Author: macdonaldp

Another project? Well, it can run parallel to my big recording project because most of the music I create with Sonic Peaks ends up getting recorded and then released under my Explorations series of recordings. So, instead of writing about Sonic Peaks here, I invite you to check out the WEBSITE. And, here’s a promo video that explains the project:

That went fast. Here I am a year later and I finished it. 52 marimba recordings in 52 weeks. I thought that might be enough, but I’ve become so accustomed to the work that I plan to keep going for at least another year. 100 is a better number anyway, more iconic.

Each recording takes on average 20 hours a week. The open improvisation solo recordings go down pretty fast (although it took me tens of thousands of hours of practice and study and 30 years of playing marimba to get to that point). But all the rest of the recordings can be very time consuming. A few of them were over 40 hours, soup to nuts. It’s a lot of time and energy, basically another job on top of my life as a college professor and Dhrupad singer and everything else I’m doing professionally. But it’s worth it, every second of it. Aside from the fact that I feel more connected to the instrument, I’ve expanded considerably my vocabulary as a composer and improviser and opened up whole new territory on the instrument.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

-expanded the timbral possibilities on marimba through mallet construction, preparations, and digital manipulation

-commissioned several new pieces from different composers

-made the first recordings on marimba of music by Anthony Braxton, Elliott Sharp, and Barry Guy

-made the first ever marimba recording of Hindustani music

-started a new series of jazz standards on the instrument

-created the first body of recorded repertoire for the instrument in the “free” or “open” improvisation genres, with many collaborations, including Weasel Walter, Susie Ibarra, Gideon Forbes, Steven Crammer, Pedro Carneiro, and more

-made a series of recordings for meditation/yoga purposes, which I’m gradually trying to get out to those communities, including a collaboration with handpan master Sean Dello Monaco

-expanded considerably my graphic score work

The self-imposed deadline of a recording a week, every week, has become so second nature that it feels weird not to make a recording every week. During the summer I got ahead by a month, but as school started and my days filled up with teaching and administrative work I’m back to finishing a recording during the week and loading it up before midnight on Sunday. Sometimes the days get a little frenetic, but I never feel like I’m recording just for the sake of recording. I’ll vouch for every note I’ve released to the public.

Of course with this much volume some of the tracks are better than others, but that’s true even for people who only release one or two recordings their whole career. At the time that I release something I’m fully convinced of its value. And even the freely improvised recordings have more editing and curation than one might think. I often delete as many tracks as I end up keeping, and sometimes it’s more like a 10:1 ration of deleted material to what I end up keeping.

So, what’s ahead? More collaborations, and deeper engagement with what I’ve already developed. I’m really just getting started.

What has the reception been so far? It’s hard to say since I’ve only promoted it via local channels like Facebook groups and email lists. Next year I have some bigger events planned to celebrate an upcoming quartet recording with Elliott Sharp, Billy Martin, and Colin Stetson, as well as the 100-week mark. For those I plan to hire a publicist and see if I can build a larger, more global audience for my work.

The percussive arts community’s response has been mostly positive. I regularly get messages from folks who are fascinated by the project and interested in what I’m doing. A few folks have cried foul on my more dissonant and crazy improvisation videos, stating that it’s “not music” or whatever. I don’t take much stock in that since few of them have really studied the improvised repertoire or know the history of that music. Honestly, I’m glad for the arguments those videos create. That pot needs a bit of stirring. I also encourage them to check out my more “inside” playing. When I play with extended techniques, they’re definitely an extension of the fundamentals that I’ve worked hard to master, and continue to practice and refine. But I welcome vigorous discussion.

So, onwards and upwards. I’m just getting started.

It’s a conversation.

Imagine you’re in a big room at a large social gathering. You’re talking with other professional musicians, exploring aesthetics, the mechanisms of survival, and all else related to the field. There are real people in the room, and there are also spirits from the past. Pauline Oliveros comes up in the conversation, as does John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Beethoven, Stravinksy, Led Zeppelin, Max Roach, Hildegard, Machaut, and so many others.

After some time, you tell your friends you want to introduce them to someone new. You leave the room, and return with a young musician. This is one of your students. You spent the last four years preparing them for this conversation. They can keep up. They can talk aesthetics, they have their own creative projects brewing, they have their own relationship with the great masters of the past. They are ready for the conversation.
Once you bring them in and make introductions, you step back and you give them the space and the support they need to speak. And you enjoy watching them not only become part of the conversation, but begin to shape how the conversation develops. You see them developing new friends and you see new relationships blossoming. And thus the conversation is deepened, expanded, and enriched.

Sometime later there’s another social gathering. This time you’re not introducing the person you brought in last time, but standing next to them sharing your recent experiences with the other guests in the room. After a while your former student says, “Hey everyone, I want to introduce you to someone I’ve been working with.”

And the conversation continues.

I’m now three months into my massive marimba recording project, and I have released 13 new recordings, one per week. Those plus the few I have in the hopper and my previous recordings put me up to 23 solo marimba recordings.

This project has changed my life in many ways. That sounds melodramatic, but I mean it seriously. For the last few years I’ve found my energies spread too far. After leaving Alarm Will Sound to focus more on my solo work, I was making films, singing Dhrupad, running a college percussion studio, playing in NJPE and various freelance gigs, etc. It was intoxicating to allow my creative powers to blossom in so many directions, but also exhausting, and at the end of the day I found that I just couldn’t keep up. In a burst of inspiration last October (partly from reconnecting with my long-time visual artist friend Beeple, AKA Mike Winklemann, who has created an original work of art every single day for 14 years), I decided to launch this massive marimba recording project.

So, it puts me behind the instrument about 20-30 hours a week, which in its own way is exhausting, but the extreme focus has been a welcome change from being too spread out. And what I’ve found is that there is so much to do. There are so many things I’ve avoided doing for a long time, and I realize now I was avoiding them by bouncing from one thing to another. It’s easier to stay busy than it is to solve problems, especially artistic ones.

Having a weekly deadline is important. Does quantity beget quality? In many ways, yes, I would argue it does, especially if one is already at a high level of musical and technical accomplishment. At the very least, the act of creating music has become more normalized for me, like brushing my teeth or making breakfast. The practicality of getting a recording out every week quickly overrides the conservatory-induced paranoia about producing masterpieces. Is every track going to win a Pulitzer Prize? No, but every track is part of an overarching journey that is deepening my relationship to the instrument, and expanding the expressive possibilities of the instrument, in all dimensions. I will vouch for every note that is on every recording. Nothing gets published if it isn’t the best work I can do at that time, but I also recognize that the recording I release this week may in some ways be stronger than the recordings I released two months ago. My playing is perhaps a touch better, I’m more confident with my creative powers, my vocabulary has expanded, and my skills with recording, mixing, and mastering continue to improve. And, for the first time in my life, I’m allowing myself to reflect in a more sustained way about my creative work.

Will I eventually cull some of this massive output of work? Probably not. It’s a zero-sum game to constantly look backwards and see only negativity. The true act of courage for an artist isn’t obsessing over an unattainable notion of perfection, but rather embracing the asymptotic process of discovering the most necessary and personal contribution to the field.

To be sure, I delete nearly as much material as I release. Many days I go in my studio for several hours and create and record music, only to hit delete at the end of the session. No matter. Sometimes knowing the right road is a matter of going down the wrong one for a little bit. I still manage to finish a complete recording each week.

Does anyone listen to this music? Does anyone care? So far, there’s been little engagement, only in the hundreds. I’m no different than any other artist. I would love it if my work was well-received and spread widely. However, I also realize that much of the work I’m doing is extremely intense and requires the listener to expend some time and energy digesting it, as well as an open mind about different parameters of sound and of what music is and can be.  It has crossed my mind that I would gain a bigger following in the percussive arts community and beyond if I released material that is more directly connected to the standard repertoire or popular music, but that’s not what inspires me. And, why do that when so many other artists are already doing it so well? Besides, I’ve already worked through most of the standard rep. As much as I enjoy playing it, I view it as more of a stepping stone to my creative work, not a final resting place for me.

I think there is room for all of us, but it’s important that we each be honest about how we can best contribute to the conversation. I’ve always tended towards the experimental and the avant-garde. As Lou Harrison once said, I’m in the R&D department of music. Certainly, it has less commercial appeal, but I do believe that those of us working in that area are contributing something meaningful to the art form. We’re asking “what if?”, a question that ultimately keeps the art form vital, and protects us from falling into musical and marimbistic solipsism.

So, I will continue. And as my engagement with the project deepens, I see how in fact that it isn’t really a specialization at all. It’s an expansion. An expansion of my creative powers, my foundational marimba and percussion playing, and ultimately about placing my creative voice into the vast, unyielding, beautiful, harsh, and wondrous world of creative music and the percussive arts community.

Thanks for reading and listening, much love to you, and best wishes in your own creative work. Please stay in touch.

After years of thinking about teaching from both the perspective of a student and a teacher, I have come to the conclusion that good teaching is fundamentally comprised of three things:

1.) Competence

2.) Organization

3.) Passion

Without competence the students don’t trust the teacher. Without organization the students get confused. Without passion the students aren’t inspired.

A good teacher needs all three. Many teachers have two out of three, some only have one, and the worst teachers have none. For example, when a teacher is organized and passionate but incompetent the students don’t trust the information. Why should they? If the teacher can’t do the thing they’re teaching why would the student trust that anything they say is true?

Likewise, if the teacher is competent and passionate, but disorganized, the student quickly becomes confused. Organized pedagogy moves forward incrementally, without creating gaps or holes that require further repairs, thus wasting time and embedding bad habits.

And, a teacher may be very competent and organized, but if they lack passion for the subject then the student won’t feel inspired. Passion is infectious, and can spark a fire in a student that lasts a lifetime, indeed, many lifetimes if that student eventually becomes a teacher and moves the knowledge to another generation.

Competence, organization, and passion.

I recently revved out of town for a night of motorcycle camping. I’ve dreamed of doing this for years and I finally have the bike for it, a 2009 Kawasaki Versys 650 outfitted with full luggage, windshield, handguards, engine guards, and a phone charger from the battery tender line.

I love that bike. It’s comfortable and easy to see (and be seen), but it’s got a Kawi Ninja engine and it can really rip, even when you’re up at speed. It will carve up twisties with no problem, it handles gravel roads just fine (even with the stock street tires), but even at sixth gear at 85 mph on the freeway it still has plenty of juice to zip away from lousy drivers. With about 64 hp and 61 Nm of torque and a top speed of 124 mph, it’s an awesome machine.

So I headed West, as all young(ish) men do, interstate 80 to Pennsylvania, then back roads to a campground in the middle of the state. I love those lonely back roads. They’re quiet, intimate, and they link one to the small towns in America that are still home to millions of people, worlds away from the urban and suburban trails I usually tread.

I even found a bit of gravel.

Eventually I made it to the campground. I got a fire going and enjoyed some fine dining with pizza and pop tarts for dinner.

It was a sweet spot, with a stream running just a few feet away. It was cool enough to keep the bugs away, but not so cold that I couldn’t sit by the fire and sing Dhrupad for an hour as it got dark.

I slept well and was back on the road by 6:30 a.m. I’m usually up early and always excited to get back on the bike. I put in my ear plugs and don my helmet and off I go on that intense meditation, not so different than Dhrupad, actually. The feeling of that machine working right underneath me, completely connected to the road, and the undulations of the highway, is beyond description. The stakes are high, and so is my concentration, higher than almost any other time in my life. I was home by noon, refreshed and shiny, glad to be alive and able to ride that impressive bike throughout this diverse and epic country. I’m counting the days until my next adventure.

One of the aspects of my career I enjoy most is performing and giving master classes at  universities and colleges.  I meet fabulous people and I like engaging with the next generation of composers and percussionists.  However, it seems that no matter where I go students have been afflicted with the scourge of medium yarn.  That is, when it comes to mallet playing, especially marimba playing, most of the time they default to medium yarn mallets.  Soft yarn comes in second and hard yarn a distant third.  In eighteen years of traveling all over the globe I have yet to hear a student use anything else.

But why not?  When I play marimba I use all manner of mallets, most of them home made.  This includes rubber, wood, plastic, paper, and regular yarn mallets that I cover with all sorts of different materials, including Tyvek, paper and plastic bags, Styrofoam, duct tape, flip flops, string, bags of bells, etc.  Sometimes I will also cover the marimba with bubble wrap or cloth or whatever else is on hand.  I frequently drop the upper manual of bars upon the lower manual; they then chatter away as I move around the instrument.  Sometimes I throw loose bundles of small dowels on the bars.  I’ve also experimented with preparing the instrument by taping various things to the bars that then rattle and buzz with each stroke or mute the bars, including plastic spoons, pieces of rubber, and cotton balls.

None of this damages the instrument.  Even wood mallets can be used in the low range of a marimba if one’s technique is sound.  To date I have not cracked a single bar and sometimes I play very, very hard.

I’m not the first marimbist to explore a broader timbral palette.  Keiko Abe used big, soft cluster mallets for many years.  My mentor at University of Michigan, Michael Udow, also used a wide variety of mallets, depending upon the situation.  But few percussionists of my generation or younger have explored a more wildly creative approach to sound when it comes to mallet instruments.  When I propose a more dramatic approach to mallet selection in master classes I’m frequently met with incredulity or even outright hostility.  There are many reasons for this.

First, I’ve observed that most developing percussionists are primarily concerned with their own physical comfort.  Medium yarn mallets feel good.  They sit nicely in the hands and they produce warm, resonant sounds across most of the instrument.  But while medium yarn mallets might be appropriate for some solo repertoire, they rarely sound good in ensemble situations.   They’re generally too soft and inarticulate, even when the players are amplified.  For most ensemble situations the player will need mallets that are much harder.  Unfortunately these are not nearly as comfortable.  Hard mallets reveal rhythmic imperfections in one’s passage work.  It is much harder to create the illusion of sustain when rolling.  Double, triple, and quadruple stops require greater precision to avoid flamming.  The trick to getting used to them is simply to practice with hard mallets.

Second, more than any other instrument save electric guitar, the percussive arts are subject to intense industry influence.  Part of the reason for this is that we play so many different instruments.  Between the different instruments and the actuators used to make them sound, there are hundreds of opportunities for companies to make something that they can sell to you.  No other instrument allows for someone to get up before a concert and thank five or six sponsors before performing.  This is especially true with mallet companies.  The bulk of their income comes from drum set sticks and marching band sticks and mallets, but they do make some money from selling marimba mallets.  And their primary output is yarn mallets.  There is nothing wrong with this, of course.  These companies make a great product and undoubtedly the majority of marimba parts call for yarn mallets, but the result of all this yarn-mallet-making activity is that students are led to believe that yarn mallets are the only option.

Part of this has to do with the number of percussion teachers who have sponsorships.  I’m one of them.  I enjoy a Malletech sponsorship and the folks there have been incredibly supportive of my artistic activities.  And Malletech makes quite a few mallets that I couldn’t make at home. They have patents on some of their designs and even if I could get the materials I doubt I could make the mallets as well as they do since they have an entire infrastructure built around making great mallets. I’m not arguing to do away with beautiful mallets made by great companies like Malletech, I’m only suggesting that these be part of the entire picture.

The problem with developing percussionists is that after being subjected to a barrage of yarn-mallet advertisements and sponsored artists, most young students conclude that indeed yarn mallets are the only way to go.  And then the tail is wagging the proverbial dog.  Instead of artists dictating the direction and shape of the musical landscape it is the companies.  As a friend pointed out to me, the situation then becomes ever more circular, spiraling down into a vortex of materialism and convenience.  The companies influence the players on their mallet selection, the players then commission pieces for that sound world, the composers write the pieces and then the mallet companies respond accordingly.  The circle is complete.

But the truth is you can hit a marimba (or any percussion instrument) with virtually anything.  Yarn mallets are only option among many, and a rather new one at that.  In fact, for years marimbists preferred rubber mallets.  (Early vaudeville xylophonists even used wood mallets on occasion.)  If get your hands on early recordings of Vida Chenoweth or Claire Omar Musser you’ll hear that much of the time they were using rubber mallets.  And their playing was expressive and technically accomplished.

So what happened?  Leigh Howard Stevens happened.  Leigh took the marimba world by storm in the last 1970s and completely revolutionized the approach to playing it as well as the construction of the instrument itself and the mallets we use to play it.  Leigh advocated using longer birch shafts and yarn wrapping around the ball of the mallet.  This approach allows the player more accuracy and helps produce a sweet, mellow sound with a pleasing blend of the fundamental and overtones of each bar.  Leigh is not only a consummate artist, but also a savvy businessman and he was able to convert his vision of marimba playing into a thriving and innovative company that makes some of the best marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, and mallets available, especially yarn mallets.  What people missed, though, is that Leigh’s approach works for Leigh’s style of playing and for the repertoire he has commissioned and championed, but it’s not the only way to play the instrument.  It is a testament to Leigh’s artistry and business acumen that he was able to influence several generations of percussionists the world over.  There’s a reason why he’s in the PAS Hall of Fame. But in blindly following him we have become like lemmings running off a cliff, jumping to a death of timbral conformity. I say all this with the utmost respect as Leigh is a friend and a mentor.

I bring this up to articulate a third point, which is that the present yarn-mallet culture is historically new and was preceded by a very different aesthetic.  Just because most people use a type of mallet now does not mean it was always the case.  Styles and attitudes change.  Nothing is set in stone, not even the hallowed medium yarn mallet.

If we don’t explore radically different mallet options then we limit our range of expression on the instrument.  Violinists have all manner of expressive devices literally at their fingertips (or bow), including sul tasto, pizzicato, sul ponticello, different vibrato speeds, spiccato, etc.  Our choices are seemingly much more limited.  But in fact we can explore dead strokes, playing with the shafts, playing on nodal points, and different beating spots on the bars.  Few marimbists do this, but those sounds are available with little effort.  Combined with different mallet changes and even preparations of the instrument, the sound possibilities are truly limitless.  We actually have more color available to us than said violinists.  (Though admittedly switching between them is a bit cumbersome.)

With all the problems in the world it may appear petty for me to be griping about mallet selection.  After all, if someone prefers manufactured mallets it’s their own business, right?  Sure, but these details matter because they bespeak of larger issues.  When one reaches into a bag and grabs a pair of mallets one is making a political statement whether one wants to or not.  It may be a statement that only fellow percussionists fully appreciate, but it still ripples out and beyond the specific activity of tapping wooden bars and the community that surrounds that activity.  This is why I make so many of mallets.  Besides the fact that it is cheaper, it gives me total control over the sound, the sound that is appropriate for that specific musical situation. I would love to see mallet companies follow suit and offer more variety of mallets made with a greater variety of materials.

I admit that much of what I’m saying follows my predilection that when it comes to interpretations I lean towards the fringe.  Glenn Gould is my favorite pianist and always will be.  I’ve always thought that in the pantheon of great pianists there’s a whole bunch of them swarming around together in a bubble—and they more or less sound the same—and then there’s Glenn Gould.  His output wasn’t complete (one needs Horowitz for Liszt, for example), but he’s still the most unique and creative pianist of the last 100 years.

When a whole generation of percussionists relies solely on manufactured mallets their range of expression narrows considerably.  Manufactured mallets produce a manufactured sound.  Most of the young men and women I’ve coached in the last 15 years are in their late teens or early 20s.  Typically this is a time of searching and discovery in one’s life.  The most important aspect of going to a college or university is to learn to think independently, analytically, and creatively, and to question systems.  If there’s one time in one’s life to really think about giving it to The Man, this is it.  But I’ve found a curious lack of rebelliousness among young people.  (This is as true in New York City as it is in Idaho.)  I don’t know if it’s the mind-dulling deluge of Netflix, reality shows, internet, advertising, and pop music, or the addiction to processed fast food, of the pervasive lack of exposure to nature or all of the above, but something seems to be preventing our young people from taking a more creative approach to interpreting music on the marimba.  The points I’ve discussed above only exacerbate the problem.

At any rate, it is time to move to another stage in the evolution of marimba playing.  And it is time to encourage the next generation of percussionists to approach their mallet selection with more creativity and faithfulness to the essence of each piece. With the world at our fingertips through the internet we have unprecedented access to more music than any other time in recorded human history.  It is an exciting time to be a musician.  In mere seconds we can traverse the globe, listening to master musicians from many diverse cultures.  When we zoom in on different kinds of mallet playing from different parts of the world we hear a cornucopia of color blasting from our speakers.  Why not let that us inform and inspire us?  Why settle for only medium yarn?

However, if you’re considering biking to work, call me first. In order to survive you have to know what you’re doing. It takes FAR MORE SKILL than driving a car to stay safe. Many cyclists are killed each year because their skills are poor and they don’t know what they’re doing. And you need a basic set of gear. I’m happy to help and if you live in North Jersey I’ll do the commute with you a few times to show you the ropes. Safety, safety, safety!