When I write a transition, it's usually the barest minimum that I need to get myself from one section to the next. I was in a master class in grad school once where the guest composer (a student of some rather well-known folks) offered the following "advice": "Spend your time practicing writing transitions." Even then I raised an eyebrow and thought to myself, "But, why?" I didn't know
why I felt this way at the time. On reflection I think that many years of listening to and absorbing heaps of film music and realising that some of my favorite composers - like Stravinsky - seemed to have very little use for transitional material.To me it seems like a great deal of the affect of music like his is that it's more visceral - by design - without those transitions. That's one of the many things that actually makes it
interesting to listen to. Steve Reich's
Music for 18 Musicians? Few - if any - transitions. Just ideas butting themselves up to one another in a really logical and - to me, pleasing - way.
Long ago a friend quoted to me something to the effect of the following:
"Transitions are for people who don't know how to write music"
I may be misquoting and I can't remember who said it. I don't know if this particular person meant it literally that all transitions are useless, but I get the spirit of it. Don't spend all your time getting from one part of the piece to the next. You don't
have to be in a constant state of flux. If you have a good idea, try to stick with it and see where it goes. And that's what I try to do.
6 comments:
I also just remembered that the the guest composer also hit on my wife. Double douchebag.
He was a douchebag, but I think his advice was coming from the experience of encountering too much music that was transitionally deficient--in a bad way, not the way you are talking about. It's certainly not bad advice to say to practice doing anything. Good transitions are a sign of good writing. Whoever said that transitions are for people who don't know how to write music, I'd say that person was being a bit of a double douchebag.
I don't know if I write good transitions or not. I'm not even sure what people consider "good" anymore. All I know is that if you have a good idea, that's great, but if you don't know how to make it transition, then that sounds like a deficiency to me. The same goes for screenwriting: if you can come up with a really good set piece, that's great... but how do you get in and out of it without it coming off as contrived?
The guy who gave you this advice was in the "guest composer" game for all the wrong reasons, and that kind of undermines any of his advice in my eyes, but at the same time I think it is a good idea to be able to write good transitions.
Sadly, however, I doubt I have the knack for it anymore. If I ever did.
It just always strikes me as odd that anyone would patently dismiss the merits of workshopping an aspect of music like transitions. Sure, good organic writing is essentially devoid of transition to the point where the entire piece itself is a transition. But I don't know... I think transitions are useful in certain situations.
I was in the conference room with both of you when he said that, but I don't know what he meant. What did he mean by "good" transitions? It makes me very self-conscious of all the ways I could or should be a better composer.
Maybe my transitions are shit. But at least I can write a better tune than he could.
Truman and Bowling Green... a blur of guest composers and hurried advice. I can't keep it all straight. I did my best, or so I thought. Tonight I dine on ashes.
I'm pretty sure the quote is from La Monte Young, as related by Kyle Gann.
That's what I thought, too. I just wasn't sure.
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