Xtension Chords at ICCA

I just got home from spring break. This year, we had to haul ass around the country to get ready for ICCA competition in Madison on Saturday. Driving around in the XRV was enjoyable, though we felt a bit rushed. It was a lot of driving.

I got sick with a massive fever and sore throat on the second day, and it didn't go away for about 3 days. It was mostly annoying because I couldn't project my voice enough to talk to anyone we met on the road.

I got healthy enough in time for ICCA. This was the semi-final round -- the winner would be moving on to New York. As we stood on stage along with all the other groups, awaiting the verdict, we were feeling satisfied with our performance. As we went unmentioned in one category and then another, (arrangement - Other Guys, choreo - A Cub Bella, Solo - Dicks and Janes, 3rd place - Rip Chords... 2nd place - A Cub Bella... ), we started getting nervous. This competition wasn't our 'everything', but we wanted to do well.

First place was announced (The Other Guys), and we left the stage, disappointed. The judge sheets didn't shed much light on the verdict -- apparently, we were just not well-liked by the judges, for some reason or another.

Several judges did strange things -- one rated our energy and stage presence 7 out of 10. Another wrote "Choreo -- why?" next to 'Friend Like Me'.

Some of their comments were understandable. Our tone quality, blend, and intonation are not perfect, and I certainly don't expect them to be rated perfectly. But as we prepared to drink the disappointment away at the Nitty Gritty, we still found ourselves wondering, "Not even 3rd place -- why?"

It’s 2006.

Have you ever looked into the future and just tried out some future dates in your head, to get a feel for how weird they ring:

“This is a 2015 Chardonnay from California, it was a very good year.”

It sounds so bizarre. I instinctively imagine any date more than a few years in the future as some crazy trekkied-out space age. I remember when I thought about 2006 that way. And now, here I am. Of course, the technology has gotten better; in some ways I think I would get really frustrated living in 1996, coming from 2006. Slow internet. Extremely limited cell phone use/network. Virtually no peer-to-peer, blogging, social-networking, or sharing of art that we now have happening over the web. No friggin Ipods.

But I can't help feeling, as I sit here in 2006, that in many ways the world is really the damn same as it was in 1996, and quite likely it was just as damn same in 1986 and 1926 and 1574. People have been getting by, and they continue to get by. When you strip away the superficial gloss - the longer life span, the better tech, the marrying for love, the free society, maybe we’re just the same as we used to be.

WHAT HAPPENED INSIDE MY LIFE

I switched majors again. I'm still in the School of Music, so this switch isn't quite as radical as the previous one. Nonetheless, it's another change, this time to music education. I think, purely as a degree, a music ed. degree will serve me better. If I chose to make this big, risky jump to music, I might as well have some padding.

Once I have a teaching certificate, I can at the very least get a decent job, and it's not too difficult to get certified in other subjects, as well. With K-12 certification, that leaves a lot of job opportunities. This isn't to say that I'm going to end up as a HS choir director (though that's basically what they are teaching me to do). It is something that I wouldn't mind doing, though, and something that could position me for further musical endeavors.

And so I did a lot of thinking at the beginning of this semester.... It's 3 years into the future... you've graduated college, took a LOT of years to do it... you've got a composition diploma...Great, you are now armed with the completely unmarketable skill of composing avant-garde sonic brain-fuck music that any normal person would probably cringe hearing.

I'm serious in my assessment of the University faculty's music here. I'm not being bitter because they didn't accept me at first and told me I was "unsophisticated" (you can read about that one in the archives). Being completely impartial, I can tell you that the music is not pleasant-sounding. It is not inspiring. It is not evocative. It is a sin against the Music Gods, because it represses all considerations of what one is supposed to feel, think, imagine when hearing music. These professors are interested in music purely as a philosophical, academic exercise. It's all numbers and matrices and pitch classes to them. Sure, they have concerts for an audience occasionally, though the audience is composed of primarily other university composition teachers, and their students, who are graded on the number of "new music" shows they attend.

But I've said enough unsubstantiated things... go listen to their stuff. Click on any one of the faculty members' name at the left of the page. Many of them have sound clips in that sidebar. What do you think of it? I decided that this was not the kind of aesthetic that I would want guiding my compositional development, but you are free to think differently.

GREECE (Part 3 of a 3-part Series)

The photo above is from Santorini, taken in the evening. It gives a pretty good idea of a typical town on the island (if you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all) -- A lot of small, white buildings (which almost hurt to look at in broad daylight) and steeply descending terrain. I guess the three-car garages must be hidden underground or something.

The beach at Naxos -- beautiful by virtue of its monotony. Swimming here feels like bathing in God's swimming pool. I went butt naked -- I figured God would think I was more of a badass if I went sans fig leaves. I have eaten of the tree of knowledge and I still have no shame. The water was cold, and the beach was filled with coppery naked old people. These folks had even less shame than I; I think even God may have winced seeing the old man doing calisthenics with the waves lapping at his ankles and his nutsack lapping at his knees.

This castle was built by the Venetians on Naxos several centuries ago when they controlled the Greek islands. Several nearby islands are visible from its windows. Now, it is a museum, as well as a performing space. We spent an evening there listening to traditional Greek music as the sun set, and were warned that we could not leave until the audience finished several hundred shots of various Greek liqueurs laid out before us. The music was good -- mostly performed by a fiddle accompanied by a lute. Also interesting was a burly, red-faced shepherd from the island who played a whiny, bagpipe-type instrument -- the diaphragm was made from the complete hide of one of his goats.

Rascal Flatts Concert (12/3) -- Review

This group writes some great songs, and singer Gary Levox performs them with such unbelievable skill, that I had to see the Rascal Flatts live.

Keith Anderson and Blake Shelton (two acts that I had never heard of) were the openers. Their acts consisted of pretty standard rock grooves with overlaid country vocals, the occasional attempt at a guitar solo (more on that later), and too many shoutouts to the audience.

Performer: D'you folks like beer??
Audience: Yea! Wooo! Beer! Woo!

Performer: All the redneck girls in the audience, make some noise!
Chicago suburban chicks with cowgirl hats: *SCREAM* YEAAH!!!

ad nauseam. It annoys me when performers ask the audience to "make some noise" too often and too early in the concert. Let your music and your performance inspire the noisemaking. Overall though, the opening acts sufficed; they did what opening acts are supposed to do -- Inspire eventual cries of "Get off the stage! Let's hear some Rascal Flatts!"

The Rascal Flatts sounded great. Their harmonies were amazingly tight, considering the guys were busy playing instruments while singing. Gary sang well -- You could tell that he was a bit fatigued, though, and he let the crowd sing quite a bit.

When the Flatts weren't playing their standard radio songs, they pulled out some interesting stuff that revealed a lot about them to me. The violin player had a giant improvizatory solo number that could have been a sideshow act for Yngwie Malmsteen (a 1980s shred guitarist). It was amazing, but I couldn't help but think how out of place it was at a country music concert. There were several other jam numbers that sounded like YES songs, too. It became really clear to me that these musicians are not finding enough of an outlet in the tightly structured, ultra clean radio singles of the Rascal Flatts.

And yet, it is a bit of a precarious balance... too many 80s hair band jams, and a large body of fans get alienated. Not enough jamming, and the musicians will be unfulfilled.

Don't believe me about this 80s phenomenon? Then you won't believe this encore:

"Pour Some Sugar on Me, You Give Love a Bad Name, Born in the USA" MEDLEY.

I was amazed at how overtly they were pushing their audience towards classic rock. Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen -- I mean, damn. I definitely enjoyed it, but I can just imagine some chump in the front row with acid-washed ambercrombie jeans and a cowboy hat having an identity crisis.

"B-b-b-but this isn't country... am I supposed to like this music or not? Someone please tell me how I'm supposed to react!!!"

I never thought I'd say this, but country music is quietly filling the space left by the disappearance of rock 'n' roll. Yes, you heard me - Country is turning into classic rock.

And it's not just the Rascal Flatts -- the opening acts were trying the same stuff. So many of their songs had the design and instrumentation of regular rock songs, with nothing but a cowboy hat and a southern twang to differentiate them. Once you start regularly using overdriven guitars with screaming 10 second sustains, it's not long before the "country" label becomes little more than a semantic distinction.

And speaking of cowboy hats... I was amused how Gary Levox gently put one on his head for about 15 seconds (taking care not to ruin his gelled hair), and then threw it out into the crowd. A nice, symbolic gesture. Next assignment -- kiss a baby in front of the camera.

GREECE 2005 (continued)

One of the exports of Naxos is marble. This marble quarry seemed like a piece of abstract mega-art, carved out of the side of the mountain.

This is an unfinished statue that has been laying near another marble quarry on Naxos since the 7th century BC. It is about 35 feet long, and apparently it cracked while it was being carved. The sculptor just left it and no one has bothered to move it since. We see so many sculptures from the golden age of Greece, but how often do we get to see failed attempts? To me, this sculpture was more interesting than many of the finished ones.

And here is one of my favorite shots of the famed Santorini sunset. The colors never get as fiery and wild as they do in more polluted atmospheres; sunsets here are more subdued, but very peaceful. One can see vauge, misty outlines of neighboring islands in the distance, the calm sea below, and the Santorini "skyline" hugging the cliffs. It feels like a Greek myth.

GREEK ISLANDS, SUMMER 2005

Just a few shots from the beautiful Greek isles from this summer. The two seascapes are from Santorini, a small volcanic island most famous for its sunsets and its wine (there is almost no rainfall, I learned; the grape vines get nearly all of their water from the nightly dew).

The interior mountain landscape is on Naxos, a larger, more functional island. I know what you're thinking -- is that a "functional" road? Indeed, we drove around for hours on roads like this one, snaking back and forth between mountains, without really going very far as the crow flies. It was beautiful, though, and thrilling (God bless my dad and his nads of steel for navigating our teeny stickshift 6-person "minibus" through this landscape).


I say "functional" because Naxos is actually capable of sustaining itself without tourism -- the inhabitants even recently voted down a planned airport on the island to curb the tourist influx.

(My family and I visited Greece this summer -- These photos are from our digi album, taken by various family members.)