by Benjamin Williams ⋅ April 29th, 2011 ⋅
I just finished reading Matthew Brown’s Explaining Tonality: Schenkerian Theory and Beyond and wanted to take note of some observations.
Some of the most important ideas I learned while studying with Gregory Proctor involved the power of voice leading. I also became intrigued with the careful explanation for every single pitch in a piece as graphically analyzed by my colleague David Tomasacci. These ideas have been a central pursuit in my own compositions over the past two or three years. One further impetus for a careful interest in voice leading was described by Brown.
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by Benjamin Williams ⋅ April 22nd, 2011 ⋅
While I usually prefer to not dwell on the profitability of artistic production, I also find its economic peculiarities fascinating.
On the one hand, there is MPA fighting hard against IMSLP to protect the ideals of copyright protection; on the other, the realization that the entire music industry is hardly worth Google’s effort to even put up a fight.
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by Benjamin Williams ⋅ February 25th, 2011 ⋅
Every once in a while a topic will come up in two or more contexts of my awareness that I would probably not notice without the reinforcement. Two articles addressing issues of copyright law recently appeared in the New York Times in as many weeks:
- Would the Bard Have Survived the Web? (14 February 2011)
- Free Trove of Music Scores on Web Hits Sensitive Copyright Note (22 February 2011)
The first might be considered more of a philosophy of copyright law, whereas the second deals with practical issues. If not for both sides of this same coin, this might be a much easier issue to ignore.
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by Benjamin Williams ⋅ September 14th, 2010 ⋅
This post is an open letter of sorts to David Tomasacci, composer and theorist, in response to his request for my thoughts on how a particular new music ensemble could be improved. However, I will make my recommendations in a generalized fashion and refer to particulars only infrequently.
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by Benjamin Williams ⋅ September 5th, 2010 ⋅
This is the second post in a series addressing the idea of a ‘composition app’ and, more specifically, Joseph Freeman’s recent opinion pieces in the NYTimes: “Compose Your Own” and “Compose Your Own, Part 2.” The first post, “Composition? There’s an App for That… (Part 1)” involved the issue of sequence in music. [Note: While I initially had other topics I wanted to address, I will most likely end with this post.]
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