Composing Music Based on the Actual Processes of Composers

In my middle school classes, my students often began composing after analyzing an existing piece of music to serve as a model or example to get their own compositional ideas. Because my students were working with loop-based software, I tried to find intriguing pieces of music that were based around loops or extended ostinati. When I was listening to the CDs that accompany the new Silver Burdett Making Music series, I ran across a track in Grade 2 entitled Fish Food by electric cellist Gideon Freudmann.


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I tracked Gideon down on the web through his website and asked him about his process for creating Fish Food:

I recorded Fish Food with my electric cello and a Lexicon JamMan - a nice rack-mounted looper that has not been on the market for several years. Lately I have been using a foot peddle looper - the Boss Loop Station (RC-20). It's not stereo, but very easy to use and has some other nice features.

Fish Food is from my CD, Hologram Crackers which is an entire album of loop based electric cello instrumental tunes (all original. It's available, along with my other CDs at http://www.cellobop.com. Fish Food is an unusual tune in that the "verse" has three measures in 7 and one in 6.

The tune was recorded mostly in one pass with the looper - playing the the strum phrase first and then building the layers of the loop on top of it. Once it was all there I improvised some leads over the top - again, all in the one pass. When I mixed it down, I started the piece at a point where the loop with all the layers were established (as opposed to some other tunes where left in each layer as they get added) and at the very end I overdubbed a few of the weird atonal sounds. The big chord that begins and ends the tune came from another tune and those were the last sounds to be added." (personal communication)

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Not only were my students informed by analyzing the recording of Fish Food, but they also were informed by Gideon's personal process of working with a stand-alone loop-pedal and production process in his studio.

I wish as teachers we had access to more stories of the actual production and composing processes musicians use to create music today. I did find a few older sources, such as writings by Igor Stravinsky (Poetics of Music) and Aaron Copland (What to listen for in music.) but what about more contemporary music and musicians?

In the bargain bin at a Tuesday Morning, I found a great book entitled: Off the record: Songwriters on songwriting by Graham Nash. This book and set of audio CDs includes interviews with Randy Bachman, David Crosby, John Lee Hooker, and others.

Another interesting book is Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers by William Duckworth. This book shares interviews and conversations with the above mentioned composers and others. I have found great quotes and descriptions of process in this book to share with my students.

For the most up-to-date examples of process, I have found Jon Savage's Sound2Picture resources to be most intriguing. In this resource and in his own personal blog, Jon shares detailed notes and videos of sound designer Andrew Diey. In these notes, Andrew talks about his composing process for each of the films and computer games he composed for in the Sound2Picture and Sound2Game projects.

Lastly, Sam Reese pointed me in the direction of a great article by University of Illinois composer Stephen Taylor entitled: Translating unapproachable light: How composers write music. This article describes his own process composing a piece entitled: Unapproachable Light. Lots of great insight here that should be shared with student composers.

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If you are interested in listening to Fish Food or using it with your students, check out the following information:
Fish Food (click to listen to and/or purchase from iTunes)
Gideon Freudmann - http://www.cellobop.com
2005 album Hologram Crackers