Production 101: Rhythm Section

The most influential album in my life is arguably Quincy Jones' Sounds and Stuff Like That.  In the liner notes (written by Alex Haley) Q calls Anthony Jackson, Eric Tee, Phil Upchurch, and Grady Tate the greatest rhythm section in the world.

As a youth, this was the first time I had ever heard the term "rhythm section".  And truth be told, this was an amazing rhythm section.  I even learned how rhy. sections would record first in EVERY studio section.  This means they have to be tight.

Things to remember:
1) Pick your rhythm section wisely.  They MUST gel.  If they don't, your recordings will reflect.
2) If you aren't rehearsing, make SURE they can READ!!!!!
3) Make sure they can play with a click track.  Yes, I have played with some that can't.  AARGH!
4) Make sure they can play the style you want to record.  (Yes, some people try to get a church              
           drummer to play afro-cuban and songo and they've never heard of it..)


I have recorded my rhythm section with NO rehearsals.  They came in a sight-read the charts to highest degree.  I believe I have been blessed with the greatest in the world!  Time for shout-outs:

I was blessed to have keyboardists Demetrius Nabors and Al McKenzie appear on four songs on "A Tale of Two Fools."   Man, they are phenomenal!!!

Guitarists Duane Collins, Sandy Love, Wayne Goins added that flavor that every album needs!  My wife's cousin, Don Vappie, will be recording soon.

Bassists Ibrahim Jones, Marcus Belgrave Jr, Bobby Scharmann, and Freeman Spills laid the groove done HARD.  People will be copying your licks forever!

The last two people were crucial to this projects:
Damon Warmarck aka Basso Profundo:  My friend since 1992.  My brother, thank you for your musical expertise.   You coming by to the house to record while I was taking care of my mom was priceless.

Last far from least, my friend forever, I thank you Nate Winn.  Out of eighteen songs with drums, you are on fifteen.  There is no way this project would be done with you.  You are a complete drummer. No style is out of your league.  You came in when it was just a piano, you, and a click track. We even came up with songs on the spot!  Superb musicianship.  The pocket is amazing.  The fills were immaculate!  This is why you'll forever be "Tightus Pocketus!"

How to write a composition or story Part Two

Length
When writing your story, one thing to perhaps keep in mind is how long will your story be.  I was CONVINCED when I first wrote my upcoming book that it was going to be a novelette.

Novelette?  Okay, let me explain.

In the whole fiction genre, there are generally four categories as it regards to length.   The Science Fiction Writers of America uses these measurements as their standards:

• Short fiction: under 7,500 words
• Novelette: 7,500-17,500 words
• Novella: 17,500-40,000 words
• Novel: 40,000 words and up

I wanted to write a smaller story in length (novelette) to tell my story.  Now if I were not self-publishing, this would pose a serious problem.  Why?

Most publishers stay away from the short stories and novelettes because of cost.  Too small to print and too small to make money.  Therefore, if you have a collection of short stories or novelette, it makes it more attractive to the publisher.  Since this is my first book, I don't qualify for that!

What about e-publishing?

There is a market for this, a great market actually; however, the upper-echelon awards require hard copies.  Depends on what you want out of it.   If think your book is Pulitzer-worthy, then get it printed. If not, Kindle it is!

So What did I choose?
Because of my word length, my upcoming project would be classified as a novella.  Contrary to popular belief, there has been MANY of novellas that have been erroneously labeled as novels:

·  "The Body" (Stand By Me, 1986) by Stephen King

·  "Rita Hayworth & "The Shawshank Redemption" (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) by Stephen King

·  "Apt Pupil" by Stephen King

·  "A River Runs Through It" by Thomas Maclean

·  "The Bicentennial Man" by Isaac Asimov

·  "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote

·  "Heart of Darkness" (Apocalypse Now, 1976) by Joseph Conrad

·  "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

·  "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1941) by Robert Louis Stevenson,

·  "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells ·   "Call of the Wild"  by Jack London
·   "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
·   "Animal Farm" by George Orwell

Mind you , I didn't say "I want to write 30,000 words."  What I did say was that I wanted to make sure I clearly defined the plots and subplots in my story and I knew it would probably take that amount of words.

Construction

As in music, a lot of people miss out on a major thing: character development.   It's important that your protagonist and antagonist have development which captivates the readers.   In almost every great piece of music, literature, and film, these are developed.  (I can only think of one movie where the antagonist wasn't developed and that was Dark Knight.  The Joker's character wasn't really developed if you really think about it.  He was just villainously raw.  However, he gets a pass because a) the Joker is as old as our grandparents and most people already knew what to expect  b) because of Heath Ledger's passing, we came to understand that he was going to return in the third movie which was going to answer if this Joker was Jack Napier, Jack White, Joseph Kerr or neither.  So unless you've writing a character that we've known for eighty years, get to developing!)

In my case, at first, I did not develop one of my characters enough.  My beloved sister Althea (who is a better writer than I and one of the most talented in the family) told me I needed to give this character an out.  If I didn't, this character would be too vile.  Something as small as one sentence gave a hint into the character.

Enter Earl Brooks.
Earl was like a professor the whole time in my process asking me questions with a stern literary critique.  Although he did not ghost write, his questions provoked a lot of thought which were invaluable to my authorship.  He made sure I understood the ramifications of using certain colloquialisms.  Because of this, Earl made me see what my target audience was.  Another key point we had major discourse on was how deep we needed to go in character development.  Back to Althea's point, I went back and devoted a whole chapter to that character which answered everything Earl asked.  This is what happens when you get a bibliophile English PhD student to critique!


Why do I share all this?
The reason is to show that everyone needs help.  When you write, you don't have to show the whole world.  Just get a selected group of people just make sure you dotted "I's" and crossed your "T's".   Don't surround yourself with yesmen.  Surround yourself with people who can amplify your goals.


Part III Coming soon!

How to write a composition or story

Many people have asked me, "How do you write a story?" or "How do you write a piece of music?"

To answer the question directly, one must storyboard.

Traditionally, storyboard is defined as a sequence of drawings, typically with some directions and dialogue, representing the shots planned for a movie or television production.
In literature, you write out your main points or events.   In music, you may write out what melodic ideas you may have.

Typically in literature, you have three main events (like in music's sonata form, we have three events also): introduction, conflict, and resolution (exposition, development, recapitulation in sonata.)

Now here's the catch: you can write any part at anytime.

You may have at first, the resolution.  Let's say your resolution is "he's reunited with his father."  THAT'S OKAY.  Now that the time to write the rest of the book.
You may have the conflict first.  It could be "Johnny finds out his mom is not his mom."  So now, you have to write the introduction and how is this going be resolved.
Finally, you may have a beginning such "a cellist who wants to over his stage fright." Okay, now come up with the conflict and the resolution.

You can write any part you want first.   If you are unsure of how to connect the two, have people who are readers help you sort it all out.  I was lucky.  I had LaKindra Parker, Althea Hughes Willis, and Earl Brooks making sure I connected the dots.


The same goes in symphonic music.  You must have all three in sonata form.  It's funny how the correlation with art, music, and literature go hand and hand!


Whatever you do, just make sure you put it all together in the end!

The French Horn

I have received numerous compliments on my writing for the French Horn.  Although I am grateful for them, the truth is I can't take too much credit for it.  I was immersed into a culture where the French Horn was played at a high level.

When I first arrived on campus, I met Todd Shamaly, a fabulous musician.  He was the first to introduce me into the world of Horn.  He was very humble and told me a lot about repertoire.

However, the next year changed my life forever.

The freshman French Horn class of 1996 was IMPECCABLE.  These musicians were amazing and could PLAY!   I don't know what happened but everywhere you went, you would here Götterdämmerung played flawlessly anytime of the day.  I loved hearing Gregory Holt, Melanie Jahr, Julie Seidel, and my birthday twin, Mieko Hatano, practice.

Then there was Eric Kuper, Alex Ruthmann, and Kyle Hoyt.   I could always count on them for the composers' forum.  They were truly the most instrumental in my composing.  They taught me about Bb, B, and C and how to place it CORRECTLY (which I still use their teachings to this very day).

Other great players that would play on my compositions were Thomas Schnauber, a wonderful composer, and Jeff Suarez, a MONSTER on the horn.

By the time I graduated, other great players came in.  Rachel Parker Childers was there who is now playing with the Boston Symphony.
There was also Rachel Manea Vaduva, Will Wiegard, and Joel Wealer, who ironically played on my last recording at Michigan!

On a side note, I can't forget my HS section of Charles Van Hoy, Sean Smith, and Michelle Brown.  Charles was the first french hornist I ever met!!!

So it is not I naturally knew what to do, I was around musicians who knew how to play!

Video Part 1

I have recently filmed my first video production EVER!!! I must admit, I was nervous as all heck.
Nonetheless, it was a success.  I have to give much props to Kamal Smith for his invaluable tidbits.

This video will be used for my Indiegogo campaign and opening movie for my novical.



EXCITED!!!

Arranging vs Composing

There was a gentleman who told me that he had a professor who said "arranging was the same thing as composing."
Au contraire mon frère, ce n'est pas vrai. There is a huge DIFFERENCE.   I think the best way for me to talk about this is to talk about the arranging field with some history.


Origins
According my research, arranging as we know it started with Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, and Paul Whitman (with Henderson and Redman being influenced by Louis Armstrong playing with them briefly).  We hear popular songs which are "arranged" for this type of music and bands in NYC.  They would take songs made popular form musicals and later on, movies, and play them in their ensembles.  Think about songs we all play/learn from our Fake Books:
How High the Moon
Almost Like Being in Love
My Favorite Things
All the Things You Are
Star Eyes
There Will never be Another You
I love You
Over the Rainbow
Someday My Prince Will Come


These are all from MOVIES and MUSICALS.  These were not premiered by Ella, Dizzy, and Bird but made famous in the African-American community by them.  Let it be known, they did not write these!


We all know Fletcher Henderson's frustration.  However, a great thing happened when he was arranging for Benny Goodman.  Now, how much money did he make off the record sales
of Benny Goodman.  Zero.  WHY?  Because those were his ARRANGEMENTS, not his compositions.

Ella Fitzgerald made us all learn the changes of How High the Moon; however, Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis made a profit off of her albums!

Frank Sinatra's sound was made by Nelson Riddle and Billy May (just to name a few).  How much money did they make from records?  We don't know, but I assure you, with me knowing LA union rules, probably nothing.  Why?  They ARRANGED the songs


The 70's
Many people still to this day listen to the music of Earth Wind and Fire, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder.  They all had fabulous arrangers: Charles Stepney, TOM TOM 84, Jerry Hey, Paul Riser, and David Van De Pitte.  Could you imagine Reasons without the symphony?  Or the descending Db major 7th chord on My Cherie Amour?  At the end of the day, it's not their music, it's someone else's.


Marching Band
I have two friends who repeatedly annoy me with something.  They place their name on their arrangements and do not place the composers name on it.  BIG NO NO! It is your arrangement, true, but it's NOT your music.  This does not set a good example of your students in this field.  They need to learn to READ the credits and find out who wrote it. (Oops, I said "read").

I remember when I arranged for the University of Michigan Marching Band.   They had to pay Jobete and Black Bull Music for permission to perform the music (this was the most expensive show that year).  Why am I saying this?  They can, at any given time, audit your arrangements. How blasphemous would it be to have your music audited and Stevie Wonder's name isn't on it?  At the end of the day, it's not my music, it's someone else's.




Point and Summary
Arranging, no matter what, is still the reworking of someone else's idea.  I don't care how fancy it is, it is someone else's melodic idea and their form.  Yes, you can use melodic development, fragmentation, transposition, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde-inversion all throughout the piece (which are compositional techniques.) However, at the end of the day, it's not my music, it's someone else's.

I love arranging.  It taught me instrumentation.  It allowed me to test out of the instrumentation class (Music 371) at the University of Michigan.  I will probably arrange until my last breath (I'm actually looking for another marching band to arrange for routinely).   However, I won't receive any royalties from any of my fifty jazz-band arrangements (with multiple difficulty variations) and 150 marching-band arrangements.  If I were to receive a royalty, it would be pennies at best. Why?  It's not my music.

Dead German's Greatest Hits and Music that swings!

We often make a fatal mistake of attempting to separate the so-called classical tradition of African American music with our rich and profoundly influential improvisational traditions. Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk and Mingus should appear on any list of African American composers. We should never accept the superficial and racist divisions of "high" and "low" or "classical" or "vernacular." To accept this division is to embrace the very racial barriers that we attempt to overcome. Our music is profound because we have made American music something much more than a pale reflection of European traditions. 
-Anthony Davis, Composer

As a composer, I find myself defending at times my love for jazz, R&B, and hip-hop with some of my academic colleagues.  This battle has been on-going since I first stepped on the University of Michigan's campus on August 21, 1995.   What has irked me is when people hear my "classical-style" compositions, they would say remarks such as "Oh, it's so jazzy" with a tone of belittlement.  At times, I almost felt ashamed to incorporated the influences of my youth in my symphonic repertoire.  

However, when I look at the music of Bright Sheng, a composer I respect highly, he incorporates Chinese-influenced melodies in his music repeatedly with no shame.  The same of Arturo Màrquez, composer of the famed "Danzon No. 2", and Zhou Long, Pulitzer Prize winning composer.

In Fall of 2002, I stopped composing in the classical style.  I focused on marching and jazz band arranging, composing tunes, and learning how to be a good teacher in the Detroit Public School (which I loved).  Why?  I was tired of competing with dead Germans and Austrians.  How frustrating is it to pour your heart out on a twenty minute opus only to be turned down routinely by conductors? Yet, I would arrange the hottest song on the radio and it would be played immediately by any marching band in the city.  Better yet, I would arrange a chart for Ben's Friends Big Band and it would be programmed on the next concert.

With years of coercing by Damian Crutcher, Armand Hall, Jamal Duncan, Kelvin  Washington, and Ed Quick, I turned to the concert band.   I loved it.  I wrote five band pieces in fourteen months and I thank them for their support and encouragement!

Another change of events happened which I thought would never happened.  I returned to academia in the fall of 2010 to finish my Master's of Music at Kansas State University.  I then returned to orchestral composition. Craig Weston was an amazing teacher and was open to the incorporation of non-European styles in my music.  

With all this being said, I still see a problem with trying to compete with Dead German's Greatest Hits.  Orchestras still won't play my music.  Maybe it sucks.  Maybe it doesn't; however, the issue is the same with fellow composers.

Solution: 

1) I am no longer by the LEAST apologetic for my love for jazz, R&B, and hip-hop.  That's right. Hip-Hop. While I am reading essays of Joshua Rifkin, it is accompanied by KRS-One or CL Smooth.  When I read biographies of the Second Viennese School, be sure to know that Basie is being played.

2) If I write a non-commissioned composition, I understand that it probably won't be played any time soon.  I am okay with that.  No one asked me to write it so they won't program it.  In the words of myself, Brandon Williams, and Ibrahim Jones, "It is what it is!"

3) I attempted to write a "what is this?".  What's a "What is This"?  I wanted to write a large opus that had all my musical loves: classical, jazz, R&B, and hip-hop/rap.  Think about West Side Story.  Is it a musical? Operetta?  Who cares, it's great music.  

        In my youth, I didn't understand how to put it together.  I did everything backwards.  I wrote the music first and then tried to write a script/libretto.  Not too smart.  I abandoned the project.

       I will never forget the words of my friend and Sinfonian brother William Tonnisen, "Hey man, you should finish that opera.  There was some good music in there."  Jay Berckley also gave me similar encouragement.

      In December of 2009, I recorded one of the arias from that unfinished "What is this" with the group Relativity/Trio Nomadian (Damon Warmack, Demetrius Nabors, and Nate Winn aka Tightus Pocketus) .  It was a composition entitled "Daddy's Little Girl."  By the time I added the orchestra to the recording, I realized I finally had the composition EXACTLY how I wanted it.

I then thought to myself, "Maybe I should finish the 'What is this'"?

        As time went by, I knew I needed to write a story FIRST before composing (that didn't always happened but I did finish the story this time. )

        I remembered earlier on in 1997, Bright Sheng gave me some suggestions for my libretto (great ones I must add) but it just wasn't coming together.  However, after an in-depth conversation with Anniece Warren in January 2011 about my music, I finally came up with the story.  Actually, I came up with several different stories which I'll eventually (Lord willing) write to all of them.  

         I officially wrote the storyboard in October 2011 (I came up with the storyboard in Feb but I didn't write it down).  Initially, I was going to just place a short synopsis in the liner notes of my CD; however, thanks to the critique ofLaKindra Parker, I went ahead and wrote it as a novel.  However, this lead me to another issue: what about the music?  How is this going be labeled? It can't just be a "What is this?";

         

       One of my good friends asked me why not make my book, A Tale of Two Fools, an opera, oratorio, or musical?  Problems and more problems.

         A) An opera company wouldn't play it..flat out...refer to the title of this blog and change the word ""German" to "Italian".

         B) A musical COULD happen; however, I don't want to have a pit of seven people.  This isn't the fifties.  How many musicals have the large pits that is required of West Side Story?  In the age where Broadway is using a Motif instead having live trumpets, I can forget about having my dream-sized pit.  Plus, there is not trumpet synth in the world that could come CLOSE to sounding like Jon Faddis, Sean Jones, Byron Stripling, and Oscar Brashear put together.  Also, four string players are not going to cut it.  I want to tell this story symphonically and I'm sticking by it.

         C) Oratorio/Concert Version could work also and be financially feasible. I may do put it in this format later on.

4)  In the end, I decided to make this a Novel/CD companion (James Aikman calls this project a musical drama).  There would be great possibilities from this.  I could get the singers I want whenever they were available (the beauty of multi-track recording [thank you ProTools] ).  I could also use whatever instrumentation I wanted.  Let's talk about the cons. I would be forced to stay within the 80 minutes confinement of a CD.  Aikman also suggested that I stay around 75 minutes to avoid possible CD-replication errors (great advice).  Granted, I could do a two-CD set but that would drive my cost up astronomically.  In the end, I went with about 76 minutes of music having to drop three songs off the CD (about twelve minutes worth of music.)

What about digital download? There's not a time-frame for that     I'll answer that one later.

 In conclusion, I realize many conflicts are internal.  I have resolved mine.  This CD, my musical drama  A Tale of Two Fools: A Soundtrack of a Universal Language  will have classical, jazz, R&B and hip-hop and I make no apologies for the amalgamation of styles.  

I look at musical trailblazers like Daisy Newman who created the African-American Reading sessions with the Detroit Symphony; Anthony Davis, the father of opera politica america; and Henry Lewis who are/were unapologetic of their vision and passion.  I stand to imitate.

Now that I have started this blog, I will use this to talk about my creative processes of my compositions, librettos, novels, videos, and in-depth writings/discussions about A Tale of Two Fools.  

Much Love,

Chad "Sir Wick" Hughes

PS: I currently have a commission with the University of Alabama.  I asked Demondrae 
Thurman, the conductor/soloist I am writing for, that I wanted to write a jazz movement in his euphonium concerto.  He said "Go for it!"