10/60 - Mind Your Graphical Trouble

I am excited to introduce several friends of mine to you today. Mind Your Graphical Trouble is the 10th minute of the 60/60 project, dedicated to Éric and Christelle Simon. Éric plays trombone with the New Orleans Jazz band Jazz Tico. He is also an amazing school teacher and director: he and his primary school pupils won a price for their scientific experiments with a stratospheric balloon.

The performer you will hear is Danny Mekonnen, here on alto sax. I took the picture on the left in the Huseac studios, after our recording session on February 9th. More than a saxophonist, Danny is a complete musician, leader of the Debo band, educator, and more. He is also a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. Read the Boston Herald's article about Danny and his band Debo and make sure you check out the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and their brand new CD!

The graphical score

This score uses graphic notation, we could say "in a traditional way." Click on the play button to listen to Danny Mekonnen's interpretation:

 

Composition process

First, I listened to the 60/60 present for this composition:

I especially liked the arrangement of Trouble in Mind. I made a spectrum analysis of the beginning of the recording. To get a sound's sonogram, you can use many software tools, including Ircam's Audiosculpt or the development environment Max/MSP/Jitter. Here, I used Apple Soundtrack, part of Apple Logic Studio.

Last step, I translated this sonogram into the graphical score, playing with the Live Trace function of Adobe Illustrator.

Composers, publish your scores!

Since I self-published my score Bleu 3, a number of colleagues and friends asked me a "score self-publishing 101" session. This post is intended to help anyone interested in self-publishing, especially composers. Some of these tips may be equally useful to make a book of your favorite recipes (a nice present for your friends). Actually, self-publishing is quite easy today, and you will surely find useful the article "Upload" from Make magazine, issue #12.

First of all, why self-publishing? Why don't all composers work with a publisher? Last year, I discussed this question with composer Julian Anderson, published by Faber Music. As he explained to me, publishers have two roles: first, the promotion of the music, and second, the printing side of the business (making scores and parts available). They are especially useful when they promote the music and their catalogue is well diffused. This is the case for rather big publishers, who are well connected to concert organizers, etc. As you can guess, these fine publishers don't like to take too much risk, and actually decide to work with a composer almost exclusively when he/she is already well known.

Because the printing side of the job is so easy today, I decided to make my music available, not only as free recordings, but also as high quality printed scores.

Engraving music and Layout

After the composition of the music, the actual conception of the score is the longest and most difficult part. I will at some point describe my engraving process on this blog. From what I've been caring about in score and parts to which software products I have been using. The most common practice today is to end up with a pdf file, that will make the communication with your printer easy.

Printing

This is the easiest step! You may look for a local printer, but a great solution is brought to you by lulu.com. It's very easy to register. The prices are clear and very competitive. And you can have very limited productions printed. You can even print only one or a few books, for instance for proof-reading.
Upload your pdf file, and you will receive your books within 1 to 2 weeks with the cheapeast delivery option.

Make your score available

A few simple options:

• have your score available directly on lulu.com's shop. Your score will be printed by lulu only after they receive the order. This is true on-demand printing. They take care of the shipping, as well.
• have your own paypal store on your own web site: get a free paypal store widget to embed in your page(s). The drawback here is that you have to deal with stock and shipping.

To make my score the most widely available, I decided to propose it through amazon.com. This is where it gets a little more complicated. The main point is that you need then an ISBN for your book.

Get an ISBN

On this great article about How to sell your book, CD, or DVD on Amazon, you will find all the information you need. The place from where you get an ISBN in the USA is www.bowkerlink.com . You need a different ISBN for each score you want to publish.

Get a barcode for your ISBN

Reading the same article, you will understand that the ISBN is just a number. The distribution of your publication will require that you print a barcode version of your ISBN. Several options are discussed in the mentioned article, with prices from $10 to $25 per barcode. This is the price to pay to get the barcode graphic of one ISBN number. Fortunately, I found another online service to generate barcodes free of charge: free barcode generator. I used it for Bleu 3, and it worked perfectly.

Register your book

You can ask Bowker to add your title in its huge directory of "Books in Print." This service is free. Then, any bookstore and library will be able to find the reference of your book (as well as your address as a publisher.)

Sell your score on amazon

I don't need to go in further details than the well entitled article How to sell your book, CD, or DVD on Amazon!
Don't forget that you can send amazon your book to enable the "Search Inside" feature.

Propose a free preview on google books

An ISBN is also necessary if you want your score to be part of the google books project. This is a great tool to allow people around the globe to have a look inside your score before they buy it. Register at this page: google information for publishers.

Note: I wrote this article about my publishing experience in the United States.

9/60 - Plane Mix

Plane Mix is the 9th minute of the 60/60 interactive composition project.
Many thanks to Cécile Pécheux for her participation and her present: a great DVD set dedicated to Lon Chaney, The Man of a Thousand Faces.
Both Cécile and I have been struck by Tod Browing's The Unknown with an original soundtrack performed live by ARFI's Marmite Infernale. I discovered this ARFI show (called Tragédie au Cirque) during the festival Un Doua de Jazz 1994. That was an extraordinary experience, as well as my first contact with Maurice Merle. I strongly recommend to watch this movie, even if it will lack ARFI's powerful soundtrack!

My first video remix

I first remixed a public domain video: Spot News 1937 (using Apple Final Cut Express). Then, I composed the soundtrack. Enjoy!

   
9/60 - Plane Mix on youtube

Fulbright Afternoon of Music 2008

This Sunday, March 9th, 2008, at 3 p.m., I will take part in the "Fulbright Afternoon of Music" organized by the Massachusetts Chapter of the Fulbright Association and the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Program.

I will present my Leblanc contrabass clarinet, perform Lina for contrabass clarinet solo, and play a work-in-progress live version of Saturation.
We will surely end the concert with a jazz improvisation over Autumn Leaves (Les Feuilles Mortes), with two great musicians: pianist Cedric Hanriot and violinist Leslie Levi.
The other artists will be June Park (piano), Syeda Masood (voice), Jeff Miles (guitar), and a pianist I will meet tomorrow.

• In 2006, I presented the basset-horn, and performed Backofen and Stockhausen's Seven Songs of the Days (Die Sieben Lieder der Tage, from the cycle Licht). Read the article that a fellow Fulbrighter posted shortly after the concert: Incredible Music.
• In 2007, I was lucky enough to play my composition Nigritella Nigra, for clarinet and string quartet. The string quartet featured Ariadna Rodriguez and Peter Deckers (violins), Sidney Solow (viola), and Blaise Dejardin (cello.)

I have always much enjoyed this fun event. It enables musicians with very diverse levels, origins, and styles to meet together and
make     music     happen.

Bleu 3 - The Recording

After the premiere and the publication of the score, here is the recording of Bleu 3:

You can also listen to it or download it on last.fm.

This is the live recording of the premiere, admirably performed by:

• Rane Moore, clarinet
• Gabby Diaz, violin
• Benjamin Schwartz, cello
• Yoko Hagino, piano
• Eric Hewitt, conductor

Of course, I was wearing a blue shirt:

Look inside the score

New! Have a look inside the score with both amazon and google books.