Today marked a big event. My piece Prayer Without Words was read and recorded by the Victoria Symphony! As I said before, having my work played by a pro orchestra has been a long-lasting dream of mine. It was amazing to see the hours of preparation turn into something real (or surreal, which is how it felt being up on stage…). The players did an amazing job, despite only having 30 minutes total to rehearse and then record a 6 minute work. What a rush!

Prayer Without Words is a musical prayer for courage. I often find myself incapable of expressing what I truly feel in words when praying, so I wrote this work in response to that. To me it reflects inner turmoil in tough times. Sometimes this is an angst felt about disasters and wars abroad, and sometimes it’s about broken relationships. My faith in God helps me get through those times and prayer is an important part. But I often find it hard to pray!

A woman approached me after the performance. She said that her sister had recently passed away, and that she found my piece uplifting in the midst of her grief. Music is a powerful tool to help express what we cannot say, and I evidently wasn’t the only one who felt that today.

A big thank-you to Giuseppe Pietraroia and the Victoria Symphony for making this possible!

A pianist friend of mine once told me that she couldn’t imagine being a composer. She pictured herself spending long hours working alone writing and thinking in a dark room…with candle wax spilling over parchment amid stone busts of dead people. Well I made up that last part.

But composers do work alone, most of the time. We spend time thinking, working out ideas and exercising our imaginations. So it’s a good thing when we music writers can meet up to talk and share our knowledge and experience with colleagues. The Internet is making this easier all the time.

Not too long ago I had the chance to take part in a global event on Twitter called #askacomposer. Using that hashtag, musicians from around the world were able to chat, ask questions, and give answers. The conversation featured some established composers such as John Estacio, who I briefly met a few years ago, and some who are just starting out and wondering what people are up to. Even better, the event reconnected me with a composer friend of mine I haven’t seen in a while. We just happened to be hanging out in the same place on Twitter.

The event was hosted by #askthemusicians, who plan on hosting another music event soon. Sounds good to me! It’s nice to get out of the dreary basement every once in a while…

Follow me on Twitter.

or,
How To Use Surgical Tape Without Going To Med School
(it’s not for paper cuts)

Preparing parts for a professional orchestra is all about the details. After the mammoth task of editing (not to mention writing) the full score, we composers must then break our work into digestible pieces for performance by an orchestra. Scoring must be done according to standard formatting rules and notation practice. This can stave off frustration in rehearsal. A good score should allow the players to gracefully slide into their roles in the same way that a race car driver fits behind the wheel of a well-tuned Indy car. It is in a composer’s best interest to be helpful in this way as the quality of our own music is at stake.

While preparing parts for my latest piece, Prayer Without Words, my research led me to a treasure trove of information on score formatting. Composers, take note. MOLA, the Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association, is a clan devoted to the printed music of large ensembles. They provide “Music Preparation Guidelines for Orchestral Music”, a document which was very helpful!

Among the suggestions:

“The paper for parts should be of
substantial quality [...] to ensure
durability, and to stand up to on-stage wind
patterns caused by ventilation systems.”

They must have seen my earlier post on windsocks.

But the biggest lesson I learned from MOLA was that surgical tape really is an accepted way to bind pages together. London Drugs carries a product called 3M Micropore Paper Tape, which works beautifully!

This roll of tape is the most unlikely item in my composer’s toolbox, but at least I’ve learned something new. Now that the parts are finished, I can’t wait until the reading on March 23!

Here’s a tip for composers, revealed to me by a young person I recently worked with:

“You should be a composer, Dave. You know, most composers were musicians before they were composers.”
-Viva Youth Choirs chorister, age 9

And hopefully they remained musicians long afterward! Evidently, I meet the prerequisite for writing music: I have to make music first! I couldn’t agree more. Hearing new music and performing is essential to growth as a musician. It’s only natural that composing new music follows from that. The ability to dream up interesting music springs from a foundation of basic musical knowledge and exposure to many different types of music. So listen and play every day!

A great piece I’ve been listening to lately is Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings. Here’s part of the 1st movement:
YouTube
An even better recording is on iTunes:
Hausmusik London

What are you doing to hone your craft? The comments below are open.

The neat thing about hitting a big milestone is that it can cause you to look back at where you were, and ahead to where you’re going. Music has always given me something to strive for. I’ve been making music for 20 years, and most of the hours spent practicing piano have been a small part of a bigger project, whether it was a performance (in a hotel lobby, for example) or in learning a new ability. It’s the completion of small goals (ie: I’ll practice this Chopin piece for 20 minutes at half-tempo) that eventually lead to something bigger.

About ten years ago I decided that I wanted to compose music on a regular basis. I was captivated by the orchestral film scores of John Williams and the quirky music of Danny Elfman, among others, and dreamed of one day doing the same for the cinema. I knew that one day my scores could be played by a professional orchestra.

That day is close at hand! On March 23, the Victoria Symphony will give me the chance to hear some of my work come to life. The long wait just makes it sweeter.

What keeps you motivated to keep working?

“Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.”
-Saul Bellow

Those words are true to my ears today. If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have noticed my announcement last week. Prayer Without Words, my freshly-composed piece for orchestra, has been selected to be played by the Victoria Symphony! They will play it at a composers’ workshop held in March, where I’ll have the chance to get feedback from the ensemble. This is one huge step closer to realizing a dream. More on that later.

Here’s a sneak peek of the winning score:

What a rush. For a composer, nothing can equal the adrenaline caused by hearing his own work performed in public. On Saturday evening, Viva’s Boys and Girls Choirs sang my piece, Rat Milk, as part of their year-end concert. Having my own work played has always been exciting, but this time I was serving as both accompanist and composer. I had written myself a few tricky piano bits, but we stayed in time and in character, and the kids performed beautifully. Our conductor, Marnie Setka-Mooney, did an admirable job of leading the choir in concert, and preparing them in rehearsal. “Do it for Dave!”, she would say, as we hammered out harmonies and practiced our entries. They came through in the end, and delivered a great performance, which is the greatest gift they could have given me. So thank you, choir, and thank you, Marnie!

Why Rat Milk? It’s an odd title for a piece of music, but it is the name of an excellent poem by Victoria’s Poet Laureate, Linda Rogers. The poem tells a dramatic tale of survival, describing vividly the struggle of a mother rat foraging at night to feed her children. After a treacherous journey, she returns home safely. I chose to set this poem for the choir because of its message of love and hope, and also because it seemed like great material for the kids to sing. I think it sparked their imaginations and piqued their curiosity. In the end, the kids’ enthusiasm made all the work worthwhile. Our performance was a memorable end to a fun year.

Viva Choirs has recorded a complete CD of our concert that will be available soon. If you’d like to order one, just message me or visit the Viva website.