When I first started writing songs, I felt a certain affinity for song structure. I always had a sense of understanding form and seeing how it could be manipulated out of its verse/chorus patterns. Partly, if not mostly, I think this came from Led Zeppelin, who never felt it necessary to supply a chorus with vocals (When the Levee Breaks, The Wanton Song), or having new/different lyrics for each chorus repeat (The Rover). My songs from 1993 all the way to 2016 would often tweak the standard song form: suddenly inserting the upcoming bridge riff between second and third verse before the second chorus (Oh Joyous Song), bringing in the guitar solo after only the first chorus (I can Feel), shortening a song to just 2xVerse/bridge/chorus/verse/guitar solo (Coattails). Helmet were another band who had an obvious influence in this department. A typical Helmet song structure is: verse/verse/chorus/bridge (or solo)/chorus - bringing songs down to bare necessities and never overstating their point.

Learning about Sonata Form in my composition studies from 2004 through to 2006 allowed me to take a brand new look at the verse/chorus structure, but flipped around in an A/B form, with the development section replacing what I understood as the guitar solo section of a song. While my first two symphonies were mostly failures (the third movement of the first pushed way beyond my capabilities by attempting a Sibelius-like composition), they did teach me a lot about sonata form and how to use, reuse, and develop each theme. 

I even took this straight into a guitar composition that I wrote in 2013's 'A Minor Sledge'. Another tweak: here I start developing the second theme during the repeat of the exposition, and it is this early development that transitions the themes into the new key for the "official development" (the coda transposes the last part of the development into the original key). The jazz guitar piece 'This is Yours' (2014), uses standard sonata form (although, a slight tweak, in that it develops, mostly, one particular section of the second theme instead of the first theme).

Back in 2004, I was having issues with a musician friend who couldn't commit to band work, and I dramatically proclaimed that I was going to quit music because nothing ever worked out for me. My guitarist friend who I was starting a rock/metal band with, laughed, and said "You can't quit music. Even if you tried, I'd come over and visit, and you'll be scrawling notes and ideas onto your bedroom wall." 

Years later, I did quit music. When I had no more songs to write, I really had no more to give to music, and put the guitar away for about five years, and only really played occasionally when I walked into music shops. Of course, my bandmate was right: I did always go back to musescore and see what i could make of some ideas. Usually the results were atrocious, and the pieces got filed with titles like 'Mr Stubbs sucks, again', 'the reason why you don't do this' ... etc. Last year, while writing The Falling City (finished and soon to be released digitally, if no publisher can be found), I did stumble across some ideas and wrote a piece for a chamber sextet, with Bassoon as lead instrument. It's okay, not great, but it serves as a completed piece. 

I have since been playing guitar again for the last three years, realising I should never have put it down - I lost all my thumb strength and much of my shredding speed (although I never mastered sweep-picking, I was pretty quick with multiple hammer-ons), and have only got both back in small doses now. This String Duo here, like the cello theme from the third movement of Three Orchestral Scores (2006), began on guitar. A simple, but interesting idea, that, even after the key change, I could not think of how to develop it further without it just being looped (I don't have a loop pedal). So, I transcribed it to string quartet, starting with cello, and then adding the viola part. However, it seemed pretty contained within these two instruments, and I soon deleted the two violins. Although I'm not a fan of Mozart's String Duo's, I had dabbled a little in Duos with other instruments, but never completed anything with any true degree of success. I actually feel like this Viola and Cello Duo is a success (whether people like it or not, is another issue...), and it takes the sonata form again, and tweaks it by not repeating the exposition, but repeating the development only, while also adding a transitional third theme. 

I am now working on a fugue for this duo as the second movement, using two themes that have come out of this Allegro movement. 
 

• 14/03/26, Ōhaupō 

"It's too dark to see the landmarks..."

26 Years ago I was living in Auckland living out the worst days of my life. Clinical depression had destroyed every sense of self and made me a victim to all that I believed life had inflicted upon me. Proving myself a failure at life, I even proved myself a failure at trying to commit suicide, and sunk into a void of what felt like endless repetitions of depression, going to work, coming home again, rinse and repeat. 

I had nothing to cheer me up, but I had this album to keep me company through it all.

Thank you Mark Sandman for your beautiful visions, words and music.

And thank you always to the wonderful musicians who helped create the Morphine sound with Mark: Dana Colley, Billy Conway, and Jerome Deupree.

"You're a bedtime story,
the one that keeps the curtains close.
And I hope you're waiting for me,
'cause I can't make it on my own." 

I wrote a new journal entry today, the first in my green handwriting book since 1st June - a full four months ago. 21 days after that I started a job as a yardperson/forklift operator assisting builders with timber purchases, while also serving behind the counter when needed. The job requires filling out dockets detailing the yard products with the accompanying codes so the purchases can be invoiced to the company. I didn't like any of the pens I was using, so opted to use my writer's pen. It seems a little sacrilegious, but I had ordered the wrong pen inks - black instead of blue - and was loaded up with all these refills I was unlikely to use, since I'm such a stickler for using one specific pen and blue ink to write with. So my writer's pen with black ink became my job pen for writing out dockets and any specific notes on offcuts I needed to make. 

So, in this sense, yes, I have been writing, I guess. 

Outside of that, there have been a handful of Goodreads Reviews of the books I finished and was unsatisfied enough to have some words about. 

And my previous blog where I talked about music needing to be in every part of our lives, rather than letting it exist in its own space for special occasions: concerts. This subject I have more to say about, and today's handwritten journal entry was a case where I needed to express some more along those same lines. 

Right now, as I type this, I sit in the living room of the house I am looking after while the owners are on holiday, only the sound of my fingers hitting keys, a few tweets from birds, wind and tyres on the tarseal far below travelling through the valley, the plonk of the cat outside climbing over the railing and landing on the verandah, can be heard. I enjoy this quiet without music. 

I enjoy the red sky burning under grey clouds above without beats and melodies distracting me from the beauty of its glow.

The night grows dark, and I am at peace.

...because there is no room for peace and quiet in your life any more. There must be music on a big screen screaming at you while in the supermarket like you are at a concert venue instead of just quietly going about your business shopping for groceries; there must be music at your place of work repeating the exact same songs every day twice a day for the entirety of your working week for three months on end; there must be music blasting from a loud speaker at your job site annoying every co-worker and neighbour who doesn't like your music choices; there must be your own choice of music blasting at a volume to drown out somebody else's music; there must be music interrupting your ability to read in the bookshop you are trying to find a book to buy at; there must be music, there must be music, and it must keep playing so you can avoid that god-awful thing called silence, or peace and quiet, that you experienced once in your life and you were so traumatised by that you swore never to be subjected to that peace and quiet ever again. 

I walked into the New World supermarket at 279 Wakefield Street, Te Aro, Wellington, and was subjected to John Farnham on, not just one, but two big screens, as though I was invited to join in and chant "You're the voice, try and understand it, make a noise and make it cleaaaa-earrr-earrr..." when all I was there for was to buy groceries. 

• Dear New World: "Is there not already enough noise with the beeping of checkout counters, the clanging of trolleys, the voice on the loudspeaker?" 

Now every place I patronise has decided that it wants to create an atmosphere of noise, produced by music that does not suit my tastes, and often doesn't suit the actual decor of the retail outlet that plays it. Not music gently playing in the background, subtle, and soothing, but music loud and obnoxious without any care about how I feel as a paying customer. 

I get that the Customer Service Representatives want to be able to enjoy their work environment, but my question is: How can they enjoy having the exact same songs played over and over without getting insanely sick of it? The other question, is if they work with people who have different music tastes, is it acceptable that one person be allowed to enjoy their work environment while the other suffers? 

We all have different music tastes, and to be honest, even I wouldn't want to be subjected to the bands I love day in and day out on an eternal repeat mode. An experience I had last year subjected me to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in a Wellington cafe. Great! I thought, Music I love. But it was so loud that I couldn't hear my own mother talking to me. This is what I don't get. How does loud music encourage customers to walk into a store? 

• Is it just me that has overly sensitive hearing? 
• Is it just me that doesn't want loud music interrupting every moment?
• Is it just me that finds conversation difficult with loud music overlapping every sentence? 
• Is this just a generational thing? 
• Is this a consequence of growing up on farms vs. growing up in cities?
• Is this the result of children being subjected to an external noise source, like a TV, or music, being played all day in their home environment? 

In Wellington city, it is very hard, if not impossible, to find a retail outlet that doesn't play obnoxiously noisy music. Even libraries, those once-upon-a-time havens of peace and quiet, have become obsessively noisy in recent years. All I want is cafe to sit in and drink my cappuccino in peace. But no such luck.

The city is all just noise, noise, noise, and more noise. When it tries to add music as a contrast to the noise, as a way of creating a sound environment that attempts to relax or bring joy to the citizens lives, it only creates more noise. Because now the music is competing to rise above the noise, and it all joins together in a cacophony of irritating, trauma-inducing, pain. 
 
That is what I am left experiencing in the city: Pain.

My perfect cafe doesn't play easy-listening jazz endlessly like a malfunctioning public toilet. It allows a piece of music to be played, to end, and then to let the silences breathe and become a functioning part of the atmosphere.

And then, the customer might suddenly notice some strings playing out a tune, before an orchestral tutti bounces a response, and the Presto from Mozart's Linz Symphony brings a new dimension to the cafe experience.

Seven minutes later we sit with the sounds of the shop again: the customers coming and going, the patrons in gentle chatter, the barista banging, and perhaps some clanking from the kitchen. All normal and 'natural' sounds of the environment we have created. 

When life without background music starts to feel a little too weird, a little 'too' quiet, the opening brushes of Take Five breaks the perceived silence. Five minutes later, and for five minutes afterwards, we sit with the memory of Jazz's all-time biggest selling single caressing our minds.

Time passes, and you and the attendants are left with a clean slate to think through some thoughts, to not be aggravated by music you don't like, or don't want to hear. And you may go now, knowing that you can always come back and sit without music, and maybe hear some music along the path of sitting and sipping.

Maybe then, you might hear quietly in the background the opening buzz of 'Pushit' by Tool, or the electronic pulse of 'Electric Dream' by Shapeshifter, maybe Avril Lavigne, or even The Beach Boys.

The music does sit in the background, but it also does not intrude, and it doesn't niggle and upset continuously like an earworm in the back of your brain. The point is never to override the calm spaces, but to momentarily relieve the quiet and provide alternative listening, maybe a temporary mood resetting; but to always return to the quiet space that brings calm and relaxation that musical sounds can never do.

Cafes are already noisy. And the world we have created adds to all that noise. Music in the background, whether easy-listening or hard-listening just adds up to more noise. Sound on top of sound doesn't improve, or cancel out noise. Sound layered on top of sounds create noise.

There is never any true quiet, but non-musical moments help to cleanse the palette.

Listening to music doesn't have the same appeal that it used to when I was younger. I feel, as I get older, that music is an intrusion on my sense of self. Where once it was the soundtrack to my emotions, now it is a bombardment of noise demanding I pay attention.

And I want to pay attention, but my ears don't want to hear.

Perhaps I have gained a great deal more sensitivity towards sound volumes - understandable, to some degree; although, some grow less sensitive as they continue to gain hearing loss. I have not sustained a great deal of hearing loss from my days as a solo acoustic musician and a rock/metal guitarist. While I was working as an assistant book-buyer in Highland Park Paper Plus, I noticed my ears becoming extremely sensitive to the sound of coins dropping against one another in the till, to the sound of trolleys clanging against one another in the supermarket next door, to the point where I felt like I was in immense pain from these noises, and I began wearing cotton in my ears to reduce the decibels, otherwise the extreme sensitivity I was experiencing would bring a great deal of stress. I was also going through the lowest point of my clinical depression at the time, which may have have been a potential cause. Regardless, I had spent years hunched over my acoustic guitar with my right ear being pummelled with sound waves. Years later, after moving from Auckland to Invercargill, and the rock/metal band I was in drawing to an end, I had a hearing test done and it turned out that the hearing loss I did have was negligible (that's approximately 7 years of wearing hearing protection by plugging my ears with cotton in every day!). What I was experiencing, I was told, was 'in my head'. This was somewhat of an unbelievable statement. Years of hearing sensitivity was just something my mind was conjuring? The audiologist suggested that I would simply have to work on getting used to normal levels of sound again. I went back to my flat, mind reeling from this news, heart beating with anxiety at the thought of having to suffer through this excruciating pain all over again; but within a week of not wearing hearing protection, I was starting to get used to normal sound levels again.

Like a lot of musicians, I also suffered tinnitus. I have made efforts to reduce noise levels to assist with the reduction of tinnitus, and over the years this has reduced also.

Since 2018 when I moved into my car, I have sought peace and calm along riversides, through forestry tracks, and over ranges, searching for those peaks or rapids where I can rest and enjoy the natural sounds around me.

Music isn't natural. It is a constructed sound put together by humans. It is my firm belief that animals do not make music. Even birds. We liken their calls to music because we can pitch them to a musical scale, but we can also pitch construction machines to a scale as well - but we don't! (as far as I know no one has, but to be fair, someone probably has!). If birds make actual music, it is unknown to us; we can only hear what they produce and interpret it as music. But music is something that we humans put together out of natural sounds that can be produced. We force these pitches together with rhythmic impulses, and music is born.

Rock music has a noise quality to it - loud for the sake of being loud. Electronic music is produced into digital loudness. Compression destroys all the highs and lows. I first started turning away from loud rock music, but many a morning I have woken up and while driving to my job, have not even wanted to listen to my beloved Mozart.

The silence of morning.
The rumbling of the car engine, the scraping of wind against the windows - all these are noise enough.

I was once accused of being someone who listens to music as background (my god! I don't know how anyone could accuse any musician, let alone someone who has written 200 songs, performed acoustic and metal music, composed for orchestras, and listens to all the best music from all but 2 genres, of being someone who listens to music as 'background'!). I have studied Mozart and Beethoven scores, I learned almost every Led Zeppelin song, learnt every song on Undertow by ear - music has never been a background, and it never will be. I have to HEAR music. I have to hear what's going on - what those flutes are playing over the violins, what the bass is doing when its not following the six-string guitar, what drum patterns are being played as a contrast: all the counterpoint and interesting harmonies will forever fascinate me. Whether it's Mozart or Tool, what those musicians and composers are doing to make music will always bring an interest beyond just the emotional moment that got me first listening to the piece.

But if I don't want to hear noise, I turn music off. All of it.
Because even Mozart, performed by the greatest orchestras ever, is still a noisy presence when I just want as much quiet as I can possibly find.

In the city, where noise reigns supreme, unwanted sounds must be matched with wanted sounds: this day I may want to bring Helmet up on the stereo and help block out those other intrusions, or maybe Page Hamilton's riffs just fit with this day's city-mood; this other day I may want Beethoven's 6th Symphony to bring me some joviality while I drive through the centre of town.

But when I am down on the riverside with water passing through rapids, cicadas in the bushes, swallows dipping and diving, and the occasional cow mooing for attention over in the paddock, the last thing I want is someone to bring constructed sound into the mix. Not even Delius, who of all the composers feels the most 'natural', because even his music is constructed from constructed instruments. And that which is constructed doesn't fit naturally into the landscape.

Let these noises be still,
And let those voices born from the earth have their say.
I will listen,
And let this peace momentarily reign.

• 7th April, 2024; Upper Moutere

Presto Classical, a website hosting Orchestral Music products and events based in the United Kingdom, has for a number of years now, perhaps 8-9, helped me to discover many new Classical composers I had not heard of before by offering samples from CDs to listen to and providing downloads from mp3@320kbps to Hi-Res CD Quality 24K Flac files for purchasing at very reasonable prices. On top of that, record labels frequently offer discount offers of 20-30% off advertised prices for a limited time. Presto Classical has been my absolute go-to for CDs and downloads since Amazon became an extremely overpriced market place with postage often doubling the cost of a CD alone. Postage to New Zealand is a nightmare of expensive costs, and with Bandcamp and Presto Classical giving the purchaser some control over what they buy and the quality of downloads (Bandcamp can offer mp3, flac, and wav. files, depending, I guess, on the artist's own preferences), these are currently the only two online services I can recommend and continue to purchase from. As far as I know, Amazon, Gooogle, iTunes, and other streaming services etc., do not provide anywhere near the same customer orientated quality.

Check out the full range of the Presto website: www.prestomusic.com/

• Amazing site that also hosts Jazz products, sheet music, books, and instruments!
  

Krommer is one such a composer who I discovered through the Presto Classical website. Born half a year after George Frideric Handel before the Baroque Period of music began waning and the new form of Classical music brought on by J.S. Bach's sons sought clearer musical textures with less "business", Krommer also died 4 years after Beethoven when the period of Romantic Music had caught the wind of change and was about to become a full blown course of musical exploration. Thus Krommer lived through the entire Classical Period in which he is associated with. Quite a feat when one considers that few people lived past 50 or 60 in those days: Bach and Handel both survived into their 70s as well, but Mozart passed at the early age of 35, Beethoven at 56, Schubert 31, Chopin 39, and many commoners did not have clean and healthy living environments that the wealthy could maintain to ward off disease.

Krommer has never been a composer as highly regarded as the previously mentioned, nor has he even been a composer worthy of noting by any publications - hence my never having heard of him before. But with J.S. Bach's sons leading the charge of the Classical Period, Haydn creating compositional masterclasses on how to compose in this new gallant style, Mozart capping it all off with his genius of prolific tune-making, orchestral colouring, and absolute mastery of every genre, and Beethoven pushing the Classical Period to breaking point and ushering in the heroic nature of the forthcoming Romantic Period, to be honest, any other composer of this period was hardly ever going to get a look-in. But while Krommer and his contemporaries, such as Franz Ignaz Beck, and Johann Baptist Vanhal, all live in the shadows of critical opinion, that does not mean they don't deserve to be listened to. Vanhal in particularly has many a tuneful sinfonia worth putting on your playlists. 

What struck me about Krommer on first listening to his symphonies was how dramatic they were, how they seemed to evoke the same spirit of Beethoven without the suffering or heroism. On further listening I thought I even heard very similar Beethoven-type phrasing and I began wondering if this might have been a composer who Beethoven borrowed from. This remark seems sacrilegious, but it is well known that Beethoven took ideas from Mozart and reworked them considerably enough that they became completely his own:

• Link: Copying Mozart: Did Beethoven Steal Melodies for his own music?

Not only the 'Ode to Joy' tune can be found in a Mozart Sacred Work,

• youtu.be/lEBYufTXJQk?t=56,

but I also have picked up a very Beethoven-like episode in Mozart's 'The Abduction from the Seraglio', 

• youtu.be/jJhIChIS9pM?t=100,
  

as if Beethoven upon hearing this Opera, or even just that Andante section of the overture, immediately thought 'That's it, that's my sound!!' and off he went composing in a similarly heavy and weighty manner. It is entirely possible.


There is so much music out there going unheard, not just in the realm of orchestral music, but also in all forms of contemporary music, but if you find yourself becoming a little bit bored hearing the same Mozart and Beethoven works again and again, I can highly recommend Franz Krommer as an alternative: Not as charmingly tuneful as Mozart, and not as heroic or excessively weighty as Beethoven, the symphonies still manage to convey intensely dramatic episodes while also being tunefully appealing. I also listened to samples from his Oboe Concertos, and these few snippets were absolutely wonderful and went straight onto my wishlist for future purchasing.


Check out some samples on Presto Classical
Symphonies: Krommer - Symphony Nos 4, 5, & 7
Oboe Concertos: Mozart & Krommer - Oboe Concertos

Enjoy!