Have you ever participated in a musical coaching?  Have you ever done it via webcam?  Yeah, it’s pretty strange, but works remarkably well.

Several months ago, the ASU composition seminar had a guest composer named Ken Ueno give a presentation on two of his works.  This was pretty similar to most of our guest composer presentations except for the fact that Ken was still in California.  Yes, Dr. Etezady decided that we were going to have our premiere Skype session with Ken, so instead of being in the flesh, he was projected live from his office to our seminar room at the School of Music, where we discussed his techniques, music, and life as a composer.

This is all just a preamble for the fact that I never thought much about this until last week.  Jonathan Glawe, a colleague from Oregon who was working on his masters in orchestral music education while I was in my undergraduate, decided to read and then program my string orchestra overture entitled Faded White.  The really neat thing about this is that, instead of being a contact back in Oregon, or a performer I know currently living in Tempe or Phoenix, Jonathan teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan at Pioneer High School.  Now, what I was actually expecting was I would send him the score and music and then get silence as a result of it all, but I was quickly given a different outcome.

Not only did his orchestra read the piece, they decided to program it and wanted me to listen to and give them feedback.  Without hesitation, Jonathan suggested a Skype meeting, which sounded odd to me, but because I saw it work with Ken, why couldn’t it work with me?  My only concern was that the sound would be so distorted that I wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of what the piece actually sounded like, so we decided to test it.  Two weeks ago, I was skyped in to the music room at Pioneer High School, where Jonathan did various sound tests.  I was just simply sitting in my office, but on the other end I was amplified through a classroom sound system and projected onto an enormous screen.  The plus side to this meeting was that there were no students present, just me on a wall, and Jonathan playing a cello to check the sound on my end.

Last week was the Skype coaching, which I was quite nervous about.  I had no idea what the group would sound like realistically, let alone through an electronic filter, nor have I ever been terribly good at communicating with students younger than undergraduates.  So, I sat and waited for the call.  My computer jingled at me, and then connected, and there I was, starring at a high school string orchestra, undoubtedly prominently projected onto a wall of the classroom.  We tweaked the sound a little bit, and finally I was treated to the first 80ish bars of the piece.  Let me tell you, that was cool.  I was amazed at how well they did.  They could count, they played in tune, they played together, they played musically.  It was really nice.  After this abridged performance, I was asked to comment, and that’s where I noticed a small technical issue from the Skype setup I was now engaged with:  I could hear myself being picked up from the sound system in Michigan and being sent back to me.  It was much like talking in a stadium, except my voice is not nearly as cool as Don Essig.  It freaked me out, so I immediately started talking super slow, just to let the echo die off before I said anything more.  This actually ended up playing in my favor because it gave me time to think about what I was going to say, as well as how to say without utilizing some of the words that has sunk into vocabulary over the last couple of years.

After this rather productive coaching, we entered a question and answer session, which was pretty funny.  Instead of getting questions like, “what is your inspiration?” or, “why do you compose?”  I fielded a question asking for an explanation about the piece (please see the page for the composition), as well as whether or not I played all of the instruments I wrote for, and my favorite question of the afternoon:  ”where do you live?”  In all honesty, I was quite pleased with not having to answer the standard composer questions that I have yet to actually be able to formulate adequate answers for.  Finally, after everything was said and done, Jonathan had one more request:  ”can we get a picture with you?”  Yeah, this was an unusual experience involving the entire orchestra surrounding my massively projected head.  I could only see where the computer was looking, so instead of being able to actively participate in the picture-taking, I was stuck staring at the back of one of the student’s sweatshirts.  It read “make music.”  These pictures were later posted on the Pioneer High School Orchestra blog.

All in all, great experience that worked surprisingly well.  I would highly recommend it for composers and clinicians alike, especially when working with underfunded programs.  It saves everyone the cost of hotels and travel expenses, and if all you’re doing is donating an hour of your time to listen to a rehearsal, then why not?  I hope to work with the Pioneer High School Orchestra again in the weeks prior to their performance, as well as many more times in the future.