It occurred to me that my diet and the way I like to eat food is a lot like the way I enjoy music. If I want to pepper my second string quartet, the piece I am currently writing, with syncopations off phantom strong beats, I should be able to. But since a lesson with a dear friend yesterday, I have been in a sort of funky, low-quandary about how to achieve such syncopations without my players wanting to enjoy me as food.

Here's why I want these syncopations in the first place: The theme of the piece, or rather the title is tentatively: "essays from fakebook landfill". I had a dream that I fell out of a plane into a vast landfill of nothing but jazz fakebooks. You can probably see the scene. But can you hear its soundtrack? This is what my present work aims to realize.

A big thunk, as I hit the landfill, a period of confusion and chaos, subsiding into a kind of stuttery blues, and on into the piece, as if I am making my way through the landfill, stopping a various places to pick up a book, sometimes spending a little more time looking certain songs, etc. These pauses for reflection basically make up the 'sections' of an essentially 1-movement work. These sections are adheased to the piece by little aleatoric fragments called "landfill music", which come between the sections….and that is basically the piece.

In certain places I want the syncopation to resemble that of a solo jazz pianist, who will often go long stretches without providing a strong beat, as the syncopations persist, mostly in the left hand.

The problem is, an instrumental chamber ensemble doesn't think, collectively, like one person improving at the piano. So, how can this be achieved without driving the players crazy?

Then, as I ate an incredible plate of Mexican food last night, it occurred to me: syncopation is a lot like the reaction to a tasty bite of food and that the bite itself is better appreciated when framed by other, contrasting bites (or sips, as was the case last night, on a spicy michelada). And in this analogy, the beat, or phantom beat, is the insertion of the bite into the mouth. So, slowed down……bite, close mouth, mmmmmmm. The mmmmm is the syncopation.

Anyway. So maybe setting the moments up properly so that the syncopation can be understood by the player and enjoyed as such by the listener is more important than the moment itself. For instance, if you listen to Thelonious Monk play a solo, by himself or with very minimal accompaniment, he often sets the off beat accents in the left hand by melodic fragments in the right which lead the listener to bite down and enjoy. I think this is what I must keep in mind.

A concept piece is a dangerous thing to attempt and in the case of this concept, I think it is important to think about the masters, the people who have already done all of the work in the areas you chose to base a concept on....think about things outside the surface sounds, to what makes things work. Also, I have learned that if you are not thinking about practical solutions to real musical problems all of the time, even when you eat Mexican food, then the solutions won't taste as good.

I'll give it a try and get back with you.