record store, sure, they have sweet 80s tunes, but it’s hard to get freaky in the cassette bin. No, this was the furniture store, so there were lots of beds (and, in a case of inexplicable set design given the intended demographic of the film, a $3000 Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman). The issue here is that it’s not an 80s horror movie without boobies. No worries; there would be boobies. (On really skanky chicks, but still — boobies!)
So the mall closes, a bunch of kids and their girlfriends stay after work at Furniture King to party, party, party (perhaps the lamest party ever, considering there are only eight people), three of the four couples get naked (since one couple — the nerdy smart couple, of course — does not, you immediately know who will be surviving until the end of the film), lightning strikes, one robot kills the guy who monitors the security system up in the “computer room,” one of the girls wants a cigarette but doesn’t have any, so she sends her boyfriend out into the mall for smokes. (To get him to come back soon, she flashes him. Oh, and there was also a little nudity in the locker room. At the mall. Because if you’ve ever had a job at a mall, you probably showered there.) The guy goes to the cigarette vending machine (remember those?) out in the darkened part of the mall, and surprise, a killbot kills him. His girlfriend, wondering where he’s been, goes looking for him, finds his dead body, and the murderous killbot. The killbot chases her, shooting lasers at her as she runs down the mall hallway. As she passes in front of the furniture store, where her friends are all watching through the glass doors, the killbot lands a laser blast right in the gal’s head, causing it to grotesquely explode. It was sweet. It was so good, I found the video. Click it to view.
The film goes on from there, with the three killbots chasing and killing the kids. The kids do manage to kill two killbots using supplies found at the sporting goods store and the auto supply shop (explosive propane tanks, flares, and a machine gun — it’s a really kick-ass sporting goods store).
Some other highlights:
* At one point, after seeing his girlfriend killed, a guy goes all kamikaze, screams insanely, and drives a golf cart into a robot. You really need to see it. (Sadly, I can’t find a video of that moment. Really, there are so many priceless moments…)
* A great line: “Let’s go send those *uckers a Rambogram!”
* Another great line: “It’s not you, Bernie. I guess I’m just not used to being chased around a mall at night by killer robots.” Amen, sister.
It’s available on DVD, but we saw it on Showtime. Don’t watch it alone — not because it’s actually scary, but because this is a film that must be watched with somebody special to be truly appreciated. ***** out of *****. Oh, and you can watch the entire trailer here.
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wow.
I loves me some boobies and a bit of the old ultra-violence...these damn public computers won't load the video of the exploding skank-head! Dammit!
killbots huh... sounds like a title to a marching band show that I can FINALLY add the under-rated dance, the Robot, too!!!
Dear John,
I tried many time to email you on your email address, but the emials still got returned. I hope you may receive this email!
Could you please tell me how to order "Rush Hour"? I hope to play the music for my percussion recital. I could pay by credit
card or any other form you wish, just hope to receive the music soon that I may start practicing. Thank you very much for your help in advance! You are
such an amazing composer!
My address:
11F, No. 115, ZILI Street,
Sindian City, Taipei County,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
Sincerely,
Pei-ching Wu
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Daniel Montoya, Jr. says
Looks really cool, can't wait to hear it. But I have a feeling due to the instrumentation, you're looking at an automatic Grade 4.
John Mackey says
Yeah, that's what Newman said, too. In addition to the instrumentation, it gets progressively more difficult. Lots of exposed solos, etc., and intonation problems like crazy. Oh well. Writing easy music is too damn hard.
Travis Taylor says
You certainly do like those Fortisisisismos don't you?
-Travis-
John Mackey says
Yeah! Fortisisisimos RULE! AEJ joked that I should just call the piece "FFFF."
I really just just wrote "F poss." to indicate loud-as-possible. Even with "FFFF," I still have to say to players, "no, louder."
But this piece has PPPP, too!
Daniel Montoya, Jr. says
...you could just write "p as soft as possible."
Newman says
I'm afraid it's not a 4, either. But that's hardly the point. It's MUSIC. And it's glorious stuff. Everyone will want to play this, no matter the "grade". Which will change depending on who you're talking to, and in what state they reside.
Kevin Howlett says
You could call it "F YOU!!!"
Thanks, I'll be here all week...
Daniel Montoya, Jr. says
True statement, Newm. Music is Music. I guess I've been the Texas PML mindset lately. Oh well...
Michael Markowski says
I see you were serious about the waterphone.... good luck with that! :D
Travis Taylor says
Might as well make a new record and make this number ten comment!
-Travis-
Cathy says
The conversation through most of these comments brings up a question I've had lately, now that I've been conversing with composers. When writing a band piece, do you ever have a "goal" of what grade or difficulty you want to write for? I would think that it really didn't matter; which is what this discussion pretty much says....
~C
Mark Steighner says
This will be really long...my apologies.
First, in regards to the new piece: by most commercial publishers' standards and guidnelines, the piece is probably a grade 4.5 or 5 or 5.5(judging from the first two pages of score and your descriptions). Why? Use of extreme dynamics, changing meters, unconventional notation, and orchestration that calls for things like contrabassoon...not to mention the technical demands of the pitches and rhythms and tuning. Now, if all of those instruments were cross-cued to account for missing or incomplete instrumentation, you could perhaps bring down the grade a little.
The grading system was developed by publishers to help their customers identify suitable music. Unfortunately, it has become something akin to a creative template that by and large results in uninspired, cookie-cutter music. I have a colleague who writes band music for Hal Leonard. Each year he is told to write "5 or 6 grade 2's or 3's" and he has a few months to complete the task. This year, he let the deadline slip and wrote all of the pieces in the space of 2 or 3 weeks. He could do this because he plugged into the formula: a grade 2 piece has x rhythms, x key signatures/modulations, x length, etc. Most commercial publishers literally have a specific set of instructions for changing the grade of a piece..."ok, let's make it a grade 3...make the B section in D major concert and add some eighth/sixteenth rhythms."
My point here, John, is that you are in an incredibly unique and lucky position of writing music for ensembles that can play virtually anything. How cool is it that you can follow your muse wherever it takes you?! Don't EVEN worry about the grade thing. (Now, if your consortium asked for a grade 3, you kinda missed the mark!)
Last thing: a few postings ago you described grade 3 music as that which is played by a "bad high school band." This sorta stuck in my metaphorical craw. Don't confuse quality of performance with difficulty of music. For one thing, despite what I noted above, a lot of great band music (for instance, the Holst and Vaughan Williams suites) is generally graded at 3.5 or 4. Does that make bands who play these works, "bad?" (if so, there are a lot of bad university bands) Due to many factors beyond our control, my bands here in Oregon must play mostly grade 3-4 pieces. Sure, we could play grade 5-6 music, but doing so wouldn't make us better, it would just be poorly played grade 5 music. I'd rather have my band play easier music so we *can* be a good band.
Final comment: if you want to check out some somewhat innovative "easy" band music (by composers with some real world cred, like Michael Colgrass), check out music in the BandQuest series (http://www.halleonard.com/bandQuest.jsp) If nothing else, for those in the collegiate/academic music world, it's interesting to note what the big commerical publishers think of as having integrity and innovation.
John Mackey says
Wow, I'd no idea any blog entry here would ever generate so many comments!
Briefly, to Mark -- that's not at all what I meant by "grade 3." Often, for this blog, because so many readers have no idea what a euphonium is, I have to simplify some of the music stuff to the most basic level. I can't say "Grade 3 maintains X range, with no leaps larger than Y, and instrumentation limited to Z." For people who don't know band, I went with the lazy description. A piece like "October" is supposedly a Grade 3, and although the technical demands aren't incredibly high, it requires great musicality. So if a band has those skills, they're not a "bad high school band." My mistake was using "bad" when I should have said "less-experienced" or "a high school band with a little less technique."
I also appreciate that players can't play a Grade 5 until they've played a Grade 4, 3, 2, and 1.
Plus, these grade things are silly, and depend on where the band is based. A middle school band in Japan is playing Redline Tango, but it's definitely not a grade 2/3! Japan is just freaky! (And speaking of my note above, they may have the technique, but will those 12-year olds in that middle school band have the musicality to make any music out of Redline Tango?)
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