Entering a film contest may seem odd for a group that includes no film students, 3 graduate students in music composition and 2 newly minted doctors of music composition. No wait – what I meant to say was that it’s odd that people who have never studied music are always using their computer nowadays to make all kinds of crazy music…No wait – what I meant to say was that it’s odd how people who have never studied photography are always using digital cameras these days along with cheap and easy to understand software to make photo projects – NO WAIT!

But that’s just it. There’s no reason to wait at all anymore. No waiting for film to get processed so that you may critique the results and learn from them. SNAP – turn the camera around and see what you got – repeat 2600 times (no cost of processing). You’ve gained the experience and perspective that would have taken months (or years) and thousands of dollars to amass 10 years ago. Emiliano Sullivan-Figueroa and Matt Schoendorff created a fantastic original score for the film in a morning using a laptop. No need to wait for the orchestra so that you can be sure that doubling that cello line in the bassoons is the way to go. While editing footage in my office, I would step out to the living room and ask for the sound of a cell phone ringing (or whatever). Four minutes later, the file is loaded and in my resource panel. More composers should try their hand at making a film (and the music) rather than wishing that they could become a film composer.

AHHH – I think it would take a while for me to run out of things to say about this experience, so let me close with this. I’m proud of the film (mistakes and all) that we made. For a first effort, I think we made a very good showing. But it is the experience itself – being so deep into a project that everything else fades away and it’s just you and these other artists all working to make this thing come to life, that I cherish the most.

For your consideration – Download.

DOWNLOAD from sam merciers on Vimeo.

Share/Save

For the student composer, emphasis falls on preparation for making a living off of and contributing to the classical canon, while the cultural authority of this music wanes . This approach ignores the realities of modern cultural production where the artifacts created and the artist that create them are increasingly difficult to describe within traditional disciplinary boundaries. Internationally recognized creativity scholar Ken Robinson stated in his 2006 TED Talk, “Creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not, comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.” If one may count on the consensus that composition is in fact a creative activity, then certainly music scholarship may profit from interdisciplinary work.  The broader social benefit is clearly described by biologist and social theorist Edmund O. Wilson,   “Most of the issues that vex humanity daily – economic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, poverty – cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities. Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is . . .”

So – What does it mean to be a composer in world where an inexpensive laptop grants easy control over audio, video, photographic content, graphic design, text and the means to easily share your products in a space where physical proximity will eventually be of  no hindrance at all? My current work addresses this paradigm from the perspective of music composition, a point of view often neglected in multimedia arts. Commonly this portion of the audio component is hired out to composers tasked with creating a work to specification and in service of the other media elements. More often audio is selected from batches of banal pre-fabricated clips in a manner similar to selecting from stock photography. Devices to capture, create and manipulate media are growing in power and connectivity while shrinking in size and we are creating the content.  Humans create, share and engage culture through what’s in our pocket, on our kitchen tables, in rows by the dozen at university computer labs.  Modern Scholarship in music composition must embrace this paradigm or leave matters to the media conglomerates where monetary returns are the only obligation.

Below is film_2: role strain. Taken with film_1: three variation, these films begin the narrative that will form a self-reflective exploration of what happens when an expensively trained composer tries to reach out beyond his sphere – when music in a multimedia work is central to the formal and aesthetic constitution of the work – not just clip art.

Share/Save

Share/Save

Sound in Context (Full Film) from Sound and Music on Vimeo.

Share/Save

Share/Save

- sam

Share/Save