Christmas Composer Quest

This update is late in arriving, but this New Year holiday season I’ve been reminded that I did a podcast interview with composer and music producer Charlie McCarron a long, long time ago. Charlie contacted me about using an excerpt from our 2013 interview for a year-end podcast dubbed “Merry Podmas.” He wanted to focus on some of the best pieces of advice he has received from his interviews with many different composers.

In my case, he focused on my thoughts about musical “boxiness.” That interview can be listened to in your browser here:
http://charliemccarron.com/mediaftp/composerquest/composer-quest-109-merry-podmas.mp3

I come in at about 7:55 into the podcast, but the whole episode is valuable for all composers to listen to.

Charlie McCarron

Composer Richard Russell is a philosopher at heart. In his mission to become a better composer, he went back to school to study the big questions surrounding aesthetics, music, and beauty. He has also dug into both existential and practical composing topics in his podcast Creativity & Composition (one of my favorites).

I’m pleased to bring you this Composer Quest podcast interview with Richard, in which we discuss everything from feminist musicology to Plato to getting performance royalties from ASCAP.

To hear that original interview, head over to:
http://www.charliemccarron.com/2013/11/philosophies-of-music-composition-with-richard-russell/

And browse around Charlie’s other podcasts. They are all worth listening to!

The post Composing Interview with Composer Quest’s Charlie McCarron appeared first on Richard D. Russell.

…how to rectify our training with our wild-card penchant for creativity? Artists anywhere will instantly recognize the theme of craft resting on the precipice of abandon, of the intellect versus emotion.

A central problem here is that our education tends to be built upon teaching the craft and the skill. This suggests that artistry itself is not teachable — otherwise, why wouldn’t we just be taught the “art” side of things? Instead, musicians are taught their scales, dictation theory, etc.

That next leap to artistry is a challenge to teach, and this is an interesting element of Black Swan. Natalie Portman’s character is repeatedly admonished to let herself go, to dance with abandon, to seduce, and to not be so (for lack of a better word) perfect. In short, she needs to inject her intellectual side with some passion.

But what’s so wrong with perfect? I found myself thinking of a Beethoven symphony — take the slow movement of his Seventh. There is not a wrong note to be found, it is architecturally sound, it is superbly crafted from the simplest of rhythmic motifs. Much the same can be said for almost all of Beethoven’s music. Where exactly is the Dionysian abandon? If it is there, it’s not something we can exactly pinpoint and then teach to another generation of composers.

So then, what does a teacher say? What does a practitioner of art do? Essentially, how is this done? Natalie Portman spends half of the movie flailing in an attempt to find an answer and cross that line. We, the audience, watch her crack under this pressure. The nearest advice she is given is to go home and touch herself, a salacious suggestion, but one that has a larger metaphorical meaning, too. Getting in touch with yourself is a crucial aspect of artistry, and if you think about it, all the very best artists are representations of a self-aware individual. It’s personality that is expressed; the craft is only a medium to do so.

But there’s an important corollary. Over the last year I have begun to sense that the very best art is that perfect blend of intellect and emotion. The intellectual structure is needed, or it is all just a mess. But without the emotional element, we have only robotic perfection. There’s a “just-so” balance to be found which touches our hearts and our minds equally.

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He’s concerned about writing language, but his advice says it all for composers, too!

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