Sitting here with Dave Berger - showing him this discussion around which
I lurk, and he suggested that having a check box choice might be a
useful solution: "Do you want to change the parts, or not?"
(Dave is still working with pencils - sometimes faster than we can, and
will probably not make the jump to this particular laborious
relationship with screens and mice. I find it almost impossible to
imagine going back.)
David Bailey wrote:
"Indeed, as long as it is user-selectable and user-implementable (ctrl-l
or something to tell the program to update the links NOW so that if we
change our minds with the undo feature we won't take performance hits) I
have no problem."
Makes sense to me. This kind of feature would save me (an inveterate reviser) a lot of time. - Chuck
David Bailey wrote:
"I can understand his composition going quite rapidly with pencil and
paper (I find composing with Finale quite difficult) but from first
note-in-score to complete-set-of-score-and-parts-ready-to-read-from is
he really faster?"
No, I'm sure not. He pays copyists to produce Finale parts and scores too, I assume, though I've never seen him refer to anything but his pencil scores when directing his band or correcting things. - Chuck
David Bailey wrote:
"Hats off to him! I'm not quite sure why I find composing in Finale to
be more daunting than the old MusicPrinterPlus but I think it might be
that because of the layout issues and other things I get too caught up
in the engraving aspect and find it hard not to pay attention to that
while trying to get musical ideas down on paper. I find it easiest to
get the musical ideas down on paper and pencil and then to play around
with them in Finale."
I am of two minds about this. If I write in pencil - there's an intuitive an immediate connection that comes more easily without the interceding mechanism of the keyboard and computer. Fluidity of writing (or at least the achievement of that Mozartean illusion at the end), is a primary goal of mine. Pencils seem to encourage that kind of "composing by gesture." That said, I find that I use Finale playback, mechanical and unmusical as it is, to experiment with refining gestures about which I am making educated guesses as I write, and the entry of this feature into my creative life has allowed me to experiment and learn things quickly that might have taken more time otherwise. Living far from musicians who are able to perform my music correctly makes this mechanical "reflection" of what I write seem like a godsend.
Here is a personal example of how that Finale advantage played out in something I was writing: I kept imagining a particular figure which I could sing to myself correctly (consistently), but which defied attempts to write it down. Long story short - my jazz musician's orientation to duple and triple subdivisions in written music was blinding (deafening?) me to the fact that the figure was a septuplet which, when I finally got away from my prejudices and tried writing that way, Finale reproduced perfectly. Granted, there are a number of other ways I could have learned this - ranging from consulting recordings and scores to asking more experienced "classical" composers to listen to what I was singing and tell me how they thought it might be notated correctly, but Finale provided a shortcut to this information. (Of course, the orchestral flutists, for whom the figure was written, performed it flawlessly at sight. It was a normal part of their experience and training, and only my limited experience with writing this kind of subdivision prevented me from understanding more quickly what it was that I was hearing.)
When I lived in NYC, people used to ask me, "Aren't you frustrated by imperfect performances of your compositions?" To which my answer was that, in fact, I often got contributions to my music from the way performers played that seemed to exceed the quality of my writing. The players were imbuing my writing with more "music" than I thought I had indicated in the score. That was paradise (in that respect). Now I live in another kind of natural paradise, in "Northwest Ecotopia" here in Bellingham, comfortably employed and free from impending economic doom, but where that kind of performance of music is not remotely possible. The musicians here (mostly) lack the common cultural background to achieve those results quickly, and the opportunity and/or motivation to spend the time and energy required to achieve them over time.
Apart from these things, I also find myself (as you described) becoming heavily invested in, and taking much time with "engraving" issues, especially in parts. Whether or not that is ultimately the most productive use of time is an unanswered question, but Finale has provided relatively convenient control over the graphic appearance of what I write, and there is some esthetic satisfaction in exercising that control.
David Berger (to my mind, an exceptional and profound jazz composer/arranger) turns out considerably more music than I do. He writes quickly and has provided himself with access to a group of musicians that can play (beautifully) what he writes soon after he writes it. He spends his own money, rather than his time, to have others deal with making parts. This situation approaches an Ellingtonian ideal, and I miss it.
Chuck
Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com
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