Busy couple of weeks ahead. Next Tuesday I am spinning at the Contemporary Museum here in Baltimore for the next Mobtown Modern event, "Sequenzathon", featuring the solo instrument Sequenzas of the late Luciano Berio. The next day I am leaving for Portugal, where I will play two sets at the Musicbox Club in Lisbon on March 7-- one solo DJ set and one with Rare Degree (Saxophonist Michael Straus and bassoonist Dana Jessen) and Vitor Rua. A week later I am performing in Toronto for Canadian Music Week (at Cameron House) with singer/composer duYun, with whom I've co-written some songs. I get back to Baltimore for two days and then I'm taking my daughter to Iowa for a week to visit with family. Then no more performances until May... why can't I just spread these things out over a couple of months? Funny how my performing schedule always seems to work like this.

Hey don't forget to check out my new song, "Pierrot Redux 2", available for download. This is one of a series of beats that I'm making using instrumental samples that I recorded with an ensemble back in January from Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire".

Check it out:

http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5688

This summer I am striving to be self-employed as a composer, DJ, and teacher. As I begin life as a stay-at-home dad, letting my wife take a turn as the primary income maker, I am advertising private lessons in digital music composition for the Baltimore area. Pass the word.

OFFICIAL AD BELOW:
------------------------------------
Want to make your own music?

Lessons available in:
-Beatmaking with Reason software (and other sequencing programs)
-Producing with Pro Tools software
-Turntables/mixing technique
-Notated composition

$30 per hour (need-based discounts available)

About the instructor:
Erik Spangler (aka DJ Dubble8) received his Ph.D. in music composition from Harvard University in 2004. Since then, he has performed his own music as a turntablist at clubs, art galleries, and universities across the United States, with the aim of bridging modern classical music and hip-hop culture. Erik also serves as Artistic Director of Mobtown Modern, a new music series in partnership with the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. He has taught composition at Ithaca College of Music (Ithaca, NY), Oasis Charter Middle School (Cape Coral, FL), and MATHS Charter School (Baltimore, MD).

Contact:
607-339-5081

www.dubble8productions.com

I am proud to announce the launching of a new music series, called Mobtown Modern, which I am co-curating with saxophonist Brian Sacawa. We have been very fortunate to partner with the Contemporary Museum, which is donating performance space and helping to promote our shows here in Baltimore. Our first concert, "State of the Union" (featuring VJ Art Jones), was on January 29, and received praise from The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun. Our next concert, "not so much: minimalish music", will be on May 9. Here is our official statement:

Described as "an edgy music series" (The Washington Post) and "a welcome addition to Baltimore's new music scene" (Baltimore Sun), Mobtown Modern presents a diverse range of today's most relevant and engaging contemporary music. Curated by saxophonist Brian Sacawa and composer Erik Spangler, the series showcases music by both established composers who have defined the contemporary musical landscape as well as some of the most exciting emerging composers who are shaping the future. Mobtown Modern is committed to introducing the public to the energy and vitality of contemporary music by presenting a concert series at the Contemporary Museum with the goal of cultivating both an appreciation of and support for this dynamic art form.

Upcoming concert:
Following a critically acclaimed debut, Mobtown Modern returns this spring with a concert of minimalish music. Included on the program are Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint for flute and pre-recorded flutes, Michael Gordon's The Low Quartet for four baritone saxophones, along with works by Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, and Terry Riley's monumental minimalist masterpiece, In C. In an age of cutbacks and downsizing, this music proves you can do more with less.

I am currently finishing an 80-minute soundtrack to accompany a recorded narrative by multi-media artist Kianga Ford. The project, entitled "A Story Of This Place: Charm City Remix", will open at The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, as part of a mapping exhibition sponsored by the Maryland Arts Council.

Participants will be given an iPod and a map with four possible walking routes. Different tracks on the iPod can be chosen to accompany different walks. Neighborhood boundaries, social tensions, and layers of history are among the themes explored in the stories and music.

The exhibition opens on March 15.

For updated information, check my site: dubble8productions.com.

I'm a dad! Mila Marie Spangler was born on October 17, at 1:22 AM. She ended up being delivered by c-section following a prolonged labor, weighing 7 lbs 6 oz at birth. My wife Marie was really amazing and strong through labor, which lasted about 30 hours before surgery became necessary. She is recovering very well and we're both so grateful to have such a beautiful and healthy baby. Marie and I just got back from the hospital yesterday, having been there for almost a week. It's so incredible to be home now with our baby, I don't know what else to say. A lot of other things start to seem pretty insignificant. I'll probably be spending a bit less time on MySpace, so PEACE OUT! LOVE!!

In the next month Marie and I will be moving from Gainesville down to Cape Coral, in Southwest Florida, the Fort Myers area. I have been offered a job teaching music at a charter middle school, a school which is still under construction as I write. This is an exciting opportunity for me to build a music program from the ground up, as the first music teacher in this new charter school system. I am designing a curriculum for grades 6-8, culminating in a digital music composition class that will include ensemble performance using mixed electronics and found-object instruments.

This job comes at just the right time, since we have an infinitely more significant change coming in the fall-- we have a baby girl due in october!
This opportunity for fatherhood gives me great joy, and also a new level of responsibility as I prepare for this new life stage.
It didn't take long to figure out that my food service work, freelance music lessons, and trickling CD sales weren't going to give us the financial support we need, so I eventually had to start looking for secure employment outside of Gainesville. While Cape Coral doesn't appear to be much of a cultural and artistic center (yet), I believe this position that I am offered can allow me to have a wide-ranging and positive impact on the life of a developing community. The middle school years for me were a time of incredible changes in perspective, just before I found my path in music composition. I think I can offer a creative outlet and set of listening skills for these kids that will help them regardless of whether they decide to continue with music. Along the way, I hope to be part of creating an educational environment that I will be happy to see my daughter through!

Send us your blessings in thought.

[While I was driving out for a lecture and performance at the University of Arizona last week, my wife Marie called and asked me to tell her a story next time we spoke on the phone. I took this as an opportunity to write down what I was seeing as I drove across the Gulf Coast. This was my first time ever in New Orleans...]

3/21/06

Bent trees beginning in Biloxi,
broken treetrunks increase as I drive west toward New Orleans.
Half a year after Katrina, it is a bright blue day along I-10.
You call me and I tell you about my stay last night in Pensacola
and the longest bridge I'd ever experienced,
starting out this morning.

After we hang up, I find myself on an even longer bridge,
arching over Lake Pontchartrain amid pelicans and seagulls.
At the zenith of the bridge I can see the outline of white towers in the distance
across the chop of murky waves.

On land again, I drive for some miles with no evidence of habitation,
in the midst of a half-uprooted forest.

Gradually I come upon the wreckage of former subdivisions,
debris piled high next to decaying apartment complexes and houses with no roof.
Gated communities looking like shanty towns, demolished stone walls and fences.

I drive past an abandoned mall, its large sign hanging sideways on a bent pole.

The garbage piles become higher as I enter the city, through neighborhoods of empty streets and ruins like Pompeii.

I take the exit for the French Quarter and find the tourist citadel of the downtown
patrolled by squad cars that are seen at every turn. Stop signs have replaced street lights at many intersections.

I miss a turn and find myself at the Superdome, remembering that night when I read online about things that were hard to believe-- the chaos and neglect that came to a boil here...

I get myself turned around and park in the historic center, which seems untouched by the devastation but for what I read in windows and on t-shirts in the tourist shops:
"FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass",
"Without Levy 5 We Can't Survive",
"FEMA, throw us a bone"...

Before paying $3 for a bottle of water on Bourbon Street,
I make a pilgrimage to Armstrong Park where a homemade sign on the gate says
"Peace is here".

I say a prayer in Congo Square and make my way back through the French Quarter. Passing over a junkyard of abandoned cars beneath an expressway ramp,
I drive on toward the Texas night,
and New Mexico dawn,
carrying a book of names.

Tracing my musical journey...

My music background began with a desire to be a professional recorder player at age 9, playing in an Early Music group in Iowa City, IA, and writing little melodies that imitated Mozart and the Baroque music that my dad was playing at home. Between then and my early teenage years I also played violin, tuba, and classical guitar, before turning my musical focus to the perpetually failing attempt to start a thrash metal band. When I was 15 I met the composer Param Vir, who invited me to attend rehearsals of his operatic double bill that was being given a preview performance at the University of Iowa. This first encounter with live, modern classical music in the theater was the decisive moment that made me want to become a composer. Within a year I moved to Oberlin, OH, to study with Param Vir and attend classes at Oberlin Conservatory. Before long I was deep into the study of "free atonal" harmony, writing miniature piano pieces modeled on early Schoenberg, as well as learning 16th Century counterpoint.

In 1995 I was admitted to Oberlin Conservatory (without finishing high school), where I received a full dose of classical training and developed a compositional voice that was thoroughly steeped in modernist influences. Immediately after graduating from Oberlin, I entered a doctoral program in music composition at Harvard University. While my years of graduate school allowed me to refine my craft within a great support system of talented people and enormous resources, I felt that I was much more on my own in terms of my musical education and development. Already at Oberlin, and increasingly so at Harvard, I began to be dissatisfied with the concert hall setting as the sole means of creative presentation, and felt that it had little to do with the way I wanted my music to be experienced. I began searching for other kinds of settings, and rituals, that would be more participatory for an audience. I also wanted to feel more involved in the performance of my music than to simply hand my compositions over to other people and tell them in one or two rehearsals how the score should be played, whether I sat in the audience or beat out time at the podium during the concert.

My transition toward becoming a DJ began in graduate school through creative exchanges with my roommate, who was a student at Harvard Divinity School. I would introduce him to my favorite modern classical composers and he would introduce me to underground hip-hop artists, music that completely transformed my perspective of rap and other cultural forms to which it connected. My sense of groove was deepened through several classes dealing with African music, but even more significantly through my participation in an Afro-Caribbean drumming group, The Jah Jah Drummers, which I was invited to join through a chance meeting on the street. The new influences of African rhythm, reggae, and hip-hop, were not immediately apparent in the music I was writing at the time. Aspects of a hip-hop DJ aesthetic began to emerge slowly through my interest in the possibilities of sampling and remix, first in the way that I was approaching the composition process on paper and then through recorded audio collage as well. I eventually bought a starter DJ turntable kit, which remained an occasional bedroom experiment for a while before I considered performing with turntables in public.

In my last year at Harvard I learned a computer music production program called Reason, and started making beats using samples from my concert works. My primary influences in the realm of electronica were abstract hip-hop or trip-hop producers, including DJ Spooky, Dan the Automator, and Blockhead. Under the guidance of a singer with the Jah Jah Drummers, I also began making modern-sounding dub tracks modeled on the layered rhythms and raw vitality of reggae artists such as Buju Banton and Sizzla. Before moving to Ithaca, NY, to complete my doctoral dissertation, I composed and performed in the first piece of mine to openly incorporate breakbeat patterns and to combine a DJ part with live acoustic instruments. That composition was Midnight Turning, for Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with myself on turntables and laptop. It was at this time that I created my alter ego as DJ Dubble8.

The forms of electronica to which I feel most connected are often found with the overlapping genre names of "downtempo", "illbient", "abstract hip-hop", "trip-hop", and "experimental breakbeat", often also sharing the problematic genre name of "IDM" ("Intelligent Dance Music", a term disliked by nearly every artist whose music it describes). In addition to the early DJ/production influences mentioned above, I would also add DJ Krush, Prefuse 73, Madlib, Amon Tobin, DJ Signify, and turntablist scratch artists such as DJ Qbert and Mixmaster Mike. Some of my electronica compositions could also fall into the categories of "dub", "jungle"/"drum & bass", or "acid jazz". All of these electronica subgenres share a common source in breakbeat rhythmic patterns, treated in different textural contexts across a large range of tempi. For my purposes, I view the breakbeat as an anchor over which I can float complex sonorities and textures that would never reach the same audience in the absence of the familiar rhythmic context. From there, I can play with the listener's expectations and open up realms of experience that are hopefully transformative. I see these sample-based forms of electronic music as an arena where sounds from many different cultures can fuse in a common purpose, by engaging a wide range of people on a physical and spiritual level to truly promote understanding between us. The sounds of modern classical music are just one aspect of what I am trying to bring to these "hybrid breakbeat soundscapes" my awkwardly condensed description of the electronic music that I am creating.

My musical activities as DJ Dubble8 have occasionally been described (by others) as being in the realm of "techno", but to me the term "techno" has particular rhythmic associations (which I identify as being related to those of "house" music) and traditionally a basis in synthesizer sonorities, with which I don't feel that my music is much involved. To avoid these particular associations, I will use the term "electronica" to describe the broader category of multi-layered, beat-oriented electronic music which is well suited to home listening with headphones, as much as it might be played in a club setting.

Electronica, as a category of music, is wide open as far as its association with other forms of music may go. In terms of its affinity with classical music, this may be found in its kinship with the minimalism of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, which grew out of the classical composition tradition. The complex layering found in much electronica could also be related to Baroque-era counterpoint, though much more contained and with a less linear focus. When not confined to a conventional song format, electronica can explore developmental approaches to form that are closer to the energy of symphonic movements than traditional pop or rock songs. These approaches to form can include long introductions, interludes and ending sections, gradual accumulation of layers and dynamic level, breakdown of layers, and incorporation of new thematic material on top of existing frameworks, without the need to follow a verse/chorus structure. When in the absence of a lead vocalist, more attention can be focused on the complexity of the instrumental texture and in the sphere of tone color, such as is not often found in most genres of popular music.

In the more experimental forms of sample-based electronica, samples of music either directly from or in the style of various 20th Century classical composers may be found. The general harmonic language of much progressive hip-hop, for instance, while usually holding tonal centers, often has features of bi-tonality or an emphasis on dissonant intervals that place it in a sympathetic relationship with much avant-garde music of the 20th Century. In addition, the collage aesthetic of turntable and sampler-based composition can be found to resemble many aspects of the first form of electronic music, musique concrete, a form which is now seen in relationship with the classical tradition through composers such as Edgar Varese and John Cage. The rhythmic context and effect of audio collage in modern electronica is, of course, usually very different from that of the earliest electronic music pioneers.

I would hesitate to say uniformly that electronica is more faithful to the classical tradition (or its experimental offshoots) than rock or any other forms of today's popular music, since there are progressive movements within many of these genres, defying the homogenizing format of commercial radio to incorporate more complex structures and approaches to texture. Within the broad category of rock, modern classical (or "classical tradition-derived" experimental) influences can be found in the music of artists and groups such as Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Tom Waits, and Godspeed you black emperor! (sometimes termed "post-rock"), to name just a few.

Before discussing in detail how electronica differs from the models of classical music, it should first be stated that this new field is definitively not the property of Western culture and has no need to look to Western classical music as a sort of parental guardian. Modern electronica is most remarkable in its ability to adapt to the aesthetics of every culture that has embraced the approaches of sample-based electronic composition. The concept of "the mix" is what defines both us and the music, culturally and acoustically. We embrace common rhythmic frameworks (whether in our urbanized sense of time, common channels of media, or in a musical beat context) but hang out our own clothes on these shared lines. While African origins and black culture have defined the major rhythmic frameworks of electronic dance music, transformations and adaptations of the music to localized taste are found everywhere that you look, bringing about a truly international dialogue. One example is that of the East Indian electronica genre known as "bhangra", which molds its loops from the sounds of the tabla drum and features its own traditional melodic language.

It is also true that orchestral and chamber music (of a classical bent) is becoming less and less centered around Western cultural models, adapting sonorities and textures particular to the tastes of composers from nearly every nation in the world. Modern music for classical instruments is much more openly received by the culture in Japan than it is in the United States. Simultaneously, instruments such as shakuhachi and biwa are becoming more commonly used in an orchestral context both in Japan and abroad. The cultural boundaries are clearly dissolving in this arena, yet the gap between institutions such as orchestras and the surrounding popular culture the world over does appear to grow. The undeniably Western associations that surround orchestras, which have occasionally been associated with imperialist ideologies, seem not to be present in the technology used to make electronic music. New digital channels of audio distribution appear well suited to an international, online dialogue through sample-based music. The systems that support classical music seem to struggle with these new channels.

The primary musical differences that I see between electronica and Western classical music forms are in the area of harmonic structure, which is linked to the pace of harmonic change, narrative development, goal-orientation, and hence time perception. The harmonic language of Western classical music up until the 20th Century had defined itself by a hierarchy of related key areas supported by an elaborate network of pre-defined chord functions. In the classical tonal system, all harmonies are linked to a central tone and chord, the tonic, through a commonly held set of assumptions about dissonance and resolution. All harmonies in this context must be resolved into the tonic, the home base. Interest is generated in the music through the delay of that arrival, through detours into contrasting harmonic territory before returning home. The formal model of exposition, development, and recapitulation brings to life the drama inherent in this harmonic system. The Germanic tradition of tonal music, as exemplified by Bach, Beethoven, or Wagner, developed an expressive vocabulary hinged upon restless striving within a narrative of opposing thematic ideas, continual transformation, goal deferment and inevitable consumation. The surface of advanced, chromatic tonal music (as found in Romantic-era compositions) tends toward a high rate of harmonic change, always moving forward towards what inevitably should follow, dependent upon a strong sense of past and future within the composition.

The orientation of most electronica is vertical rather than linear in its development. Continuous harmonic change is not usually a defining feature of this music. With a tendency toward loop-based structures, forward motion is de-emphasized with a resulting shift of focus to the complexity of the present moment. Changes of harmony will usually repeat within the context of a loop or be used to define extended stretches of music. Rather than developing the composition through a continuous, linear narrative, interest is often sustained through the addition of new layers to create a deepening sense of polyrhythm within a stable loop framework. Existing layers are treated to various rhythmic transformations, but usually revolve around a downbeat in the metric structure and return to patterns that have already been established. Alternately, change of timbre can become the central parameter of development, along with the reduction of layers within a loop structure. A narrative sense of time is usually suspended in favor of a sense of timelessness.

In classical music since the 20th Century one can also find examples of vertical or non-linear conceptions of musical time as well, despite the prevailing influence of the linear model even in post-tonal compositions. Likewise, examples of beat-oriented electronic music can be found with a strong sense of narrative and linear development. The moment one attempts to make a categorical statement about a living form of music, the music will prove the theory to be wrong. As a composer, I am not seeking to exclude any possible directions by which my music can develop. From where I stand, I wish to further synthesize the strategies and expressive means that I have developed through my classical training with the modes of music-making that I have discovered on my path to becoming a DJ. Ultimately, I hope to erase the boundaries between these forms of music, with the wish that those who listen to my compositions are engaged with the sounds on a visceral level, regardless of previous musical conditioning.

"Fourth World: A term coined by composer/trumpeter Jon Hassell to describe an electronic hybrid of ancient and modern, acoustic and digital, composed and improvised, and Eastern and Western musics."

--Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music [ed. Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner] Glossary



"The bonfire burns huge and hot on the slope of the hill. At its crest, the hill boasts to the sky a circular palm-covered shelter. The smoke from the fire is thick but wafts incandescent as incense. The fire pops and crackles and small flecks of flame spark upward to the shelter in drifts of smoke.

The Nyabinghi is heard here, raising the power of Earth to the sky. Through rhythmic beats on the heavy bass drum, you can feel the earths very center- and the rhythms forming above the bass, from smaller drums, carry the Rasta cry of freedom and dignity into sky above, lit with stars so bright they seem to point the way to eternity.

Here the bredren, the sons, the sisters and daughters of Rastafari have come to relax and share their innate power in nature. Some play the drums. Others dance in an unfrenzied, flowing motion. Each has his own, but all emanate from, and return to, the essential rhythm. Nyabinghi."

--Rastafari [Tracy Nicholas] p. 70


In Rasta terminology, Nyabinghi refers simultaneously to a rhythm, a drumming style, a spiritual gathering (also known as "grounation"), a way of living, and a stance in opposition to oppression. My introduction to Nyabinghi drumming came at a time of great perspective-shifting, halfway through my time as a graduate student in music composition. In 2000, soon after my roommate got me actively listening to post-1995 hip hop for the first time, I was invited to join an Afro-Caribbean drumming group called The Jah Jah Drummers (heard on the last track of my previous album). I shortly found myself as a participant in nearly every West Indian cultural event in the greater Boston area, and, along way, regained a sense of rhythm that my academic composition training had not developed. In the same year I had my first direct experience of large-scale civil disobedience, as part of a protest outside the first presidential debate between Al Gore and GW Bush. The misuse of police force at that event awakened my political consciousness, and led to the second major shift of perspective for me. Along with my renewed interest in beat-oriented music, I began to look for ways to integrate my expanding social concerns into my compositional activities.

"Fourth World Nyabinghi" is a mix of sonic artifacts, a non-linear tracing of my journey over the past five years. Sections from several of my "sound documentary" pieces from 2001-02 are included as interludes and a postlude: one feauring sound and textured spoken word connected with the 2001 presidential debate protest, one from a cross-country documentary project investigating human relationship to water. A few other tracks were created for a multimedia performance entitled "Dismantling War", and feature a mix of Iraqi and Vietnamese sound sources. My newest mix also features recent collaborations with Orlando-based MC S.K.I.P., NYC-based trip hop singer Du Yun, keyboardist Brian Ellis, and a live track featuring the Ithaca College Percussion Ensemble.

While my previous album, "Tompkins County Organic", consisted of distinctly separate tracks, "Fourth World Nyabinghi" is a continuous mix blending each track into the next. The final mixdown is acheived through turntable performance.

Look for the album in January 2006 at www.cdbaby.com/dubble8

Blessings,
88

www.dubble8productions.com