# Oat



## Crudblud

Yes indeed foax, it's that time again. My second "major" work of the year after Urgynes is a 12 minute piece for trombone, tuba, vibraphone, marimba and Moog synthesiser. Of course, these are sound libraries, so don't expect physically performable music.

Stream it here!

At present it is only available to stream. My good friend Prof. Dr. V. Smart, as he wishes to be known, is working on a special mix, when that's done I'll be releasing a full download with both versions and the ubiquitous liner notes.


----------



## ptr

Looking forward to the download, my ISP is to slow for streaming! (That's the p-i-t-a of living rurally...  )

/ptr


----------



## Mahlerian

I, too, look forward to downloading my very own individually numbered and serial-stamped copy.

The trombone and synthesizer really do suit your sensibility very well. I also enjoyed the color of the vibraphone, which is a bit different from your usual.


----------



## Crudblud

I don't want to seem ungrateful, because I'm not. I'm glad people are taking the time to listen and respond, and I thank them all for it, but I am often curious why a lot of the response is just one or two lines, or otherwise vague. Not that I expect to be the subject of scholarly research and essays or anything like that, I'm just wondering. Also, I suppose I'd like to hear people's opinions in greater detail, as I notice very often we don't seem to actually discuss much in this forum. I don't want anyone to feel obliged, of course, which is why I generally abstain from making this sort of post, but it'd be interesting to have something more specific, I guess.


----------



## tdc

I listened to the piece and thought it was good. You are certainly on the cutting edge here, with music like yours sometimes it is for me at times hard to gauge whether it is truly ahead of the curve, or more or less plowing less than fertile fields. I really am not sure, and since most of my thoughts on this piece are just based on subjective preferences I thought I would abstain from commenting. But since you've asked for more detailed comments I'll offer them up anyway.

The music struck me as fresh and well put together, but I can't say it really "moved" me in any profound sense. Again a lot of this is sheer personal preference but much of your music sounds comedic to me and irreverent, not necessarily bad qualities, but I think for art to be profound there needs to be an element of something serious there too. It is great to break down barriers but I also look for music that builds something up - within as well - and I'm not sure I can connect with anything in that sense in this piece. The title - like the music I find both intriguing and intelligent yet simultaneously slightly distasteful. One could in a sense interpret looking at a small piece of material and expanding it to see the infinite within the very small, I'm not sure if you were thinking this when you named it, but I thought of that. At the same time the title fits in with your consistently comedic and irreverent approach, and to me this can get tiring and seem like a bit of a schtick.

As far as the music itself, the piece is put together in a way that is not overly predictable, yet it flows well, this makes it quite listenable, and I had no trouble listening all the way through without feeling anything was stifling me or didn't make compositional sense. The sounds at times sound very random, yet many times in the piece I felt the combination of tones used created enjoyable jazzy chords that worked for me. My favorite parts of the piece were in the use of the marimba and vibraphone which gave the piece a feel of movement and opened up possibilities in my mind of other sound worlds. I got a similar feeling once when I was listening to Boulez piece _Le Marteau sans maitre_.

So all in all another high quality composition from you in a very up to date modern style. The music itself is not precisely my cup of tea, but I can recognize it is a well composed piece.


----------



## aleazk

I liked the timbral effects. I would say I found the general form, the material, the direction and development a little vague to my taste.

Many times I said to you that I think you have a good ear for the gesture-countergesture dialectics. In this piece, we have this, of course, but it's always local, it never grows to a global narrative, at least to me. And, at some moments, all these problems overlap with each other producing as a result a texture that can only be described as "random" or "arbitrary" (in not the best sense of the word).


----------



## PetrB

More specifically: when you venture into the more fully atonal regions, I don't think you have enough equipment to yet make that sort of work somehow 'cohesive.' _I use cohesive very cautiously_, since you have in the past somehow made pieces which are a series of near unrelated-sounding events 'cohesive,' and I know too, that is sometimes part of your preference or aesthetic.

The more fully atonal, no matter what or how you have determined your pitch selections or ordering, whether systematic or by ear alone, my opinion is that you have yet made any of those work so well. (This piece and the last you posted.)

Since you are autodidact, and very much find your own way, I have nothing to offer other than 'what I hear and how I hear it,' to help you firm up in this particular area what is to me a weakness. I'm sure you will eventually find your own solutions 

Your sense of timbrel play, and good ear for gesture and placement of events remain a constant.


----------



## Crudblud

aleazk said:


> I liked the timbral effects. I would say I found the general form, the material, the direction and development a little vague to my taste.
> 
> Many times I said to you that I think you have a good ear for the gesture-countergesture dialectics. In this piece, we have this, of course, but it's always local, it never grows to a global narrative, at least to me. And, at some moments, all these problems overlap with each other producing as a result a texture that can only be described as "random" or "arbitrary" (in not the best sense of the word).


Unfortunately Soundcloud took it upon itself to mess up the mix I created considerably, it is of course my mistake to have released prematurely an inferior version. I can't say for certain if this is relevant to your issues with the textures but I feel that they are much more well defined in the full mix. I understand what you're saying about the "narrative", the gestures however do reappear in many different guises and with some recurrent signposting, in particular there is much use of inversion, transposition, and aggregating of lines and so on. Still, it is a dense piece, perhaps requiring more time than it deserves to be properly understood. The final release is taking some time, but I hope you can be convinced to give it another shot when it's ready.


----------



## Crudblud

tdc said:


> I listened to the piece and thought it was good. You are certainly on the cutting edge here, with music like yours sometimes it is for me at times hard to gauge whether it is truly ahead of the curve, or more or less plowing less than fertile fields. I really am not sure, and since most of my thoughts on this piece are just based on subjective preferences I thought I would abstain from commenting. But since you've asked for more detailed comments I'll offer them up anyway.
> 
> The music struck me as fresh and well put together, but I can't say it really "moved" me in any profound sense. Again a lot of this is sheer personal preference but much of your music sounds comedic to me and irreverent, not necessarily bad qualities, but I think for art to be profound there needs to be an element of something serious there too. It is great to break down barriers but I also look for music that builds something up - within as well - and I'm not sure I can connect with anything in that sense in this piece. The title - like the music I find both intriguing and intelligent yet simultaneously slightly distasteful. One could in a sense interpret looking at a small piece of material and expanding it to see the infinite within the very small, I'm not sure if you were thinking this when you named it, but I thought of that. At the same time the title fits in with your consistently comedic and irreverent approach, and to me this can get tiring and seem like a bit of a schtick.
> 
> As far as the music itself, the piece is put together in a way that is not overly predictable, yet it flows well, this makes it quite listenable, and I had no trouble listening all the way through without feeling anything was stifling me or didn't make compositional sense. The sounds at times sound very random, yet many times in the piece I felt the combination of tones used created enjoyable jazzy chords that worked for me. My favorite parts of the piece were in the use of the marimba and vibraphone which gave the piece a feel of movement and opened up possibilities in my mind of other sound worlds. I got a similar feeling once when I was listening to Boulez piece _Le Marteau sans maitre_.
> 
> So all in all another high quality composition from you in a very up to date modern style. The music itself is not precisely my cup of tea, but I can recognize it is a well composed piece.


Not at all, subjective preference is all any of us has, ultimately, even in giving technical advice we can only say "I feel..." or "I think...", your opinion is just as welcome and valued as any. I must also disagree with you: I doubt I'm on the cutting or even dull edge of anything. Without holding my work too rigidly at any part of the spectrum, whatever that may be, I feel that it is neither avant garde nor conservative, it's a little off to the side, maybe.

I'm not a manipulator of the emotions, certainly, I make music that makes me smile or even laugh. I can't say, however, in this particular case those smiles turned much to laughter, certainly there are some sounds which could be comic given the right timing, but I think my choices in this piece are not exactly "serious" but not the sort of variety show feeling I was going for in something like _Frozen Bob_. I'm not really one for raspberry blowing either, and certainly I try to avoid unnecessary humour (but apparently not unnecessary overuse of the word "certainly"), I don't get to a part and think "okay, I've got this nasty serious sounding bit here, I should throw in a saucy trombone glissando to help meet the giggle quota" it's just whatever happens to fit the situation right in my conception of the piece.

Someone else PM'd me mentioning that, while they enjoyed the piece, they found the ending very abrupt and anti-climactic. Here you are saying that the piece does not "build", which I guess is a similar line of criticism, and while it is a seemingly cop-out statement to respond with: that is entirely intentional. While there is material constantly being recycled in many different ways, I was trying to avoid making this too obvious, but I may have overcooked it a little. The ending was played around with considerably, I even at one early stage had a big finale where the instruments were made into a sort of orchestral force. No matter how I played it it somehow seemed more hokey than any joke I could put in there, so I deliberately chose understatement to get away from a big circus act of an ending I could have gone for. My hope was to subvert my own initial expectation of what the ending would be, and I feel that was achieved, though obviously that lends it the quality of an in-joke, for better or worse.

It was clear to me while I was writing it that the music could easily be seen as random noodling, so I hoped to develop a consistent flow between parts that would lend it enough forward momentum to leap over those potential issues. There are in fact very few random notes in the piece, some of them were placed randomly at first, but then shaped and contoured to fit new ideas and perspectives, the random notes that stayed were just my good luck to have created something spontaneously that fit seamlessly into the ideas I was working with. I'm glad you liked the jazz flavour of certain chords, while it is not the entire piece, I was interested in referencing indirectly some of the classic material associated with the vibraphone, so I did go for some jazz and even quasi-Pink Panther type stuff, at least so far as was appropriate. The piece is very rhythmically complex, so I avoided, or tried to avoid, too many "straight" beats, though there are some in there.

I'm sure the Boulez comparison is one I am not deserving of, but nonetheless I thank you for taking the time to write in such detail. I hope you will also give the piece another listen when the final release comes out.


----------



## Crudblud

PetrB said:


> More specifically: when you venture into the more fully atonal regions, I don't think you have enough equipment to yet make that sort of work somehow 'cohesive.' _I use cohesive very cautiously_, since you have in the past somehow made pieces which are a series of near unrelated-sounding events 'cohesive,' and I know too, that is sometimes part of your preference or aesthetic.
> 
> The more fully atonal, no matter what or how you have determined your pitch selections or ordering, whether systematic or by ear alone, my opinion is that you have yet made any of those work so well. (This piece and the last you posted.)
> 
> Since you are autodidact, and very much find your own way, I have nothing to offer other than 'what I hear and how I hear it,' to help you firm up in this particular area what is to me a weakness. I'm sure you will eventually find your own solutions
> 
> Your sense of timbrel play, and good ear for gesture and placement of events remain a constant.


Thanks, Petr, it's always good to hear from you. I apologise for what is decidedly a lack of response to your post in particular, I have thought about what you've said, and while I don't agree with all of it, I find myself wanting of a reply that is presently beyond me. Hopefully my next piece, whatever that may be, will be response enough.


----------



## PetrB

Crudblud said:


> Thanks, Petr, it's always good to hear from you. I apologise for what is decidedly a lack of response to your post in particular, I have thought about what you've said, and while I don't agree with all of it, I find myself wanting of a reply that is presently beyond me. Hopefully my next piece, whatever that may be, will be response enough.


It is a very good thing, regardless of the harmonic vocabulary in play, to scan the pitch content of any and all sections of a piece you are writing. Especially with atonal music, or whatever you may call it when you are freely using all twelve of the chromatic degrees, the same principles from tonal music about how to keep it interesting, or better, 'fresh,' are still salient:

Tonal music stays within certain key-centers for a while, which makes modulation both a surprise and a refreshing change from the pitch content (and relationships) heard only within the previous key area. The principle is a change of perspective, just as modes shift character depending upon where you call home, and that shifting the step-pattern arrangement of each mode (Mode is from whence we get the word "Modulation.")

Ask of your piece then, a few questions:

Are we hearing too much of one or more pitches for too long or too frequently?

When constantly using all twelve, there is nothing withheld, which allows for no 'surprise' or that pitch content somewhere seeming fresh, and enlivening to the ear. 
Elliott Carter and Henry Brant tallied and set parameters about and around sets of intervals, what was in play and where, throughout the piece. 
Other serialists dwell for a while on a cell group from the 12 pitches in the row(s), allowing for the later appearance of those withheld other pitches -- which then by context sound 'new to the ear.'

Use them all, somewhat arbitrarily, all the time, and the effect is dulling, monotonous, and any sense of 'moduation' to relieve the flatness is not present.

*The best comment on a piece of music is another piece of music 
~ Igor Stravinsky*


----------



## Mahlerian

To add to PetrB's post, when I wrote Flutter for the competition, I kept in mind which pitches I considered central at a given time. I tried to change this by section and within sections, as with modulation in a tonal piece, for variety.

Crudblud, I'm sorry I didn't leave much of a comment before. My impression was that I would have to listen more times to really be able to give much more feedback, but I do have a few more remarks.

I was very aware throughout that everything fit together (and perhaps even more so than in your other compositions), but at times the connections were somewhat hard to discern.
I too was left with a sense that the piece wasn't building in a linear fashion, which is fine, but I also had the sense when it was finished that I wasn't aware that it was about to finish. This can happen to me for two reasons: either the composer's language doesn't work the way I expect, or the balance is somehow off. I would ask that you trust your own sense of form. If it sounds complete to you, then consider it complete.


----------



## Crudblud

It's been a while! At long last the full release is available, and I hope people who listened previously to the butchered stream on Soundcloud are interested in giving it another go. This final release contains both my original mix and a special mix that offers an entirely different perspective on the piece. Each has details that the other does not, and I think while it perhaps might be impossible to offer a definitive presentation of this very dense work, what we have here is certainly close.

mp3

FLAC


----------

