I read a great book recently, Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, which is essentially this fantastic global theory of poverty and progress that works flawlessly across all of history and the world. One of their key…
Blog Archives
Is There Such Thing As A Professional Composer?
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Hans Abbing’s Why Are Artists Poor?, which formed an important source in my last two articles. Abbing is an economist and a visual artist, and he tackles the broad question of artist poverty from the perspective…
Tagged with: Donald Rushkoff, economics, hans abbing, money, philosophy, professional, selling out
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Why Composers Should Drop Out of University (and What They Should Be Learning), Part 2
A self-help guide to becoming a composer In the first part of this article, I talked about some of the problems with studying composition in academia, and I offered some alternative ways that composers might cultivate their craft more effectively…
Tagged with: academia, Aniruddh Patel, biology, career, christien ledroit, composing, creativity, education, evolution, gyorgy ligeti, neuroscience, notation, olivier messiaen, philosophy, poeme symphonique, snowball, teaching, university
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Why Composers Should Drop Out of University (and What They Should Be Learning), Part 1
The challenges of learning composition in academia I’ve always said that I learned despite my education and not because of it, and after my master’s degree I decided to put my money where my mouth was and not pursue a…
Tagged with: academia, career, charles ives, composing, creativity, drop out, economics, education, hans abbing, pedagogy, philosophy, teaching, university, william pannapacker
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Letting Go of 20th-Century Historicism
Like most composers, I absorbed certain widely accepted musical axioms from my university studies, but they’ve never been entirely satisfying. As a consequence, I constantly search for better explanations, in the process hopefully becoming a better artist. One of the…
Tagged with: biology, historicism, oksana g, philosophy, process, quatuor bozzini, se contourner se conformer, sociology, tapestry
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Improving Composer Education: Less Theory, More History
Recently I discovered the amazingly addictive new website Quora, where people ask questions on certain themes. After a basic setup, I was instantly directed to a very intriguing question for me: Why do people study music theory? I argued that…
The Starving Artist: Full Time versus Part Time
A few weeks ago, a friend’s link to a rant about a rant about the Hype Machine, a music blog aggregator, got me thinking about the issue of whether it’s better to do art full time or part time. The…
Tagged with: art, authenticity, economics, motivation, philosophy, professionalism, starving, working
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Economics vs. Art: Why a good fit has never existed
The economics of art is a perennial source of debate. Proponents of funding for the arts usually follow one of two arguments. The first is that art contributes intangibly to society by contributing a reason to live, as opposed to…
Tagged with: arts, dissemination, economics, fast food, marketing, philosophy, theories, value
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AudioMicro: Musical Value Online
I was intrigued last month when I received a message from website AudioMicro.com asking if I was interested in a link exchange. They seem to be an interesting mix of a variety of different musical “services” rolled into one, and…
- @elcush Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
- My response to @elcush's The Bacon-Wrapped Economy http://t.co/PFKEL7p9eH
- My latest blog post, looking at the difference between crowdfunding and traditional philanthropy:http://t.co/PFKEL7p9eH
- My latest article: Working for Free: Helpful or Harmful? http://t.co/TvNqXlxT54 a composer's response to @tanehisi Atlantic piece
- Composition Lessons: The Dirty Projector’s “Police Story” and on how to write for voice http://t.co/1ze2kTuBF0
- A friendly review of my premiere at Other Minds last weekend: http://t.co/d1EspIr1Q9
- The @OtherMindsSF Festival was pretty great this year, thanks to all involved.
- Soundcheck for @OtherMindsSF complete, come check out the show tonight, premiere of my piece.
- Apparently my "Machiavellian Guide" now ranks for the search term "iconoclast composer". ;-) http://t.co/tRwTLccA7R
- I will be interviewed by Sarah Cahill on @kalw_radio tonight for the @OtherMindsSF Festival, 8:00pm PST, check it out.
