David McClelland MAP Summer 2001 8/12/01

Iowa: Lines, Borders, Boundaries

Part I: Process

This morning after our meeting, I discussed with Natalie the problem of meshing personal and academic goals in composition. How does one create music that is personally and artistically satisfying, but also academically and historically meaningful? -Journal: May 30, 2001

I began my summer mentor-assisted project in composition with every intention of creating a good solid piece of academic work. I checked out and began to read a number of fascinating books on 20th century composition, Iowa’s

“vernacular landscape”, and the history of the world soundscape. I conceptualized about the connections between lines in sound and space, between physical lines and contrived borders, and between perceptual borders and social boundaries. I diligently began to record and catalog the sounds of the vernacular Iowa landscape. I planned interviews with Iowans and a website to present the music in full contextual glory. I had the strong beginnings of a composition full of fertile academic and historical meaning. Promptly, I lost my motivation to compose music.

Something was missing. Unfortunately, it took most of the rest of the summer and a physical injury for me to figure out what it was.

Nothing in this project has come very easily. It’s all been frustratingly slow work... I don’t feel like there was any point where I just felt like I had a burst of inspiration and something just came

1 out. It’s all been slow methodical work, not always of the most exciting sort. -Journal: July 20, 2001

For over a month, I struggled. I had a hard time motivating myself to work, I found plenty of distractions, and the work I completed lacked motivation in itself. I spent several weeks trying to change a collection of sounds from the Iowa soundscape into something meaningful, but my work, the first mix of "Lines" lacked cohesion. Somehow my theoretical ideas weren’t translating into anything artistically interesting. So I found more distractions. I escaped from my composing by writing music--music that had as little to do with the project as possible. In particular, I composed a song entitled "Unfinish," with my midi synthesizer and a reconstructed drum sample. The track featured a contrapuntal harmony and a skittering syncopated rhythm. Its meanings were entirely personal, and I had no interest in integrating it into the academic realm of my project. I didn’t feel like it was appropriate for the standard of "historically meaningful" music I had set for myself. On the other hand, unlike my project, I was actually happy with it.

I’m really frustrated at this point. I’m having a lot of trouble with wrist pain... At this point, I’m questioning whether I’ll be able to finish this project at all... -Journal: July 11, 2001

In the last week of June, I strained the tendons in my arm with too much continuous computer work. At first, just a nuisance, several weeks later it brought my work to a complete stand still. I was almost ready to give up and change

2 directions to a more researched based project. After all, the research elements of the project had so far been more successful than the creative elements.

However, as much as I never wanted to use a computer again, I couldn’t face the disappointment in just giving up. With some advice from the doctor and support from my advisor Jon Chenette, I began working again, taking frequent breaks to stretch and rest my arm. Still, my work on the second section, “Borders,” was methodical but uninspired, and I had little direction for my final section. However, something had changed. With the frustration of my arm pain, came an emotional investment in the work. Finally, I really cared about finishing it.

Starting yesterday afternoon, throughout today, I’ve spent a lot of time going back to “Lines.” It had been bothering me that it hasn’t been finished. -Journal: July 24, 2001

In the end, I had to change my expectations to finish Lines, Borders,

Boundaries. I had to put aside my overly academic conceptual concerns and let myself become emotionally involved in the music. I had to compromise my unrealistic ideals of both academic and emotional music, in order to achieve something ultimately more satisfying. In returning to "Lines" I added a synthesizer and rhythmic track, purely because I found it aesthetically pleasing.

The synthesizer part was influenced by (and, in one section directly quotes from) my work, "Unfinish." All of a sudden, the piece gained both motivation and meaning, because I had risked something personal in its composition. In finishing

"Lines," I felt a burden lift and "Borders" came almost easily. In giving myself

3 permission to do what I really wanted--instead of what I felt I ought to do--I was able to complete "Boundaries" in only a fraction of the time spent on the other two sections.

Part II: Product

While it took an emotional investment in the work to finally complete Lines,

Borders, Boundaries, the research and conceptualization did not go to waste. To some extent, I had to set aside the academic research in the actual process of composition, but in the end, whether consciously or not, this preliminary research infused the music. There are two contrasting themes holding together the distinctive sections of this work: orientation and tension. Each section explores how we define ourselves as Iowans, but also how we struggle with these definitions.

Lines

I want to start by examining natural/environmental lines and boundaries in the Iowa landscape/soundscape. Part of this will be utilizing the correlation between straight line and repetitive sounds in human conceptualized landscapes and organic line and unpredictable sounds in the natural landscape. -Journal: June 7, 2001

The first section of this piece, "Lines," is about spatial orientation and the tension of a created natural landscape. Growing up in rural Iowa, I have come to expect the hills to roll away to the horizon and the cicadas to sing into late

4 summer. I expect roads to follow cardinal directions and the rumble of passing airplanes to be muted by distance. While I may take these expectations for granted, leaving Iowa and returning always brings them into focus. As a child coming home from long family trips, when we crossed back over the Mississippi,

I was suddenly eased. The hills rolled by us in proper fashion, and when we stepped out of the car, the continual evening hum of late August insects greeted us home.

My conceptualization of “Lines" drew heavily on two sources: The Tuning of the World: Toward a Theory of Soundscape Design by R. Murray Schafer, and

Take This Exit: Rediscovering the Iowa Landscape, edited by Robert F. Sayre.

Schafer introduces the concept of hi-fi (rural) and lo-fi (urban) soundscapes (43), and writes, “The definition of space by acoustic means is much more ancient then the establishment of property lines and fences” (33). "Lines" explores this space-defining power of sound while playing with the tensions between the hi-fi and lo-fi sounds of the human and natural landscapes. As Sayre writes in Take this Exit, “...Iowa is not a natural landscape. It is almost entirely a human-made one: measured and cultivated, planted and built...” (11). Indeed, even Iowa's prairie land, such as the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, has been mostly recreated. Likewise, as I experienced at Neal Smith, standing in the hi-fi soundscape of an insect- and bird-filled prairie one still hears the highway in the distance and plane engines overhead. "Lines" builds on this experience. The main harmonic content is created from the dropping pitch of a plane passing

5 above the prairie, analyzed and resynthesized in Metasynth. The melodic material is composed to fit this harmonic progression. Near the beginning of

"Lines," an annoying fly buzzing merges into a lo-fi rumble of passing cars. Near the end, this plane harmonizes with synthesizer and birdsong. Both natural and human sounds can be ugly or beautiful. In Iowa, both are part of our sonic orientation. In the middle of this work is a more introspective contrasting section, reflecting on the transformative powers of both water and technology. The muffled voice in the background is from a recorded narration at Lock and Damn

No. 10 in Guttenberg, Iowa, explaining how locks maintain a set channel depth along the Mississippi.

Borders

The debate was quite fascinating ... and the material seemed very fertile. Lots of differing opinions on what was most important in dividing up the state: regional identity, compact districts, bringing diverse people together, political convenience, etc. Still, I’m not sure how to approach this material in a “musical” fashion. -Journal: June 19, 2001

The second section of this composition, "Borders," is the most literal treatment of orientation and tension, exploring the geo-political lines dividing up the state and ideological divisions within the Iowa Senate. On June 19, 2001, the Iowa

Legislature convened for a special session to debate the adoption of a second plan to reapportion Iowa’s state and federal congressional districts. An original plan, developed by a non-partisan committee, had been rejected in the regular

6 legislative session on the grounds that the population deviation among the five

House districts was too large. The second plan developed by the committee remedied this problem at the expense of the physical compactness of the districts. While most senators were satisfied with the compromised improvements of the second plan, a vocal minority raised objections, making for fascinating debate on the senate floor. With a bit of luck, I was able to capture the 80-minute debate on tape from the balcony. My local senator, Dennis Black, had warned me to “prepare for the long-haul” in waiting for the redistricting debate, due to the variable nature of senate scheduling and the numerous other issues at hand. If necessary, he told me, he was prepared to stay until 2:00 a.m. However, with perfect timing, the debate commenced only minutes after I returned from my lunch break.

Having ideal source material to examine Iowa’s political boundaries posed a challenge in itself. The debate was fascinating in its raw form, but daunting in its sheer length and numerous points of view. By manipulating the senators’ voices I was immediately entering the realm of political commentary, a tricky place to be.

My intentions were to communicate my fascination with the debate in a vibrant and humorous manner without deliberately taking sides or mocking the senators.

The key to transforming this material into a piece of music turned out to be inspiration from the work of Steve Reich. Reich’s explorations with phasing had helped inspire an earlier work of mine, "Approach," where I used a phasing technique to process the sound of a passing car. While Reich used two tape

7 loops of slightly different lengths to create ever-changing looped material (Reich

Works 1965-1995), I used one loop of a set length and continually incremented the contents of the loop by a set time interval. With “Borders,” I developed this technique further, turning the sound of papers shuffling, for instance, into a rhythmic texture and constantly changing the contents of an underlying vocal loop. The changing loops provide meter and movement, while changes in the texture and the narrative content provide direction and build tension. Despite my intentions to avoid poking fun, the senator whistling “If I only had a Brain,” heard at the end, was far too good to pass up.

Boundaries

The decision to stay in or leave Iowa is a complicated one. Often young people just assume they’re going to leave, perhaps without thinking it through fully, but when they do... there is a lot there to think about. Probably won’t stop us from leaving though. -Journal: July 30, 2001

The final section, "Boundaries," deals with the “problem” of youth leaving the state. There is constant discussion among Iowans about what could be done to keep young adults from leaving and what might attract them back. However, as one college graduate I interviewed suggested, the problem isn’t always what

Iowa lacks. My experience growing up here is that many of my peers are proud of their state and what it has to offer but are ready to get away and experience something new when the time comes. Some may come back, and those that do

8 will bring new experiences that will enrich Iowa. Some probably won’t, but a little bit of Iowa certainly couldn’t hurt the rest of the world.

Not being able to reflect every young Iowan's experiences, I decided to focus

"Boundaries" on a small group, a rock and roll band. Four Grinnellians I grew up with, Wes Phillips, Mark Paulson, John Paul Mohan, and Phil Moore, have played together as a band for almost ten years. Having graduated from college, they are currently residing in Iowa City and perform under the name Speed of

Sauce. Their current plan is to make a career out of playing in the band, a goal that may necessitate a move to a larger city to gain recognition and look for a record deal. I spoke with three of the band members, John Paul, Mark, and Wes, and recorded the band practicing for a RAGBRAI performance on July 26th. The recording of the practice captured John Paul on drums, Mark on guitar, and Wes on bass, along with an added trombone section of Tim Phillips and Ryan

Bernemann.

Musically, "Boundaries" lies closer to modern popular music than the other two sections. The rhythm and melody supporting the interview material are snippets of the band practice, sampled, cut up, and reconstructed. The most useful material turned out to be not the songs, but the fragments of warm-up in between. In the composition I found myself influenced by the neo-jazz breakbeats of electronic musicians such as Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher Hard

Normal Daddy) and Amon Tobin (Amon Tobin Permutation).

9 While "Boundaries" is about the tension of deciding to stay or leave, it is also about orientation. Popular music, such as the rock and roll played by Speed of

Sauce or the electronic music this piece is influenced by, is a form of social orientation among its fans. As sociologist Simon Frith writes, "we enjoy popular music... because of its use in answering questions of identity: we use pop songs to create for ourselves a particular sort of self-definition, a particular place in society" (Classic Essays... 346). For kids growing up in the relative isolation of rural Iowa, popular music (or classical or experimental music for that matter) becomes a connection to the rest of the world, a way to define one's self in a more global sense.

Lines, Borders, Boundaries

The words lines, borders, and boundaries are almost interchangeable. All three represent ways of defining literal or figurative space, demarcations of orientation. The three words do, however, have slightly different connotations. In fact, it is a sense of tension that separates the words. The word line has the broadest meaning, encompassing both borders and boundaries. A border is a line that divides space, adding a sense of tension. A boundary, in turn, is a form of border, but one that confines, again adding a sense of tension. -Final thoughts: August 14, 2001

Ultimately, the tension in each section of Lines, Borders, Boundaries is to some degree resolved. "Lines" ends in musical--if not, necessarily, spiritual-- harmony between nature and technology. "Borders" finishes with a moment of humor and the assumption that the passion of the debate will give way to

10 everyday life, even if we do have to live with convoluted congressional districts

(the plan being debated was, in fact, approved). The final line of "Boundaries," is the (only slightly sarcastic) assertion that friendship is the most important factor in choosing a place to live. These endings are a reflection of my own resolution of this summer's artistic and academic struggles. However, some things remain unresolved. My arm pain, for example, may be something I'll have to learn to live with. And despite all my thoughts on orientation, I still have no idea of where I want to go after college. I'll probably even consider Iowa. Eventually.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to my advisor John Chenette and fellow MAP-er Natalie Kneip for support and feedback.

Thank you to my parents for support throughout the summer, and in particular to my father for discussing this paper with me.

Thank you to Senator Dennis Black for advice on recording the Iowa Senate debate.

Thank you to everyone I interviewed: Shannon Hammen, John Paul Mohan, Sara Eilert, Mark Paulson, Wes Phillips, Sarah Hilliard, and Neil Stone.

Thank you to Speed of Sauce, Ryan Bernemann and Tim Phillips for audio source material.

Thank you to Ben McCune for traveling with me to northeast Iowa and taking pictures along the way.

11 Works Cited

Kostelanetz, Richard and Joseph Darby, editors. Classic Essays on Twentieth- Century Music: A Continuing Symposium. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996.

Reich, Steve. Works 1965-1995 [sound recording]. New York: Nonesuch, 1997.

Sayre, Robert F. Take This Exit: Rediscovering the Iowa Landscape. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989.

Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World: Toward a Theory of Soundscape Design. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980.

Squarepusher. Hard Normal Daddy [sound recording]. London: Warp Records, 1997.

Tobin, Amon. Permutation [sound recording]. New York: Ninja Tune Records, 1998.

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