Writing the music you would like to listen to

If a composer would be satisfied with the existing music he wouldn't be a composer anymore. A composer is searching all the time for music which is not existing yet - of course you don't want to write a piece which is already existing (usually in a version you not even could dream to write it). The easiest way to find a music which hasn't been written before is to search in parts of music which are located as far as possible from the "normal" music or also outside of the music. Although almost every experiment is already done, this seems to be still the method of many composers.
I gave up searching in this direction a long time ago. My only criterion is: I want to write a music which I really like to listen to - I want to be in love with that music for a while. And I am searching in the areas surrounding me, the nearer the better, and trying  to find something which was probably used millions of times but not in the sense I am using it. That works not every time but sometimes.
That is hopefully a chance to get contact to the audience again because - since I am a human - other humans could enjoy what I enjoyed. Get out of the Ghettos!

Protection shield complexity

Complexity in music is often a protection against attacks and critics. It is a perfect shield:
you are able to explain your music like a scientific work with impressing facts and formulas. (nothing from that is audible though). If somebody dislike this music or is just clueless, this person has simply not understood your music and is just not on your level.
The academic circles are satisfied.
If you write a simple and clear peace everybody could attack you: nothing is hided, everything is open and scholars could easily destroy that kind of music with a few words.
Nowadays it is not curious at all to write music which is atonal, complex, experimental etc. - it is safe and comfortable. It is inside the circles where this kind of music is expected. It is the opposite of innovation, it is just keeping the status quo. It is conservative.

Can you learn to compose music?

The answer is:

- No, if you expect a really unique piece of music full of phantasy and surprising ideas, a music which seems to have no model. Musical phantasy and ideas you have to have, you can't learn it, The feeling for the tones you are putting together must be already inside you - you have to activate though. Also a sense for the form of music is given and not really learnable. Of course you have to study a lot and write many many pieces, try out several music styles before you will be able to write a piece I am talking about.

- Yes, since many music of nowadays is learned. Even people without any or poor phantasy are able to write "music" if you use prefabricated or proven methods. You can learn everywhere techniques (composition systems, algorithms, computers aided composition etc. or develop your own system in a similar mode) and copy extended playing techniques (without ever touching  that instrument). If you are not lazy, you can write a fascinating looking score of new music which could sound also not bad. But it could be that there is not a bit of music inside it and nobody will notice that - just another piece among many. Who cares.

The museum classical music

In the times of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc. it was normal that the newest music is the most interesting music - the audience thought that as well as the players and of course the composers. Old music wasn't performed at all until Mendelssohn began to reanimate the music of Bach (this day shall be cursed). To hear the music of their times was so natural like listening nowadays to the newest pop songs.
What went wrong that 95 % of the classical music is the music of composers died a long time ago? It's the largest museum in the world, there is a lot of dust everywhere and all orchestras and conductors are oppupied to do the dusting. Who is guilty? The audience who likes to hear the well known music played by X or Y more or less faster, cleaner or whatever (but of course with faithfulness to the original, that is sacred!) or the program directors, conductors, players who like to fulfill wishes of the audience? Or the composers who refuse to write music which could be liked by many people? Which is so difficult to play and also to listen to it that all involved people abandon this music?
Anyway,  I seldom go to a concert with non contemporary music and if this happens coincidental I miss the most important thing listening to music: the energy and spirit of a human living in the same times like me. Everything else is like visiting a cemetery. Or a just a museum.

True Korean Music

Korean shaman music is an etermal source of inspiration for me. Listen to authentic korean music for a while:

KIM Sohee, "Guǔm" (김소희, 구음)

For me as a korean born and grew up in Germany shaman music is one the things which are authentic "Korean". Listen to the voice of the female pansori master KIM Sohee on the recording, She is improvising over a complex shaman rhythm-cycle of the percussion group. The Changgu is playing unbelievable variations over this uneven rhythm - this is Korean rhythm feeling! Nowhere in the world you can find something similar. It's the sound of nature with deep soul. Eternal.

Ranking 2

A music heard for the first time is

- touching, fascinating and enjoyable
and gets even better the more often you are listening to ✩✩✩✩✩

- fascinating, but demanding
and gets better the more often you are listening to ✩✩✩✩

- demanding
but gets clearer the more often you are listening to ✩✩✩

- unpleasent

but gets interesting in a some sense the more you are listening to ✩✩

- pleasant
but gets flatter and cheap the more often you are listening to ✩

- boring
and it's still boring the more often you are listening to (out of range)

- like a torture
and you won't listen to it again (far out of range)

Keith Jarret is so outstanding because

he is really unique. You can recognize his piano sound among thousands of recordings. He is one the last piano players breathing life into the piano. Unique voices like Whitney Houston, Freddy Mercury or Maria Callas - you can recognize them immediately, you can hear the soul of this singers, with all their strength and also weakness. My old teacher Carlo Domeniconi has a guitar tone which I never heard by another guitarist. Who is really interested in a perfect thing? The things we love are not perfect at all. We can admire a perfection but never love it.
Personalities are vanishing and the younger generation of musicians are hiding themselves behind a perfection, which leaves no room for individuality. The violin sound of Isaac Stern was really characteristic - if you want to distinguish Hilary Hahn from, let's say Janine Janson, that's really not so easy. The faster and cleaner the playing is, the more you may be fascinated by the virtuosity but you will not be moved anymore. Hearing the music of one of those personalities I mentioned was or is really a different story. By the way, the most perfect and fast player is e.g a computer software or another music machine. Completely soul free. Guaranteed.

Ranking 1

A music sounds
-  virtuous, demanding and complex - and is easy to play ✩✩✩✩✩
-  simple and easy - and is easy to play ✩✩✩✩
-  virtuous, demanding and complex - and is difficult to play ✩✩✩
-  simple and easy - and is difficult to play ✩
-  awkward - and is difficult to play (out of range)
-  stupid - and is in effect impossible to play (far out of range)

For every piece a new composition system...

and to be a beginner for every piece - that is an attitude of many composers considering themselves as avant-garde. That is of course commendable since this approach avoids to write similar pieces all over again. It must be also very exhausting to begin every time a piece from zero. (of course this is only the half of the truth: to change every time the parameters is not a complete new beginning. There are much more fixed habits in our way of working as we are aware)
There is one decisive disadvantage of this behavior: you will never reach a masterful level in your works since you tried it only once. After a while you may see what you could have done better but this knowledge is unfortunately useless since you are already using another system with completely other problems. I believe that every masterwork in music history stood at the end of a long row of pieces using similar techniques - developing, refining and perfecting these techniques. A composer has to practice as well - like a player - to be really good. How many pieces Bach has written before he could write something amazing like the Chaconne from the violin suites? Let's practice more.

Composing for the own instrument...

...and performing it - that should be one the most natural things - and it was natural for the classic music until ~100 years ago. It is natural for most other music genre like jazz, rock or folk music. It is healthy to perform the music you have written, you will learn what is possible to transfer to the listener and what is just theory. If you start your composition outside the instruments, e.g with a tone generating system like tone rows or mathematical formulas, the result may look amazing on the paper - but it will be for sure very difficult and uncomfortable to play - not to saw impossible, that is the big disadvantage of composition systems. To avoid the so-called idiomatic writing for an instrument leads to music which is really painful to perform (and mostly also to listen to). Music which is not fun to play will disappear. The performers decide what will be played. The programs of the most piano recitals of today consists of the music written by composers who performed as well: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel...
It is worth to perform your own music.

The roots of the music...

...are located inside ourselves. Our vocal chords had been probably the first instrument. Our breath is the source of singing and all wind instruments. Our pulse is the source of rhythm and our hands are the tools for plucking, striking, bowing the instruments.
What does that mean concerning the music we are composing? For me it means that music has to respect  some basic things:

- nearness to the voice and breathing
- pulsation, at least partially
- organic movements of the fingers and hands

If a music fulfills these basics it could be a good music.

The myth about perfect pitch - a cleanup

In german language perfect pitch is called "absolute hearing" - that shows better the wrong legend about the perfect pitch. If something is absolute it has to be fixed forever, like the number pi=3,14159etc. or the speed of light. The tone A is changing constantly, in the times of Bach it was a half-tone lower. The orchestras are tuning higher and higher, nowadays up  to 445hz. If there is no absolute A there is also no "absolute hearing".
Perfect pitch is special kind of memory - you can remember pitches (you heard before, mostly on piano) - that's all. It has nothing to do with musicality, to the contrary: a perfect pitch could prevent one from hearing musically, means to hear tones in relation towards each other, not only the information "pitch" of single tones.
A perfect pitch is of course very useful for e.g. conductors (recognizing quickly wrong notes) or singers (finding the right pitch) and if a real musicians has by random a perfect pitch, he is a lucky person.
But to judge somebody because of his perfect pitch (or better relative pitch) is really wrong and dangerous: the entrance examinations of music academies are showing the tendency to rise the grade of difficulty of the ear training examination which is leading to wrong selections of the students, especially in Korea. Almost exclusively students with perfect pitch can pass the examinations for composition - musically highly talented  young students have no chance to get in the university - that's a tragedy. I hope that all this young musicians find nevertheless their way.

The simpler the instrument the more human is needed

I am fascinated by instruments like the  korean instruments Daegǔm (bamboo flute) or Piri (double reed) which are really built simple and close to the nature. Even the best best Piris are really cheap - not more than 100 Euros I would guess. Normal ones are about 30 Euro!  Compared to the crazy prizes of western string instruments (even the strings are more expensive than a whole Piri) thats really nothing. Almost everybody could learn Piri, regarding the instrument prize. To learn Violin you have be born in a rich family...but this is another story.
The Daegǔm is one piece of bamboo that you of course have to choose well. Drill some wholes in it - that's it basically (I am exaggerating of course). Try to get a tone out of it - nothing comes out! A very difficult instrument, also physically. Or the Piri: also a (smaller) piece of bamboo with wholes and a double reed you stick on the top end of the tube. Blow inside and - nothing. After several attempts you may get the first queeek out it. The tone is very flexible and you have to adjust the pitch with your lips. Everything the instrument does not have by itself the player has to add with his body thus the human is a big part of the instrument. In a world full of high-tech, computers and smart-phones, these instrument are like from another world. Music is our connection to the nature. We are a part of the nature. We should not forget this.

The time of the piano is gone

...since long time ago. The emperor of the western music dies away slowly but surely. The last important piano work - Ligeti's Piano Etudes - most of them have been written more than 20 years ago with a strong focus on rhythm - the piano has become a percussion instrument. Again the lack of the harmony system in contemporary music took away the most important task of the piano: playing harmonies.
The piano can play almost everything fast and perfectly but the tone itself is rigid and cannot be changed after sounding - that's the weakest part of the piano and it will lead the piano to  meaninglessness.

Why do we hear music?

My answer would be: I want to be delighted, moved, touched, fascinated. I don't want to think consciously, I want to forget the reality and want also have fun - not necessarily entertained but enjoyed hearing fascinating sounds and getting energy.
Music where I have to put more energy in to listen to it as I get is for me soon boring and annoying. Music is energy flowing from the musician to the listener who gives it back if he or she is delighted, moved, touched - it is a non verbal communication about all things we can't express with words or other resources.
Music is part of an ancient instinct of the human being hence indispensable for us.

Dominante - Tonika

Spannung - Entspannung, quasi die Energiequelle der westlichen Musik seit hunderten von Jahren ist auch heute die beherrschende musikalische Kraft  - ein Großteil der Musik auf dem Planeten bedient sich immer noch des harmonischen Systems.
Für zeitgenössische Komponisten ist das schon lange kein Thema mehr:
ausgelaugt, abgenutzt, alles schon gesagt damit - um nur ein paar Urteile darüber wiederzugeben. Dem stimme ich auch soweit zu, nur meine Abneigung zum harmonischen System ist eher persönlicher Art: mir ist die harmonische Welt eigentlich immer fremd geblieben - sie liegt mir einfach nicht im Blut - sie will nicht in meinen Körper kommen. Die einzige Frage ist dabei nur noch: Was ist an sie Stelle vom Dominant-Tonika-Prinzip getreten? Jede Musik (wenn man es nicht explizit vermeiden will) verwendet ein mehr oder weniger ausgeprägtes System, mittels Spannung - Entspannung ein Musikstück in Bewegung zu halten und größere Formen zu ermöglichen. Ein solches Prinzip ist eigentlich Bedingung für gute Musik.

Die koreanische Musik basiert auf einem sehr vielfältigen Rhythmussystem, den Changdan.
Die Changdans bauen auf viele Art und Weisen Spannung auf und entspannen sich wieder meist auf dem ersten Schlag. Dieses rhythmische System liegt mir im Blut. Meiner Musik liegt immer ein (von mir selbst gewebtes) rhythmisches System zu Grunde - mein persönliches Spannung - Entspannungsprinzip. Die Musik braucht so etwas - sonst ist man als Zuhörer verloren.

Westliche Instrumente sind für harmonisches Spiel optimiert...

...und kaum ein zeitgenössischer Komponist verwendet mehr die Dur-Moll-Harmonik. Ist das tragisch?  - Der perfektionierte, saubere Klang, die genaue Intonation, der lückenlose chromatische Umfang - alles das langweilt die Komponisten anscheinend seit langer Zeit und es wird alles dafür getan, dass der Ton wieder unsauber, gebrochen und geräuschhaft wird - klar, denn ohne Harmonie sind diese Instrumente ihrer Bestimmung beraubt und wirken verloren. Wer wird wohl einlenken? Werden die Komponisten wieder harmonisch schreiben oder werden die Instrumente wieder "primitiver" ( = inhomogener, reicher an Klangfarben, mehr Modulationsfähigkeiten am Ton an sich) werden? - Es wird spannend in den nächsten 50 Jahren.

Three things to become a famous composer

1. A teacher or/and supporter, who opens the right doors for you
2. Study (to get a brilliant technique, for a longer career)
3. Not a too strong will

Was ist "traditionelle" Musik?

(mal auf deutsch, ist doch einfacher für mich)
Der Begriff traditionelle Musik (geprägt durch die westlichen Länder), ist eine stillschweigende Diskriminierung. Niemand würde in Europa oder in den USA auf die Idee kommen Bach, Beethoven oder Brahms als traditionelle Musik zu bezeichnen, was es aber wäre, wenn man die gleichen Kriterien anwendet. Mit traditioneller Musik schert man alles über einen Kamm, was eben nicht westliche Musik ist, sein es nun Volksmusik, Zeremonienmusik, rituelle Musik oder klassische Musik des jeweiligen Landes, "Außereuropäische Musik" entlarvt die Gedanken schon mehr. Wenn China eines Tages die beherrschende Weltmacht sein wird, dann könnte westliche klassische Musik als "Außerchinesische Musik" bezeichnet werden. Da fühlt man sich gleich - na eben - diskriminiert. Macht und Geld spielen eine große Rolle bei der Bewertung von Musik - wie leider bei allem. Zum Glück ist die Wahrheit nicht davon betroffen.

Why new music has seldom a chance...

...against old music in when it is played in the same concert? It is no secret that many new music pieces are boring but even if it is a fantastic piece  - a classical piece or a so-called traditional (more about that in the next post) piece of music will have in 98% of the cases more effect.

The reason is again very simple: they are played much much better. The old pieces have been practiced 100 times more and longer, are memorized and well shaped including the smallest details. New music is usually read from the score and has been practiced enough to come through the piece without big accidents. (and then you have to be glad)

If an old masterpiece got played bad - you know that it was played bad (and the piece remains a masterpiece), if an unknown new piece is played bad the audience thinks that the piece is bad - that's life of a contemporary composer.