A Look Under The Hood #2
Last year I posted the first (and, until this, the only) entry of A Look Under The Hood, which serves as a behind-the-scenes view of what I do as a multimedia creative. In that post, I wrote about a method of composing music which I was developing. This post is a continuation of that topic.
A Li’l Preamble
Circa 2012. I was a senior in high school and discovered the existence of graphic notation in music. I like the weird and the unorthodox, so naturally I took a liking to the concept of non-standard music notation.
While in college, I explored the topic further and would visit the campus library to take a look at the avant-garde music scores (this one in particular). To my delight, there was a nice selection to peruse.
Eric Whitacre’s Emotional Architecture for “Deep Field.”
In the fall of 2015, I had the great opportunity to attend a choral musicians’ symposium at a neighboring college. The symposium was headlined by Eric Whitacre, a prominent choral composer. One of the clinics he gave focused on his process of composing. Whitacre presented an abstract outline of his piece, “Deep Field.” He referred to this part of his process as creating the “Emotional Architecture,” which is his way of visualizing or making sense of what he wanted a new piece of music to be in the end, before even writing a bulk of the music.
Whitacre’s process of creating Emotional Architecture resonated with me. Shortly after attending the symposium, I set to work experimenting with creating my own style of Emotional Architecture. Some finished music came about from my experiments, but my process was then too abstract and didn’t have a defined set of rules about how to utilize my own methods.
One of Bob Graettinger’s graphs. I have no idea how he used these and I love the coffee stain.
In the previous A Look Under The Hood (1), I mentioned composer Bob Graettinger’s wildly abstract composition plans, many of which involve colored pencil on graph paper. A) I’m a visual person who, over the years, has learned that color keeps me organized, and 2) I love graph paper for writing down my thoughts and ideas. So, naturally, I was immediately fascinated with Graettinger’s composition plans (even though no one really knows how to decipher them).
The (Old) Grid Guide
One of the few early iterative examples of the (then) Grid Guide. Cleary inspired by Whitacre and Graettinger.
The main topic of the first A Look Under The Hood was (what I then called) the Grid Guide, which is a system I have been developing to organize the structure of a composition before writing most (or any) of the music. Early iterations of the system included meter (4/4, 6/8), key, tempo, when a given melody is being played, and instrumental sections specified by color. I’m a “big picture” kinda guy, so this system has helped me to see, at a glance, what a piece of music is “doing:” which instruments are playing what and when in the piece, the length of the piece, and so on.
So… What’s New?
The outline I used to arrange “The First Noel.” Note: The form of this piece was written elsewhere, which I referenced as I composed.
In the nine(ish) months since posting about it, I’ve been refining the Grid Guide system to be the most informative it can be while still being simple to read. The changes to the system are small yet, in my opinion and for my own needs, significant.
I write the form of the piece above the instrumentation, keeping in mind the scale (typically one square equals four measures of music). Unique melodies are given their own letter, in order of appearance (A, B, C, etc.).
In the instrumentation, I now write “M” to denote the section(s) playing the melody, “S” to denote section(s) providing support (anything non-melody), or “M/S” if a section is playing both melody and support.
Dynamics are written below the instrumentation field, including crescendos and decrescendos.
The outline for my most recently-completed work. Notice how more robust this outline is compared to “The First Noel.”
I also include additional lines below the instrumentation field: Sketch, Score, and DAW. As I write a new piece, I’ll color parts of each line green as I complete each step. This is a visual way for me to see which portions of a work-in-progress are incomplete or finished.
A New Name
One of the aspects I have been struggling with has been what to call this outlining system. I never set “Grid Guide” in stone, because I never really liked that term - to me, it’s too broad and doesn’t really convey what this outlining system is.
So I thought, and I thought. And I thought some more.
And then I was thinking about graphic notation and its use, comparing it to Whitacre’s Emotional Architecture and Graettinger’s graphs. I thought: Well, graphic notation is abstracted music notation meant to be placed in front of and interpreted by a performer. The organizational methods of Whitacre and Graettinger aren’t for the performer; they’re for the composer to bridge the gap between idea and execution. It’s a way to structure their thoughts.
Structure. Hmm.
I continued, Graphic notation is a blanket term for most types of non-standard music notation. There aren’t, to my knowledge, names to specify the notation of John Cage from Morton Feldman. What if…
And then the term came to me: Graphic Structure.
Both graphic notation and graphic structure can come in all shapes and sizes; however, graphic notation is to be read by a performer while graphic structure is typically created by the composer for the composer. The difference is in the purpose.
Whitacre’s Emotional Architecture was for himself. Graettinger’s graphs were for himself. My outlines are for myself. Each of these methods fall under the graphic structure idea.
Closing Thoughts
The current iteration of my graphic structure outlining process is streamlining my workflow - which is the entire point of creating it for myself. My process before was like trying to walk through a plaster wall compared to now.
I’ve found my method, I’m now starting to write music more efficiently, and (most importantly) I’m having fun with it!
In the next installment of this series, I’ll be writing about a sister component to my graphic structure outlining. After all, it’s hard to write music without… writing music. So stay tuned.
Be kind and make it a great week!
