Jay C. Batzner is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida where he teaches theory, composition, and technology courses as well as coordinates the composition program. He holds degrees in composition and/or theory from the University of Missouri – Kansas City, the University of Louisville, and the University of Kansas.
Jay's music is primarily focused around instrumental chamber works as well as electroacoustic composition. His music has been recorded on the Capstone, Vox Novus, and Beauport Classical labels and is published by Unsafe Bull Music.
Jay is a sci-fi geek, an amateur banjoist, a home brewer, and juggler.
Once again XKCD gets it right, using math instead of music to describe how I feel at times.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
6/25/2009
At least they were listening
I recently got an email from a student who compiled a list of things that I said in last semester's Orchestration class. I'm not going to dispute any of these. I don't quite remember WHY I said some of them, though. My recollections are in parentheses.
- "Write this for bassoons and it'll sound like burrito night."
- "The high range of this is on mushrooms." (not sure, maybe oboe?)
- "I don't generally find myself asking, 'What would Johann do?'" (as in Strauss)
- "If you want them to be really quiet, give them rests... unless they are middle school percussionists."
- "I don't think Stravinsky thought, 'Debussy? What crap!'" (part II of Rite)
- "You wake up every morning and there's a new low note on the bass clarinet."
- "The Nuclear Whales Sax Ensemble has a version of 'Fanfare for the Common Man' that will... it will make you salute."
- "This would be layer cake... and THIS would be brownies." (overlapping vs. interlocking scoring for woodwinds)
- "Right... and I'm gonna build a house and assume you all have a vertical leap of 8 feet and not build stairs." (assuming that performers will play whatever you write)
- "I want you to treat these scores... like gateway drugs."
- "Don't go above that C. Ok, the D if you have to... if it's your birthday or something." (high range of trumpet, I think)
- "Unless you are Holst. If you get to be Holst, send me a postcard."
posted by Jay C. Batzner
6/16/2009
Pre-review
A showed my 10-minute (actually 8 and change) opera to a friend. His comment on the tone was:
"Godot with waffles, minus the despair."
Yes, yes it is.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
6/10/2009
Autodidact, part one
I've been asked to be a part of Richard Zarou's podcast No Extra Notes which has me thinking about how I ended up where I now am. I remember what I thought I would be doing and, as it turns out, I'm not doing those things. My view of myself has been out of sync with other people's views so I've been ruminating upon why people see me differently than I do (that makes sense, right?).
For example, if I'm known at all it is most likely in the electroacoustic music world. That is the biggest surprise. I know people who write electronic music exclusively and, while it is a healthy part of my output, it is a rather recent development.
Or is it?
My first serious tape piece was in 2005. Prior to that, I have always claimed that I didn't have much experience with electronic music. Turns out that isn't entirely true. I'm seeing things in my past that set me up for being who I am right now. All the experience that I've had came from my own isolated experimentations and, even when I took classes in college, I was still pretty much left to my own devices.
In junior high I bought my first keyboard, a hunk of junk from Target, but I loved it (Casio CT-360). It had a simple recorded attached to it that would record whatever I played but didn't allow for any manipulation. I played around with that keyboard a lot, figuring out guitar licks from pop songs ("The Devil Inside" by INXS, for example) and making up drum beats and solos by rapid toggling through the rhythm beat buttons. My first musique concrete!
In high school I made collages using a dual cassette deck. I'd take fragments from pop songs, film scores, and stand up routines and splice them together using the dubber. My sister might have the tape somewhere, I'm pretty sure I don't. The one track I remember was using the Bangle's cover of "Eternal Flame" and interjecting humorous commentary from Sam Kinison and the Dead Milkmen.
Turns out my current tastes and methods of making electroacoustic music are still steeped in what I was doing before I learned anything about the genre. My collegiate experience with electroacoustic music was also rather "hands off" from my teachers. I'll blog about that later, along with the disclaimer that I still need to formulate. The next post might make it sound like my teachers didn't teach me anything, and that is far from the case. They taught me the most important things ever by forcing me to be an autodidact.
Done right, shouldn't all composers be autodidacts?
posted by Jay C. Batzner
5/24/2009
Unbalanced
Christopher Biggs just posted this video. The piece, Unbalanced, is for unbalanced trs cable, amplifier, and Max/MSP. The end result is haunting and amazing and mildly disturbing. Meredith Bradford is the subject, but she is really all of us.
My position at UCF came to a more abrupt ending than I would have liked. While I was planning on using my office and equipment (correction, UCF's office and equipment) through the summer, I was told by the upper administration that I had to have my office packed and equipment returned on May 7th. Since I was told this late in the afternoon on May 7th, there was no way to comply. Yesterday, though, I turned in my laptop, keys, and fully vacated my office space.
I get attached to computers. I work with them a lot and develop relationships with them after the many hours spent together. When my Performa 6320 died in 2001, I wrote a eulogy for it. My UCF laptop, a first-gen MacBook Pro, served me quite well for three years. I generated hours of music (no exaggeration, here, since every podcast episode I made was done on the thing). My most performed work to date was created on it. It had a quirky side and would manage to express its personality at the most appropriate times (like crashing twice during a job interview). Earlier this year, during the three times it had to be sent to California for new logic boards, I was pretty much lost without it.
Tuesday, I took the install discs, zeroed all the data on the hard drive, and did a clean install. I felt a little bit like Paul seeing Millie/November with a different personality imprint on Dollhouse. It was still my laptop, but it wasn't anymore. Yesterday, I left the laptop on what was my desk, closed the locked door on what was my office, and turned in what used to be my keys. I feel a bit ungrounded and unattached. And I'm trying to move my work to my home computer which just isn't the same (MDD G4 tower).
Anyhow, we vacate the "sunshine" state in about 10 days. I'm under deadline for three pieces, none of which are going well. My brain is having a hard time letting go, all because of a silly thing like a laptop. Of course it isn't just because of a laptop, the laptop is serving as an icon of the whole situation. I get that. Doesn't make the composing easier, though.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
5/06/2009
What I learned from teaching orchestration
My biggest challenge this semester was developing and teaching a single semester orchestration class as an upper division theory elective. There ended up being 34 students, only 3 of them composition majors (we only have 3 comp majors). I've blogged about prepping the class, and I wanted to run down what I got out of the experience. It was a lot of work, but it was also my favorite class. We got to talk about great orchestral music and how to write it. Who wouldn't love that? Guitarists? Sure, they didn't enjoy the class too much, I suppose.
1. The Kennan/Grantham is a good book. There were three major choices, the Adler, the Blatter, and the K/G. I love the Blatter and have used it as my guide for about 15 years. The Adler is okay but severely bloated for a one semester overview course. I've taught from it before and I like some of the things it does but not enough to foist it upon the class. The K/G is a lean, mean, terse reference book with good practical suggestions and a CD that targets important listening. I'd happily use it again for a one-semester course, even though it puts sax and euphonium in a back chapter labeled "infrequently used instruments." K/G knows not of this thing you call "band."
2. Raising the bar really makes the students work harder. The class didn't do so hot on the midterm. I had high expectations and they weren't ready for it. For the final, the expectations were the same and they rose to meet them. I was happy to see it.
3. The Dover edition of Mahler 6 should be avoided. I made the class buy 4 scores in addition to the textbook: Symphonie fantastique, Mahler 6, Rite of Spring, and The Planets. As we talked about different sections of the orchestra, we looked at how those sections were used in these very different pieces. Mahler 6, my favorite of his symphonies, turns out to have Bruckner-like issues when it comes to score revisions. The Dover is a cheap version of Mahler's original orchestration. He changed it substantially before the final version. Turns out it ONLY happens with Mahler 6. I should have done more research on this one. The score is a historical novelty to the students, not practically useful the way I had intended.
4. Some students just won't do the work and I can't help them. It really isn't my fault if you see a score excerpt from Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto and label it as Debussy's Prelude on the Afternoon of a Faun.
5. I love talking about music. The last month was spent going over the basic concepts of orchestration (not instrumentation) and playing examples. I wish I had a document camera in my classroom (or a projector of some kind) because you can't get 34 people (or the 17 that usually showed up) to crowd around miniature scores. I stressed the idea of orchestrating dynamics and accents. Some of them really got into it.
I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to teach such a course again. My new job at Central Michigan University is focused on music technology and electroacoustic composition. There is still a lot of orchestration to talk about in electroacoustic music, but CMU has plenty of composers to talk about the acoustic side of the story. At any rate, I learned more from this class than my students did, I'm sure. Some things I won't change if I teach it again, some things I will. We will just have to wait and see.
posted by Jay C. Batzner
