Seventh Discussion @ Poppa Rollo's 10-12-05 @ 10:00pm

Topic of discussion - compositional ideas
(new piece ideas, new genres, new venue . . . )

Products of discussion:

Things to incorporate in pieces -

lighting
- real-time reaction with performers
- lasers
- keyboard controls lights as it would control sound

different types of staging and stages
- theaters in-the-round
- opposite of theaters in-the-round (performers on the outside with the audience in the middle)
- moving stages (stages that rotate with sound or pan to move performers and sound across a space)
- FYI - MCC has a complete theater in-the-round created by two rooms connected when a movable wall is opened

laptops as instruments
- all instrumentation in a piece is a form of a computer (the performer mixes and creates electronic sound just as any other instrumentalist would create sound with his or her traditional instrument)

whips
- philosophically a very interesting instrument considering it creates a sonic boom by its looped end accelerates to a speed past that of sound

smoke
- mess with sound waves (~like doppler effect)

audience
- in what ways can the audience be involved (actively participate) in the composition?

humor
- success of humor in music is dependant upon it being a short and light touch (it is when people try to reiterate a joke after it is already said that it is taken as juvenile or "lowly")

If we owned our own space, these are things we would want to keep in mind -

- black lights
- track speakers (like track lights, we could position them anywhere along the tracks)
- record video of performances or practices in space and put clips on the internet to promote

Sixth Discussion @ Poppa Rollo's 10-05-05 @ 10:00pm

Topic of discussion -

Music Notation

- graphic notation
- experimental notation
- how can we notate other than on paper?
- knowing more ways to notate music helps communicate how to reproduce the sonority a composer hears or has in mind (browse around the MT35 section of the Crouch Fine Arts Library to find books on musical notation including 20th century graphic notation)

Idea that notation is just a BLUEPRINT
This makes a great parallel between architects and composers
- two people using the same blueprint can construct identical buildings
[one can live in a building that is nothing but that represented on the blueprint - having no decorations, no furniture, no drywall, etc.; it would of course be a boring, dull, uninteresting place to live]
- it is how the two people decorate their space (that which the architect conceived) which gives it stimulation, life, and interest

In the English language, we call written notation (instructions) and performances (the audible) both "music." The German language desiphers the two more clearly so that written notation is called die noten (notes) and that heard is called die musik (music). Of course this begins to blend into last week's discussion on musicality and inspiration verses technique and craft.