Tag: songwriting

Composers Collaborate!

Posted on December 5, 2018 by Don DiNicola - Analysis, NewMusicBox

In the beginning of August 2018, I was in Montpelier, Vermont, preparing to give a talk to the students enrolled in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Music Composition Program. My talk was titled, “How Many Hats Can a Composer Wear Successfully?”. I looked out at my colleagues in the room. I knew what the response would be: one of beleaguered pride, the pride of a warrior who knows the score and has survived despite the odds against him or her. In that moment, I realized that I didn’t really want to talk about how many hats we wear as a badge of pride. The point I really wanted to bring home was how much we lose when we choose to write, arrange, perform, and produce in our own solitary creative bubble.

Our first instinct is to grab as much as possible of the already too-low fee for ourselves.

Early on in my career, I discovered the professional advantages of collaboration quite by accident. During the late 1990s, I was writing music for several dramatic reality TV shows when I got a request for some hip-hop music. My first thought was, “I can do that.” I knew I could, although it certainly wouldn’t be very authentic. But I did have several colleagues at the time who were more than capable of producing authentic hip-hop tracks. I made a decision that forever altered the course of my career. I brought in these colleagues to write and produce the hip-hop tracks. The reason this is so important is that as composers, especially at the beginning of our careers, most of us are, to put it plainly, broke. Our first instinct is to grab as much as possible of the already too-low fee for ourselves. After all, we have been laboring for years and have never been fairly compensated for our efforts, right? The idea of sharing the credit/fee or hiring help hasn’t crossed our minds yet. My good friend Paul Chihara has many stories of his early days in Hollywood as a film composer. In most of those stories, he talks about having to spend the entire fee on union contractors, arrangers, music editors, conductors, and players. Often, the expenses would be more than the fee. The results for Paul now include a long list of Hollywood film-scoring credits, including collaborations with the likes of Louis Malle, Arthur Penn, and—most notably—a long working relationship with Academy Award-nominated director Sydney Lumet. It was during one of those projects that we met, and Paul hired me to edit and prepare tracks for him.

Elaborating on the concept of collaboration, I’d like to share several examples that have stood the test of time.

In the not so distant past, any one of the following categories would have been considered a full-time vocation. Most of these people were composers themselves, but focused on one area of music production.

Other related fields often not credited (except on the inner sleeves of record albums or the super tiny type on CD jackets):

Recording Engineer – Mix Engineer – Mastering Engineer

I look to the past not for sentimentality but for inspiration.

Here are several instances of truly inspiring collaborations over the years. Notably, most of these examples reach back into the past. I believe there are several factors that contribute to this. First and foremost, the advent of digital technology was a game changer. Personally, I wasn’t able to participate in the pre-digital era of recording and producing. It was simply too expensive to work in the medium without the deep pockets of a record company. For better and for worse, the era of digital technology levelled the playing field. Many of us were finally able to jump in and start making respectable sounding recordings. However, with the levelled field (which ultimately led to the demise of the record industry as we had known it) came a new breed of musical autocrat. I have never heard it better expressed than by Molly Sheridan who dubs it the “Absolute Great Man” syndrome. While the “Absolute Great Man” can now achieve what used to take several people to do, the loss of the collaborators and their different perspectives is, I believe, sorely felt. I look to the past not for sentimentality but for inspiration. Because although much of the music is dated, there is no argument on the high quality of the craft inherent in these examples.

“Thriller”

It’s easy to call it a Michael Jackson effort, but the song “Thriller” was written by Rod Temperton and produced/arranged by Quincy Jones.

Let’s take a look at the track “Thriller” from the hit record album of the same name. It’s easy to call it a Michael Jackson effort and because of that, he is much revered for it. However the song “Thriller” was written by Rod Temperton and produced/arranged by Quincy Jones. To quote Alan Light from Rolling Stone October 30, 2009:

When asked today about the album Thriller, Jones points out – taking care to insist that he is not minimizing Jackson’s role – that it requires an entire brain trust to make a classic album. “Michael didn’t create Thriller,” he says. “It takes a team to make an album. He wrote four songs, and he sang his ass off, but he didn’t conceive it – that’s not how an album works.” Jones gives particular credit to the contributions of engineer Bruce Swedien and especially songwriter Rod Temperton, who had become a trusted Jones collaborator, contributing three songs for Off the Wall, including Rock With You and the title track.

Temperton had already written hits such as “Always and Forever” and “Boogie Nights” when he was in the band Heatwave during the mid to late 1970s. Quincy’s credits are too numerous to mention. But early on, he was in Elvis Presley’s backing band during his early TV appearances, played trumpet in Dizzy Gillespie’s band, and studied in the late 1950s with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. Whew! And this doesn’t even include his film scores, among which are The Pawnbroker and In the Heat Of The Night (which earned him an Oscar for Best Original Score). Bruce Swedien, the engineer for the track, was the engineer for many Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons records, not to mention recording and mixing records by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Herbie Hancock.

Upon listening to “Thriller,” even by today’s standards, it stands out for the excellent quality of the recording, arrangement, and—most especially—Michael Jackson’s performance. The opening bass riff is probably Quincy. At least four people are credited with bringing the synthesizers to life. In our current paradigm, it would probably have been just one person putting together the entire track. The production of the Thriller album really marks a turning point in the production of popular music. Not only is this the beginning of the digital era, MTV was launched less than a year before Thriller was released. Suddenly pop music writers, producers, performers and audience members were confronted with an evolution from what had been largely an aural experience, to a hybrid aural/visual experience. Now we watch the Buggles video of “Video Killed the Radio Star” and take its truth for granted. At the time however, the very idea of the visual component becoming part of the music production process was terrifying to many composers and musicians. Many careers did not survive the transition. The generation that springs forward starting in the early 1980s, encompasses this entirely new phenomenon. The evolution of digital technology has fundamentally changed the nature of collaboration. More recent collaborations might now include Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan’s “Heartland” 1993 (written through exchanges by fax) and the Kanye West- Rihanna-Paul McCartney composition “FortyFiveSeconds”. The new level of inter-connectedness provided by the ever-evolving technology has forever altered the landscape of collaboration. Now we can trade session files in a way that makes it possible for collaboration without even being in the same country, something unimaginable in the not so distant past.

Listening to “Thriller” today, the sound is still awesome in the truest sense of the word. Given all of this combined experience, what you get is a recording of a song that stands the test of time—a true collaboration by four heavy hitters, all at the top of their game.

“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”

I recently watched the PBS American Masters interview with Carole King during which she talked about bringing in a song to a publisher when she was working in the Brill Building in Manhattan. “That’s great kid. Here’s 25 bucks,” says Carole, quoting the publisher. She went on to write dozens of songs with her husband Gerry Goffin during the ‘60s, including “Chains” (covered by the Beatles on their first UK record), “Locomotion” for their babysitter Little Eva, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” for the Monkees, and most notably, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” recorded by Aretha Franklin. Listen to this Atlantic single (preferably on vinyl or CD, but for expediency you can also experience it through this YouTube Embed below):

Here is a divine melody, a unique POV (few pop songs had been written from such an emotionally confessional female point of view up to that time), sterling production by Jerry Wexler, a pared-down precision performance by Spooner Oldham on piano, and of course Aretha in top form. The track is a true collaboration and meeting of many top talents. Keep in mind that Aretha was only 25 years old at the time, as was Carole. Spooner was 24 and Gerry was 28.

“Mack The Knife”

Another famous collaboration is that of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill on “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” (which most people know by the title “Mack the Knife”) which was originally written for Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in 1928. Grab a listen to an original version performed with organ accompaniment and a vocal by Brecht himself.

It’s written in an eccentric “Singspiel”-type song form, which lends itself to storytelling.

Fast-forward to 1959 and find the “big band” arrangement with a superb interpretative vocal performance by Bobby Darin. What really makes this record special is the addition of the arrangement by Richard Wess.

It’s as classic as it is unlikely during the era when rock and roll was taking over the airwaves. It was a collaboration among many talents across many years.

“The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jiveass Slippers”

Charles Mingus has always been a favorite of mine, and if you haven’t taken a deep dive into his material you might check out his 1972 record on Columbia Let My Children Hear Music—specifically “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jiveass Slippers.” When I was younger, I thought it was written and arranged/scored by Mingus. But it turns out that Sy Johnson is credited with the orchestration, transcription, and arrangement, as well as the conducting. And the ubiquitous (at the time) Teo Macero produced the record. Teo wrote, produced, and arranged for the likes of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Gato Barbieri. He later went on to produce for Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, and Tony Bennett. This collaboration is unique in that the complexity of the composition calls for a high level of familiarity with the fusion of European classical harmony, blues, jazz, and extended song form, which gave birth to the newly emerging form of extended jazz compositions such as this one. (Mingus spent five years studying bass and composition with the principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, Herman H. Rheinshagen, while Miles Davis attended “The Institute of Musical Art” now known as The Juilliard School). Both Sy Johnson and Teo Macero were more than up to the task. The result is a recording that takes Mingus’s composition (in the Ellingtonian tradition of “symphonic style” jazz) and elevates it to heights heretofore never achieved.

“On Broadway”

Four writers were listed on the record.

Another example is “On Broadway” by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (with kibitzing by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller). Cynthia and Barry originally wrote the song from a female point of view. After a couple of attempts to get the song recorded, they had the chance to present it to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (their idols at the time) who were the principal writers for the Drifters. Leiber and Stoller both liked the song and gave Cynthia and Barry the chance to either rework it themselves, changing it to a male point of view, or to collaborate with them. The result was four writers listed on the record. It has been recorded and arranged multiple times—first by The Cookies in 1962 and very soon after that same year by The Crystals. The first “definitive” version was recorded in 1963 by the Drifters, with a guitar solo by budding songwriter (at the time) Phil Spector and an instrumental arrangement by Gary Sherman.

Fast forward again to 1978 when a second “definitive” version was recorded by guitar virtuoso George Benson. George’s version ended up in the movie All That Jazz and later Benson performed it with Clifford and the Rhythm Rats for the 1994 Muppets album Kermit Unpigged.

Another time-traveling collaboration suitable for “all ages.”

“Eleanor Rigby”

Most readers are likely familiar with “Eleanor Rigby,” written primarily by Paul McCartney but attributed to Lennon/McCartney. This recording was an interesting project for many reasons. It was an early example of the Beatles’ transformation from a rock and roll act to a more experimental, studio-based band. But it is George Martin’s arrangement for double string quartet that makes this recording really stand apart from the rest of the Beatles’ canon. While many previously recorded rock ballads had utilized string arrangements, this was arguably the first to feature a classical-style quartet on a song that actually rocks. This opened the door for the likes of The Moody Blues, ELO, and later Queen, Kate Bush, and Arcade Fire, to name a few. It is one of many collaborations between producer/arranger George Martin and the Beatles. It’s hard to even think about this song without imagining the staccato eighth notes pumping and driving this recording.

“God Only Knows”

Lastly, let’s consider the production and recording of Brian Wilson and Tony Asher’s “God Only Knows.” It is a stunning example of a collaboration between peers. Brian wrote the melody and then ad agency writer Tony Asher wrote the words. The tracks were performed under Brian’s direction by the now famous “wrecking crew” of top flight LA studio musicians. At the 11th hour, Brian decided to have the vocal performed by his brother Carl. According to “The Making of Pet Sounds,” an essay in the booklet notes for The Pet Sounds Sessions, Brian originally intended to sing lead vocal on “God Only Knows,” but after the instrumental portions of the song had been recorded, Brian thought Carl could impart the message better than he could.

Brian reflected in October 1966, “I gave the song to Carl because I was looking for a tenderness and a sweetness which I knew Carl had in himself as well as in his voice. He brought dignity to the song and the words, through him, became not a lyric, but words” (From “Brian Behind The Beach Boys” Hit Parader 11, Oct. 4, 1966).

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These are some great examples of what can be gained when one lets go of “Absolute Great Man” control.

In recent years there have been many outstanding collaborative efforts, especially in the field of film and TV scoring. The score composed by Wendy Malvoin and Lisa Coleman for the TV show Heroes is one of the most original-sounding and effective scores for TV I’ve heard, especially the first season. Another standout collaboration is the score by Peter Nashel and Eric Hachikian for the Netflix series Marco Polo. My collaboration with Chicago-based composer Renée Baker on the re-score of Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul screened at the Chicago Museum of Modern Art and Ebertfest in 2016; Renée’s score was performed by her Chicago Modern Orchestra Project and is outstanding for its vibrant originality and free jazz style. In the pop arena, one super standout is Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Everything Is Love. My favorite cut is “Apeshit” and the video kills it.

When we collaborate, we can also expand our audience.

So when we collaborate, not only do we create situations for a cross-pollination of musical ideas, but we can also expand our audience. A recording of one can certainly appeal to all of one’s established audience. However, collaboration among artists increases the potential and broadens that reach exponentially. I advocate for collaboration whenever possible. I have found the composer’s career to be a long, slow, and bumpy ride. It often helps to have some company at times. There is plenty of time for “solo” composing. I try to keep an open mind, and by all means possible, experiment! As Marcel Proust once commented, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” In this case, it’s “new ears”!

The Rush of Performing vs. Merely Being a Witness

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Gretta Harley - Columns

I can’t find anything that compares to the feeling I have when hearing what I imagined in my inner ear played in real time. I get a rush when I perform, especially premiering a new piece in front of an audience, or when the musicians that I’m playing with sound exceptionally good—when we are all gelling, the stars align and we’re breathing together, and that exact moment is the only moment and it is perfect.

When I’m in the audience, listening to others play the music I write down on paper, my heart races. Time slows down and I hold my breath. I am merely a witness to the music. The feeling is simultaneously one of helplessness and euphoria.

It’s a different feeling than when I’m in the audience, listening to others play the music I write down on paper. My heart races. Time slows down and I hold my breath. I am merely a witness to the music. The feeling is simultaneously one of helplessness and euphoria. And because the music is an intimate part of me, I’m hearing every mistake and recognizing every wonderful nuance intended or not intended. I feel like a fly on the wall, looking from above while listening from within, and playing witness to the sounds in the room that weren’t there a moment ago.

I am a tiny fish in a vast ocean of prodigious living composers, or maybe more like an amoeba. I do not receive nor seek large commissions, and I do not have my music played by various ensembles all over the world. But I did have the fortunate opportunity to write for and hear my full orchestral composition played by the Seattle Philharmonic. The opportunity came in a composition class when my then-professor and composition mentor, Janice Giteck, secured the orchestra. Only four of the thirteen students in the class were invited to write for the full orchestra. The other students wrote for sections (brass, string, or wind sections). Every week through the semester, the class sat with the players at rehearsals, observing, collecting questions and observations to bring to class the next day, and taking notes for our own pieces. To write for an entire orchestra was overwhelming, intimidating, and wholly exciting. There was a public reading of my piece, and the conductor, Marsha Mabrey, instructed the players to begin. She stopped them a few times to go over various parts of the piece, clarifying with the players what I had put on the page. (It was completely handwritten, pre-computers, pre-software. I use Sibelius now.) As the sounds began to fill the room that simultaneous feeling of helplessness and euphoria immerged.

One of the biggest challenges that a composer faces when handing her music to players is ensuring that what she has placed on the page is an exact translation of what she wants to hear. Every nuance must be detailed appropriately–not just the pitches and rhythms, but every articulation, dynamic marking, tempo(s), and rehearsal marking, etc. I have also written pieces that have aleatoric and improvisational components involved, and they also must be carefully, painstakingly mapped out in order to communicate the set details and geography of the music accurately. If the instructions are not clear and I am present at rehearsal(s), the players can ask me questions. But it’s better to have my notes as clear as possible so that the limited time I usually have for a rehearsal is spent playing, not translating how to read my score. If I want the piece to grow legs and live outside of my watchful proximity, I need to trust that the score is clear and will be played to my liking.

Although I showed up at my recording session with Kramer in Florida with no written-out scores, I experienced feelings not unlike those helpless and euphoric ones. Kramer is a sculptor of music, a sound painter. He chooses a color and starts molding, not quite sure where the “brush” will take him at times. He says things like, “Let me just play around for a bit until I know what I want.” I relate to this style of music making, too, because it’s how I start writing most often.

Kramer during our recording sessions in his studio, Noise St. Augustine

We began recording at the beginning of my song cycle. The first time I heard the first song (“Kaleidoscope Eyes”) all put together with its various instrumentation—piano, mellotron, glass armonica, cymbals, organ, panting voices, horns, strings (some acoustic, some digital)—I cried. I did. I was in tears. It was all I imagined, only much better. The exchange of our ideas was generous and ultimately resulted in a magic that I had hoped for, but it was unexpected in other ways. I continued to have that euphoric feeling song after song, without the helpless part. There was an unspoken agreement to almost all of the choices we made together. Sometimes music is better in a collaboration; and although I wrote all of the songs and many of the instrumental parts, this record feels like a collaboration to me.

In my previous post, “Creation is Messy,” I indicated that there is an “incredible amount of work and planning” that goes into bringing our imaginings to others, but I didn’t go into much detail. This fourth and last essay, I’ll get more specific about the process, of both pre- and post-production of Element 115 (Uup).

There are so, so many things that go on behind the scenes in any art form. Whether it is the hours a day (for years and years) that the artist hones her craft or the months and years of planning logistical details before one concert, it takes a lot of painstaking work for it to appear organic, or to look easy, and to welcome the audience in.

After playing this song cycle in various ways: solo, with a band, recording it with a creative producer, the music didn’t feel finished yet. I realized the next step was to hear it with a chamber ensemble. I wanted the orchestration to align with the arrangements that Kramer and I came up with. I began orchestrating, but I work rather slowly and had so many other logistics to juggle if I wanted a well-attended performance. Andrew Joslyn is a beloved composer and arranger in Seattle and I asked for his help. This was such a good decision. He took the recording and filtered the music through Sibelius. This saved hours and hours of work, but the program didn’t spit out the scores accurately. They had no dynamics or articulation markings; rhythms and meters were not correct, so there was a lot of clean-up work that had to be done. Andrew was also given permission to add his own ideas; most of them I kept, but some I didn’t. We divided up the pieces and within about 4-6 weeks all the parts were finished for all 14 songs in the song cycle. We were orchestrating to a specific ensemble and couldn’t have all of the sounds that were available to us in Kramer’s vast sound library, so alternative choices were made.

Gretta Harley holding a guitar in her lap with two microphones in front of her.

During the recording sessions at Noise St. Augustine

While the scores were being prepared, I was organizing the rehearsals. The wonderful thing about being able to work with top players is that they are top players. The downside of working with top players is that their schedules are always full. I secured ten players several months before the release concert, sending them contracts while hosting a crowdfunding campaign to pay their fees and for post-production of the record. I confirmed the rehearsal dates with the large group but continuously ran into scheduling conflicts with the rhythm section, which I rehearsed prior to and separate from the full ensemble rehearsals. I would meet with one of the piano players on one day and the other on a different day, for example. Not all of the rhythmic players read music. I tailored the scores so that they could read them, and some learned their parts mostly by ear, listening to the recording.

When I wasn’t soliciting money, rehearsing, or orchestrating, I was doing things like going to dress fittings or meeting with my publicist, web designer, or intern about things like T-shirts, business cards, posters, website design, and social media. Or I was printing out press releases and stuffing envelopes with promo CDs and making trips to the post office. I was preparing for and anticipating anything and everything that could happen, and still surprises and challenges popped up along the way.

I find working with students to be a great value for all parties. They are looking for hands-on experience and I am looking for hands.

When working on a project of this scale, getting help to do some of the tasks is crucial. These details are tedious and can be a giant pain in the ass. I find working with students to be a great value for all parties. They are looking for hands-on experience and I am looking for hands. In this case, I was able to depend on some people, and others made more work for me because I am a bit of a control freak, and I had to redo some things to my liking. But all in all, this community making-a-show idea is a pretty great way to do it.

One of my composition students at Cornish College of the Arts came to the first large ensemble rehearsal and jotted down notes as I yelled things like, “Check the horn part in measure 21.” I brought my computer to the rehearsal and she was able to go right into the score and make the definite changes, like “That note on the second beat in the flute part should be an octave higher.” I hired a conductor, Roger Nelson. He was one of my beloved professors when I was a student at Cornish, and I enjoyed getting to know him as a colleague during the 12 years I taught there. Having a calm person in the room who knew the material was invaluable. I gave him the scores a month in advance, and we went over in detail how we would rehearse the pieces. Delegation is an important aspect in getting anything done. Choosing trusted people to delegate to is imperative.

I secured the sound engineer I wanted a few months before the show. I planned a full rehearsal one week before the performance in the venue. I hired the sound engineer and the video designer to attend that rehearsal so that they weren’t running the show for the first time at the premiere. I invited a lighting designer to come the a rehearsal too and he had the opportunity to realize he wanted to loan the club some backlighting for the concert

Because I had never before gone on stage to sing without a guitar strapped to me, or a piano or keyboard in front of me, I wasn’t sure if I was going to look stupid.

Because I had never before gone on stage to sing without a guitar strapped to me, or a piano or keyboard in front of me, I wasn’t sure if I was going to look stupid. From all my years working in theater, I know that images are powerful and physical habits people have can be distracting. So I asked two of my friends, Kristen Kosmas and Elizabeth Kenny, both directors whose visual tastes align with mine, to offer advice about any of my weird tics at our dress rehearsal. They made only a few suggestions, like keep your arms still until at least the third song. Apparently that was good a choice.

The video slideshow of images choreographed with media designer Justin Roberts was to run with the music. We argued about the type of screen to use but we ended up following his inclination, which was more of a financial consideration than an artistic one. Although I loved his work on this piece, I do wish I had the money to have enveloped the stage as I envisioned. There are always compromises and choosing which things to let go of.

The night of the concert, after a long rehearsal, I was getting my hair and makeup done two blocks away from the venue when the texts started pouring in. “Where are you?” My stage manager was getting antsy. I think I may have jogged a bit in the custom-made dress after realizing it was 7:45 p.m. I peered into the audience from backstage and the venue was full. The house was sold out. My stage manager handed me a small glass of whiskey. The players were already tuning up on stage. Roger checked in with me. I said I was ready. I stood taking deep breaths at the door jam backstage as the orchestra played that long introduction of “Kaleidoscope Eyes.” My heart raced. Time slowed down and I tried to keep breathing. As I walked slowly to the stage, I felt both in control and very trusting of everyone in the ensemble. We had worked hard. We were ready. I had excellent players who had my back. The audience felt good. (You can sometimes feel the energy in the room before anything happens.) This was a good feeling. Friends came from New York, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco to hear this music and to support the efforts that had started exactly two years prior. I was giving birth finally. I can’t find anything that compares to the feeling–hearing what I imagined in my inner ear played in real time.

Creation is Messy

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Gretta Harley - Columns

Record release show for Gretta Harley's Element 115 (Uup) featuring Mettle. (Photo by ML Naden)

Creation is messy. Artistic inspiration without the mess (and an incredible amount of work and planning) will never see the light of day. Our finished work is only as good as it is because of the untidy part. Art needs us to bravely embrace our inner slob, even though most of us prefer a little primping before going outside.

The 19th-century poet John Keats coined the phrase “negative capability” in a letter to his brothers, explaining it as when a person is “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” This quote encapsulates the messy for me. From a new creation’s infancy through its adolescence, it has awkward moments of vulnerability that can scare many a creator away from ever completing or sharing his or her work. There is so much uncertainty. Is it good? Will anyone like it? Does it sound original enough? Will anyone care? I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this piece is. This piece sucks. I suck. But if I allowed my work to be held hostage to perfection I would never share any of it. (In fact, that was the case in another chapter of my life.) It is the case now with some people I know, especially some of my students. It can be just too vulnerable an endeavor to share our creations. They are a reflection of us. So if people don’t like my music, will they think less of me?

Negative capability says to me that working with one’s intuition and a huge leap of faith must outweigh uncertainties, concerns, or doubts.

Negative capability says to me that working with one’s intuition and a huge leap of faith must outweigh uncertainties, concerns, or doubts. The artist first must have a vision, and then ride it, with no helmet. But sometimes the vision isn’t clear. That uncomfortable place where you don’t know what is taking shape can be paralyzing. I have learned to embrace that discomfort as an incubator. The irritable reaching after perfection can stifle the idea that needs to wiggle and breathe for a while. This part is messy. I like to swim in it like a luxurious mud bath. It does not mean that I am not also terrified or that that part of it doesn’t sometimes suck.

At the same time that we allow the messy, we can’t “wait” for the clarity. It’s not going to just appear. Well, most of the time. We have to actively sculpt it, like making a ceramic bowl where the clay gets under your fingernails and the bowl explodes in the kiln and you have to start over. We need to work. I had a composition student once who suffered so much insecurity because music didn’t come to him as divine inspiration. It was an uphill battle trying to convince him to build his skills and not be afraid to write a bunch of crap for a while. Part of this insecurity is a byproduct of our instant-gratification culture that millennials have grown up with. There has been glossy-clean, easy product of perfection served to us, like that TV show Glee. “Those kids,” I said, “rehearsed something like 15 hours a day, all week long, to make that piece look spontaneous.” Response: “Reeeaally?”

My music is collaborative, but the actual writing of music is a solitary act for me. With the exception of my songwriting collaboration in We Are Golden with Sarah Rudinoff, I have written my music all alone. Sometimes I hear a melody and I write it down. Sometimes I sit at my piano or have a guitar in my hand and I just play. When the music starts taking shape, I put on the recorder and/or jot notes on paper. Sometimes words come, sometimes a violin line, a drum beat… I take my dog for walks and listen to the recordings of the week and am drawn to specific melodies and chord progressions. Then I begin honing, editing, sculpting the music. I allow both my intuitive ear and the compositional skills I’ve developed to shape the music, often not thinking about them at all.

I found a remarkable group of active composers in Seattle who seek to meet once a month on a Sunday evening to share the music they wrote on that particular Sunday. We each attempt to write 20 songs in one day and then play them for each other that evening over drinks and snacks. Over the years these self-imposed parameters have mutated to include larger pieces of music, operas in progress, and my song cycle. Before it was finished, I played some of the music that became Element 115 (Uup) to the small group. A few weeks later, on a warm evening in August, I premiered some of the finished songs at a beloved Seattle venue, Café Racer, which has a stage the size of my kitchen table. One of my Sunday evening composer companions, Matt Menovcik, was at that public premier where I noticed some of the tempos weren’t right, one song needed total revamping, and some lyrics needed attention. I had told Matt that the record producer I planned to work with—someone I had worked with previously—had turned down working on the recording of this song cycle. (This project was different than what I had produced before, and he said he didn’t know what to do with this music. I was a little heartbroken and felt slightly “rejected.”) Matt said that he thought that the producer Kramer would like this music, and he wanted to introduce us. I was floored with the idea, being a Bongwater fan. Matt sent an introductory email, and Kramer and I started corresponding. I sent Kramer five songs that I had demoed. He said he liked three of them. I thought, “Good, he’s honest.” We set up a phone meeting date and, after an hour-long conversation, it was decided that Kramer would produce my record. We set a date in January. I continued writing and sent him demos. (He also asked for the songs in their bare form, with just piano or guitar and voice.) He consistently told me to sing softer.

Readying for my recording session, I knew I had to play all of the music flawlessly. There is no room for mistakes when you’re paying for a session and only have a few days to capture it. So in the month of September I began playing the songs-in-progress at an open mic night at a dive bar in West Seattle, where the audience consisted of 2-10 mostly other songwriters on any given Monday evening. I also put together a rock band. I called it Mettle. We rehearsed this music a few nights a week, beginning in October, and played a total of about eight shows over a six-month period.

Gretta Harley’s band Mettle in rehearsal (Photo by Taylor Bowen)

The experience of playing with these guys was invaluable. Other people always bring something fresh, new, different to the music. Guitarist Brian Emery played with us once before deciding he had no time for another band and in that one rehearsal played something I kept: that metallic guitar sound on “Innocent,” the sixth song in the cycle. Dave Pascal gave me the idea for the bass line on “Needle In The Groove.” The four-piece band (other members: Mike Katell and Ben Morrow) got tighter over the months, and I was able to explore and decide on arrangement possibilities with them. Kramer, although never hearing the band, did not want to work with a band on this music. He encouraged me to play all of the instruments, to make a real solo record. He called it my Blue.

Come January, I flew to Florida and met Kramer in the parking lot of his Fort Lauderdale condo. We loaded up the rental van with gear and drove four hours north to St. Augustine where I had secured a house to set up shop. We recorded all day and night during two one-week sessions each, to coincide with my teaching schedule. Between sessions I intentionally didn’t want the band to hear what I was doing with Kramer, or the other way around. I wanted the different versions to incubate in my ear and hear what worked best. What made me so happy in working with Kramer is that he kept the authenticity of the original demos I had sent him pre-Mettle, but I still brought some of the choices I made with the band, fully recognizing their contribution to the music. Kramer and I worked well together. He had so many great, unique ideas, but he was also very open to mine. It was a true collaboration that we both left feeling proud of.

Fin Records was scheduling an August release. The plan was to tour Europe in late August, and I was hoping to bring Mettle. Fin had been showing signs of financial trouble for months, and they postponed the release. I still wanted to go to Europe and had already booked some shows there. There was no monetary tour support at that point. I didn’t have any money to bring the band, so I reworked all of the music on just guitar. I bought a travel guitar that fit in the overhead baggage compartments and played shows in four different countries, solo. When I returned, it was apparent that Element 115 (Uup) was not going to be released on Fin Records. They were folding.

It had been over a year since I finished writing the song cycle. I’d worked so hard. I had made my solo record—a long held dream. We recorded the music in a way I dreamt about as a kid. I was happy with the way it sounded. Yet so many obstacles kept coming up. I could recount them all here, but I’ll just simply say that I wondered if the universe was telling me not to release the record. Everything about the music was going so well, but every single logistical hurdle that could get in the way did– Sod’s Law. It was an uphill battle all the way. I had come so far with this music, music that I wanted desperately to share. But I was exhausted. I hosted the December composers meeting and had a mini-breakdown in front of the last straggler in my hallway. Josh listened to me cry, and encouraged me to take my time. I cried myself to sleep that night. I talked with my then-boyfriend, James, who encouraged me to put out the vinyl record that I wanted to release, and I rethought the whole thing with his encouragement, which I will always be grateful for. This release was so close I could taste it, but there was a long haul ahead. I could not abandon it.

I wanted to hear the music with Mettle and an acoustic chamber orchestra. I set up a date with a venue. (I always work better when I have a date to work towards.) I started orchestrating and gathering musicians and talking to venues. But my physical energy was low since I had caught bacterial meningitis between recording sessions and was still feeling its effects. I decided to hire an orchestrator to help me arrange the music, based on the arrangements that Kramer and I had made on the record. Some members of the band got frustrated with me. I hadn’t thought about this detail, but they had worked so hard on our arrangements and felt proud of their contribution to it and I was just asking too much of them to relearn the material, because it was different. I felt terrible because I thought they felt disrespected, but the music was guiding me and it had to be heard in the way I was hearing it inside my head. It was my intuition, and it was messy. I hired a different rhythm section, began rehearsing, started a crowd-funding campaign to pay them, and played the show in June, one full year after completing the recording. (All of this takes a lot of planning and organizing, which is another topic.) The vinyl records were delivered to my house two days before the record release show. It was a nail biter.

It is not enough to write the music. Not for me. I need to communicate it. I need supportive people to cheer me on in my vision. I need people to want to play the music, and to help me with the logistics along the way.

The point I am trying to make is that we artists create works that each has its own process; and we need help along the way. We need to reach out to other trusted people and ask them to swim through the mud in a very messy pool in order to bring our ideas to fruition. It is not enough to write the music. Not for me. I need to communicate it. I need supportive people to cheer me on in my vision. I need people to want to play the music, and to help me with the logistics along the way. Of course there is no communication without the listener. Not everyone likes the music of Element 115 (Uup). I am past caring because to the people who do like it, I have communicated, and that communication means so much to me. My own town of Seattle never reviewed the record. That did hurt my feelings. But the reviews I received from Philadelphia to Belgium warmed my heart. Many artists before me have echoed this thought in their own words: it is not our job to care if people like our work. It is our job to do our work. Period.

In the end, the possibility of the record reaching more people was thwarted once James was diagnosed with cancer a few months after the release show. I canceled the plans with my publicist to promote it further because life got very messy. Messier than art. James passed away a few months ago, in February, and I am just starting to organize my writing again. There are several files of music ideas on my phone, and lyrics on pages in journals and loosely strewn around in messy piles on my piano, and on napkins in my pocketbook. I’ve been talking with Kramer about producing another song cycle, but the music hasn’t taken solid shape yet. I’m planning to premier a few of these unfinished songs at a show in early June. I have a lot of doubts and uncertainties about it. But all I can do is keep working.

(Top photo by ML Naden.)

Mettle live in performance (Photo by Maria Lamarca Anderson)

Copyright Conundrums for Collaborators

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Marc D. Ostrow - Columns

[Ed. Note: We’ve asked copyright lawyer and composer Marc D. Ostrow to write a series of short articles this month to clear up some common misconceptions about copyright and the music business. Marc’s widely read and informative post on rights in arrangements was the reason we thought it would be helpful to our readers to learn more about additional areas where composers and other creators can get into trouble. Marc’s first post below covers legal rights with respect to collaborations, and we welcome your comments and suggestions for other topics that you’d like to see him address.]

Illustrated cartoon of the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme including the text: "Jack and Jill went up the hilll / to fetch a pail of water. / Jack fell down and broke his crown / And Jill fell tumbling after."

An illustration from the public domain book, The Book of Knowledge, The Children’s Encyclopedia, edited by Arthur Mee and Holland Thompson, published by The Grolier Society of New York in 1912 and reprinted in 1912.

Here’s a situation that’s commonly misunderstood among creative collaborators: Jack and Jill agree to write a song together. They call it “Tumblin’ Down the Hill.” Jack writes the music and Jill writes the lyrics. Who owns what?

A) Jack owns the music and Jill owns the lyrics.
B) It depends whether the music or the lyrics were written first.
C) Jack and Jill each own 50% of both the music and lyrics.
D) Neither Jack nor Jill owns the music or lyrics.

Some of you may be surprised to learn that the correct answer is C. (Hint: when in doubt, always pick C.) In the absence of a written agreement to the contrary, Jack and Jill each own 50% of both the music and the lyrics.

Now this may seem counterintuitive at first. How can Jill own part of the music when she didn’t write a note of it, and how can Jack own part of the lyrics when he didn’t pen a single word? The key is that Jack and Jill agreed to collaborate to write the song. As a result, they’ve created a “joint work” of authorship under copyright law.

Section 101 of the Copyright Act defines a “joint work” as follows:

A “joint work” is a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.

That’s what Jack and Jill did in our hypothetical. They prepared a work with the intention that Jack’s contribution (music) and Jill’s contribution (lyrics) be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole (the song).

Moreover, ownership of the work, that is ownership of the copyright in the work, initially vests (i.e., is automatically granted to) the authors (i.e., the creators) of the work. Section 201 of the Copyright Act states in relevant part:

Initial Ownership. — Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work.

Absent a written agreement to the contrary, the creators of a joint work own that work in equal shares. So, if Jack and Jill collaborated on that song with John and Jane, each would own an undivided 25% interest in the copyright to the song.

Section 201(d) of the Copyright Act states that “[t]he ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.” A “conveyance,” other than a means of moving something from one place to another, is a fancy legal term for a written document. So if Jack and Jill want something other than a 50-50 split, they’ve got to put that in writing.

Some of you who are paying attention may have noticed the reference to an “undivided” interest in the copyright. If you’re wondering what that means, it’s the reason why Jack and Jill each own half of the words and music, even though they didn’t contribute to both parts of the song. Let me explain.

Copyrights, along with patents and trademarks (and a few other things) are often referred to as “intellectual property” or “intangible property.” And the laws for such non-physical property were developed from principles of law relating to tangible property like land (real property), which go back many hundreds of years.

Let’s say that instead of writing a song, Jack and Jill decide to buy a house. Now that “house” consists of the land that the house sits on, the front and back yards (yes, with shrubbery), and the building itself. Maybe it’s like the house I grew up in, a post-war split-level on a quarter acre in the ‘burbs. So, what do Jack and Jill own?

They are “joint tenants,” meaning they have an “undivided” interest in the property. Unless they’ve entered into some weird agreement, both Jack and Jill each have free and unfettered use (and joint ownership) of the whole house (not just the first or second floors) and also all of the front and back yards. So if Jack later sells his 50% interest in the house to June, he’s selling his 50% share in the whole thing, not just the second floor and the front yard, for example. That’s what we mean by an undivided interest in property.

A photo of the facade of the Jack & Jill Store in Hebron, North Dakota.

If Jack and Jill owned property together and opened a store there, perhaps it would look like this. (“Hebron, North Dakota” by Andrew Filer via Flickr.)

“Joint” authors of a work own an undivided interest in the whole work, even if each author contributes only a discrete portion of the work. That’s why Jack and Jill each own 50% of both the words and music to the song they wrote together.

So, let’s say Jack and Jill have a hit on their hands. And unbeknownst to Jack, Jill gets an offer to license the song for use in a new blockbuster movie: The Franchised Five, Part Six. Under what circumstances can Jill do the deal?

A) She must get Jack’s permission and also pay him his fair share of the proceeds.
B) She doesn’t need to tell Jack jack and she can pocket all the dough.
C) She doesn’t need Jack’s permission but she still has to pay him his cut.
D) She can license only her 50% interest in the song.

O.K., you probably figured the answer is C. But how many of you thought it should be A or D? In the absence of an agreement to the contrary, Jack and Jill, having an undivided 50% interest in the song, can each license the whole song (words and music and not just their 50% interest), subject, however, to a duty to account to the other joint author(s) and pay them an amount equal to their interest in the work. So Jill doesn’t have to get Jack’s permission, but she still would need to pay him 50% of the license fee, corresponding to his 50% ownership in the song.

Now, let’s say someone does an instrumental cover of the song and that, too, becomes a hit. CDs and downloads are sold, and the instrumental version is performed live and is broadcast over the radio and streamed over the Internet. Who gets paid the mechanical royalties for the sales and downloads, and who gets paid for the public performances? I think you know the answer: Absent a written agreement to the contrary, both Jack and Jill, as writers of a “joint work” should both get paid. Similarly, both writers should get paid when just the lyrics to the song are re-printed.

I’m sure many of my clever readers can come up with all kinds of scenarios, like Jack licensing the song to McDonalds without Jill’s permission and Jill licensing the tune to Burger King without telling Jack. Since advertisers usually want some sort of exclusivity, it may be that both agreements would be valid, but both McDonalds and Burger King could sue our songwriters for breach of contract.

Parenthetically, what if, instead of collaborating on a new song with Jill, Jack wanted to write a song using a poem that Jill had previously published in a periodical? Since Jill’s poem is a separate, pre-existing work, Jack’s use of Jill’s poem would not constitute a joint work. And just as Jack would have to get permission to arrange Jennifer’s pre-existing orchestral piece for a ukulele quartet, he would need to get Jill’s permission to set her lyrics to music.

But getting back to our collaborating songwriters, we can see that there are many reasons (e.g., Jack is a genius musician but Jill’s a much better businessperson) that collaborators should have contracts to spell out who can do what and to whom. And they should consult an experienced lawyer to help identify and document all areas of concern.

Moreover, many collaboration (and music publishing) agreements state that each party separately administers his own share, meaning you’ve got to get everyone’s permission. And the collaboration issues get particularly tricky when you’re dealing with works like operas and musicals or performing groups like string quartets and new music ensembles. Perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

This article, including the author’s replies to any comments, is intended to supply general information and guidance. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Readers with specific questions should contact an attorney with relevant expertise for legal advice pertaining to their particular matter, as every situation is unique.

Marc D. Ostrow (Photo by Karen Haberberg)

Marc D. Ostrow is a copyright and entertainment lawyer in New York City. Prior to returning to private practice, he ran the New York office of Boosey & Hawkes where he also was responsible for all copyright, legal and licensing matters, and served as a publisher member on ASCAP’s Symphony & Concert Committee. Previously, Marc was an attorney in BMI’s legal department. He has taught music business classes at the college level and is also a composer and occasional performer.

Marc D. Ostrow

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