Ep. 68: Brian Balmages: Finding Success in Educational Music

Brian Balmages, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Doing well.

Thank you. How are you?

I’m doing excellent. I’m excited to talk to you as a person who grew up in concert band and played a lot of your music. It’s exciting to get to talk to you.

For our listeners who are not band people, would you maybe introduce yourself and your background?

Well, sure. Any listeners that you have that are string people may know me as well. There are some string people that don’t know I write band music, so you probably just shocked a few folks right there.

Breaking news, folks.

Yeah, I’ve actually had people come up to me and say, I didn’t know you write band music because they’re just used to be in another world.

But my name is Brian Balmages. That is how you say it. I am a composer.

I don’t think of myself as a band composer or a string composer. I just think of myself as somebody who writes music. And it depends on what the group is that I’m writing for.

I have a unique background in that in addition to being a composer, you could argue that I’m also a publisher because I’ve worked in the publishing business for a very long time and somewhat, I guess, as a mentor to other composers who are getting

published as well. And that includes the composers that want to self-publish and folks that are publishing in this big music industry that we have.

Yeah, fantastic. We’ll get into the self-publishing stuff later on in the interview. But I wanted to start with Concert Band because I feel like that’s in a unique place if you look at just the wider music industry, right?

And it’s something that unless you’ve been involved with Concert Band, you don’t really understand. So how would you describe just sort of the current landscape for Concert Band music?

I mean, I certainly think it’s a very exciting one that’s evolving. I think there are a lot of elements that I think make it really interesting and some that make it kind of scary.

And when you look at what’s interesting, I think there is more music being written now than ever before. I think there’s just a lot of music. And I think folks that may not…

It used to be a world where if you didn’t have your foot in with a big publisher, you were simply never going to be recognized.

But because of social media, because of the Internet, because of our ability to create our own websites and promote ourselves, there’s a lot more opportunity for folks to get recognized and get themselves out there.

With that, though, has come a lot of, how do I say this? A lot of music that might not be quite ready for the big stage, right?

And so I’ve seen people that have put themselves out there that have actually kind of shot themselves in the foot because they have not looked at best engraving practices or they haven’t looked at the best way to market themselves or they’ve written

a great piece but on their website there’s no score and there’s no recording and you can’t purchase it very easily. And kind of the rule of thumb is that people can’t see it and they can’t hear it and they can’t buy it, your website just failed.

And so there is a lot of things that I see that are promising and there’s a lot of things that I think folk could really be educated about as well.

4:54

As somebody who is actively writing new music in, as you say, a very crowded space, how do you think about deciding just creatively what to write in order to stand out?

Or maybe do you have a particular type of music that you gravitate towards and you try to make that your thing? How do you approach, you know, that beginning moment when you’re sitting down, you have the blank score and you can do anything?

I think you have to be very careful when you’re thinking about your identity as an artist, as a composer, to not get so caught up in how do I make myself different from everything else that’s out there or even more commonly in this industry, how do I

write music that’s going to sell or how do I just, I think sometimes you do that too much and I don’t think there’s any composition class that I can think of out there that says, all right, we’re going to spend a semester on how to not sound like

everybody else out there. And actually, in some ways, I think we learn by imitating, right? And if you think about the school composition curriculum that’s out there and of course, I say this as somebody who never studied composition.

But if you look at what’s out there, you will see that a lot of it is kind of like, we’re going to learn to write four part corrals in the style of Bach, right? We’re going to learn to do this.

We’re going to learn how Ravel orchestrated Daphnis and Chloe. So I think there is a lot that we can learn from studying the music of other folks.

But when it comes to the creative space and kind of figuring out where you fit in, I think most people find that after they graduate from college, it takes them four or five years to even figure out who they are.

I think we spend all this time learning to write like other people or learning to write the way our professors have taught us how to write.

And then finally, you start, or in my case, when I left my master’s degree, I had been at University of Miami, I was with Gary Greene. I had been playing music by David Mazlanka and Michael Kograt.

Like these epically, massively amazing concert band folks. And I wanted to write, I really thought I wanted to be David Mazlanka. Like this is what I wanted.

And then I suddenly realized after three or four years of this, that I’m not David Mazlanka. Like I’m actually nothing like him at all. And so why am I trying to be somebody who I’m not?

And that’s when I think my music really started to take off. The last thing I’ll say about your question is the one thing I am looking at is when I look at my own body of work, one of the things that I’m asking myself is what have I not done?

And I think you see both of those. You’ll see composers who will say, wow, this fanfare was a huge seller for me. I’m going to write another fanfare.

My thought process is kind of always, well, I already have that fanfare. Like I already have that. So, what have I not done?

How can I evolve and grow as a composer and as an artist?

This may be a distinction that doesn’t matter, but do you consider concert band music to be classical music, or is it something else?

I don’t think of it as classical. I don’t think of it as contemporary. I just think of it as a medium, right?

It’s a medium. And honestly, you could ask the same thing about educational music in general, right?

A lot of the folks that are looking at this are writing educational music because their goal is to write something between what a first-year kid is going to play and what a college band is going to play.

Like, that’s the vast majority of the folks listening to this, if they’re composing. You could argue that all of that is educational music. And you could also make the same question, well, is educational music considered classical music?

And to be honest, my thoughts on educational music are that it’s nothing more than a label to enable an entire industry to market themselves towards people that are going to buy the music.

The crazy thing about educational music is that it doesn’t have to be good. If you really think about it, it doesn’t have to be good. It can be awful and we can justify it by saying, well, it’s educational.

It’s not really great music, but it teaches the dotted quarter eighth note rhythm really well. Great. Then that’s not educational music.

That’s just a piece of educational period. Done. The music part is missing.

And so I don’t think of music as, I mean, when people ask me, what are you, what kind of music do you write? I’ll say, well, classical. And I just think about the genre of instrumental music.

But I don’t necessarily think of it as classical or romantic or me or any of that. I just think of myself as, hey, I’m somebody who’s trying to say something with this voice that is the concert band. What can I do with it?

How can I sound different? How can I create new sounds within this established medium that don’t just sound like, I always call it bandy music.

And it’s funny because every band director that I know is like, I don’t want bandy music, but they conduct a band. So trying to unpack all of that and what do they even mean with that.

And it has to do with texture and orchestration and form and all of those things.

Well, and I don’t disagree with any of those points, but the reason I asked the question is because I feel like classical music, I guess that’s a loaded term, right? But professional orchestral music, they have a problem with new music, right?

Most of the time, professional orchestras are not premiering new works. They’re going back to the old classics, Brahms, Beethoven, all those guys.

And there’s sort of, I don’t know, when there’s a perception, right, that audiences aren’t able to connect with new music, right?

And I feel like, this is just my personal opinion, but if they were performing the kinds of music that, you know, the top level, you know, collegiate concert bands are performing, it would transform the landscape because there’s such great music

happening at the collegiate level and high school level with concert band music. It’s music that’s creative and, you know, artistic but also accessible.

You know, it’s really a cool, like part of the music industry that nobody knows about unless they’ve been in band. And I think part of the problem with that, of course, is, you know, concert band doesn’t really move past the collegiate level.

There’s a couple of professional groups, obviously, and no disrespect to them, but I think for the most part, there’s not a lot of concert band after you leave the education system.

And so, I don’t know, it just, there’s all this great music that I feel like could have a wider audience, but just because culturally, societally, you know, we’re not used to hearing band music.

I don’t know if there’s a question in there, but do you, what are your thoughts just on, like, because once you get to a certain point, right, you’re writing music that’s just as sophisticated or advanced as you would for any professional ensemble.

And so, it’s like you said, at a certain point, it stops being educational, just becomes music.

Well, and I don’t think it ever stops being educational. I mean, if you think about it, any piece in the world, if you listen to it and you learn something, that’s educational music, right?

If you experience something, if you grow as a player, as a conductor, as an audience member, that’s educational music. I think we have to change the paradigm of the way we think about that.

So, that’s a little bit about that, you know, in terms of the professional level and all those things.

So, I mean, the good news is I have plenty of friends that are doing quite a bit in the orchestral space, that are writing and getting commissioned to do that. I look on a lot of orchestral programs and I’m seeing newer music.

It’s always balanced and certainly the ratio is not there. You know, Beethoven is still one of the most performed composers in the world. And there’s some great music there, don’t get me wrong.

But I also think that when these groups are doing commissions, it really creates these opportunities for this community interaction where, like I’ve done things, where I’ve done pre-concert lectures, where supporters will come and I will speak about

the piece that I wrote. Beethoven can’t do that, right?

And so I’ll talk about the piece and the things that I was thinking about and I’ll kind of map it out for them and key moments, certain things that hit me and what was I thinking when I wrote this or what emotion was hitting me or what was the story

behind it, not what some scholar on my music decided it was about, but what did I actually say it’s about in person. They can watch me interact with the ensemble. Sometimes they will do open rehearsals, all of these things.

So I think you are definitely seeing orchestras do more in that space with live composers, which makes me excited. Is it happening as much as I’d like it to? No.

And on the other side is like, okay, even when it’s happening, is it happening with all white male composers or is there a diversity element? And we’re seeing attention being brought to it. Are we seeing real substantive change?

I don’t know. I can’t say for sure yet. I think we are seeing an effort, right?

I know as a conductor myself, whether it’s a band or orchestra, I’m always thinking about that. And it’s not that I was ever against it. I just don’t think I was aware of it.

And so the fact that I become much more aware of that discrepancy between who’s out there and the representation on programs, those things are moving it in the right direction.

So anyway, the bottom line with all of this is that I do think that it is getting better in the classical music scene, whether we’re talking about school music or whether we’re talking about professional level music.

But I’m seeing a lot more folks getting composer in residence. I’m seeing more commissions. I’m seeing more of these combination things where we are combining the music of Beethoven with…

Mason Bates does a lot of that, right? You’ve got Mason Bates, who is a professional DJ, who was also, at one point, the composer in residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

And curating these combination things where at one point you feel like you’re in the middle of a rave and at the next moment you’re listening to a Mozart string quartet. So I think people are starting to think outside the box with all that.

Would you say that there’s more opportunity in concert band because there’s not so much of a competition with the late great dead composers? Or is that not really a helpful distinction?

No, no, no. I think there’s absolutely more opportunity in concert band.

John Mackey wrote this whole article years ago that he talks about how this somebody named orchestra walks into a room, but doesn’t really want to talk to you a whole lot and wants to, they want you to bring them some stuff, but then they want you to

keep your way. And then this concert band, Sexy, is like, I want you to spend a week with me, and I want you to do this, and we want to take your man.

And it’s really a pretty fascinating read, because John was doing a lot in the orchestral world and kind of just realized, man, this concert band thing is really great. I think there’s a couple of things.

Number one, there’s just a lot more concert bands out there.

And one of the reasons people do like the, we’ll call it the educational space, for lack of a better word, is because there are tons of high school bands and middle school bands and college bands and elementary bands.

So there’s a lot and they’re all yearning for new music. That is the standard. They want the newer stuff.

And so it opens up a lot of avenues for composers that are trying to break in. However, again, I come back to this idea of we’ve got to be able to write good music for them.

We can’t say, well, I’m not really that great yet, so I’m going to write for that space because that doesn’t help the canon of music being released, right? We’ve got to hone our own skills.

And there’s plenty of music that I’ve written, even still, that’s sitting on my computer that will never see the light of day, even though it’s finished and it’s finished music.

And that’s just not worthy enough for an elementary ensemble or for a middle school group. And so I really, it requires a lot of self-reflection and a lot of really being very humble and very honest with yourself, too.

17:49

All right.

I know there’s not an answer to this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. How do you decide if a piece of music is worthy to put out into the world?

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it. So you got to remember, I’m doing this on two levels.

I’m doing this on my own level and I’m doing it with other composers as well. And I think a lot of times it comes down to what we call that X factor, right? Do I really feel something when I’m listening to this?

Am I really, do I get excited? Right? And I’m not talking about uptempo or anything.

I’m just saying, do I listen to this and do I really feel something? Do I feel like this music can make the world a better place? Do I feel like this has something to offer kids to get them excited?

Will conductors, whether they’re middle school band directors or professional conductors, will they become better at their craft and better humans because of this music? So those are all the different things that I’m looking for.

From a technical level, I’m looking at a lot of things, for example, melodic, is there melodic development, right? Not just repeating the same melody over and over again, but is there melodic development? What about harmony?

I don’t care if it’s a six note piece or a grade 37 piece, right? Is there interesting harmony? Is there harmonic progression?

What about harmonic development? What about texture and orchestration? Is that approach thoughtfully?

What about the use of cues versus scoring everything all the time? Like if everything is scored in unison all the time and everything is doubled, we lose color, right? What about a composer that’s using a cue?

Then it’s telling me, hey, I don’t want to hear a muted trumpet where the oboe is, right? I want to hear oboe. It’s great.

Give them a chance to play. Cue it somewhere. Great.

Fine. Horns do not always need to be doubled in saxophones. Rumor has it, they don’t really sound alike at all, right?

And yet we all do it. Why do we do it? Because they’re in the similar range.

And that’s the only reason. There’s no good a reason. Otherwise, the technique of a middle school saxophone player is vastly superior to the technique of a horn player at that same age level, typically, right?

There’s obviously exceptions. And so we hold our saxophones back because we’re always doubling the horn line. Give the horns a chance to be heard.

So those are all different things that I’m looking at and how is the music interacted. What about the pedagogy behind it, right? Does it make sense?

And again, everything you’re talking about right now is band, but I’m looking at the same thing in the orchestral world, whether it’s a string orchestra piece or a full orchestra piece.

I’m looking at all of those things, trying to understand how all of those elements combine to create something that I believe is artistically viable regardless of grade level.

For someone who has taken, let’s say the typical orchestration class at a university that’s focusing on orchestral music and how to use the wind instruments in an orchestra, how would you explain the differences between that kind of orchestration and

Sure.

Well, I think there’s a couple of things. First of all, virtually no university orchestration class teaches you anything about how to write for younger players.

And so I see folks that have graduated from some of the most prestigious institutions that we have in the world, and some of them incredible composition teachers, with zero clue how to write for a middle school band. They just don’t know.

And so that is a huge difference in itself, right? Just understanding what are the ranges and those different things.

However, it goes much deeper into that as well, because I can’t tell you the number of times that a composer has said, Oh, I have my rage guidelines. I wrote exactly in my rage guidelines.

So according to my rage guidelines, I have written a grade two. And I say, well, according to me, you’ve written at least a grade four. And so what are we talking about?

A couple of things. First of all, if you’re writing a piece for a very young group and you have a bass line that is only in the tuba or just the tuba and the bass clarinet, 80% of first and second year bands might not have a tuba or a bass clarinet.

So you’ve just by out of the gate, your piece will fail because there’s no low voice. Well, but I really don’t want to put my trombones on that because then I lose my tenor voice.

I know, but that becomes part of the challenge of orchestrating for a younger group.

So like when I’m writing a grade half or a grade one, I’m already thinking like, okay, all of my low brass and my low reeds, they’re going to double, which is going to take away some of that tenor voice that I would normally have available to

understand that and to be able to still be colorful with your orchestration around that. So they don’t really teach that. They also don’t teach the way all these things react to each other.

For example, I’ve had people that have sent me music that is each part is individually playable, but there might be six or seven different things going on, and it’s nearly impossible to get any kind of clarity.

If I’m with the Marine Band, we might be able to get a little bit of clarity. Not always, but we might be able to get some clarity there.

But clarity becomes a huge issue where you have a lot of things competing and it doesn’t work for a typical concert band setting. In the orchestral world, you see this happen a lot quite the other way.

I mean, look at Blue Cathedral by Jennifer Higdon, right? If you look at the string parts alone, forget about the winds, but if you look at the string parts, they’re divided sometimes up to six, seven different ways.

And the bases are moving in half and whole steps against each other, slowly working their way. And you look at that and you think that should not work. Like if you look at the score, you think that should not make sense at all.

And it does, right? But again, you’re dealing with a very different level of player, very different colors, the ability to play incredibly soft. So there’s a lot of different things in there.

And so none of that is really addressed in the typical concert band world at all, right?

24:25

All right.

Let’s do a quick lightning round on your compositional process.

Okay. I wish my compositional process was a lightning round, but that’s okay.

What do you typically start with when you’re writing a new piece?

The chicken or the egg question. Yeah, exactly. The chicken or the egg question.

And the answer is I start with whatever the piece tells me. There are some pieces I’ve written that I start with the melody. There are some pieces that I’ve started with a harmonic progression.

There are some that I’ve started with a certain texture or just a rhythmic background.

And there are some that I’ve been able to start with anything, and I’ve got to go halfway through the piece and kind of figure out where I’m going before I can figure out how I’m even going to start.

I think some composers make the mistake of trying to start every piece the same way. I’m going to start every piece with the melody, or I’m going to start it with this progression.

And if you think about it, as a performer, every day I wake up as a trumpet player, some days I’m going to pick up my instrument and feel amazing. It’ll take me a few minutes to warm up and I am ready to light the world on fire.

Then other days I’m going to pick up that instrument or whatever instrument you play, and you’re going to ask yourself, do I even play this instrument? Like, what is this thing that I am holding? It feels awful.

And you’re going to change your warm up. You’re going to take another hour to warm up.

You’re going to work on the very soft response things or articulation or just some long tones or lip slurs or flexibility to get yourself back into the game to be able to accomplish what you need to do that day.

There’s no reason why composing should be any different, right? Some pieces I will start writing exactly on the computer, a notation program, and I’ll just start going and orchestrating.

Other pieces I will start at the piano and just sit and play for an hour. Some pieces I will start by pencil and paper. Like, I finished a symphony last year.

An entire movement I wrote by hand, completely as a sketch. By hand, no computer, no piano, no nothing.

I literally sat at my dining room table and wrote the entire movement without referencing a pitch one time, because that’s what the movement needed.

It was so clear to me that I didn’t want to be tied or even tethered to what I could play on piano or what it would sound like with no performer or what it would sound like, whatever. I only wanted to be limited by what I could imagine.

So I think we have to be careful to not have a prescribed order of things. Sometimes it can be very helpful, but we have to understand that some pieces are going to fight back. And when they do, we might have to change our approach.

What’s your go-to snack while you’re writing?

That’s a good question.

That’s a new one. Very often, I like these little all-natural dark chocolate-covered peanut butter things.

I will pop one of those, the little mini bars, and I’ll pop one of those, and it gives me a little adrenaline rush, a little surge of sugar, and hopefully I don’t crash until I get to the lyrical section.

Are you an early morning writer, a late night writer, all the time writing?

What’s your schedule? Yeah, when I was in college, I was a late night person, like that was my thing. And then I started realizing that when I wrote late at night, I would get really depressed, honestly.

And I think I, this was years ago for me now, at least 10, 20 years ago, that I started to realize like, I don’t like it writing at night. And so very often I would, by seven o’clock, maybe eight, I’m done and I’m up.

And of course I’ve got my wife and my kids and my family. So I want to be with them. On very rare occasions when I’m really fired up about a piece and really inspired, like it’s driving me to be back down here and to work.

And so I absolutely will. But by far I try, and I’m not always good about this, but I’m starting to get a lot better about saying, all right, every day I’m going to begin the day writing.

And my first three hours of every day, first four out, whatever it might be, will be writing. Because remember, I’m also a publisher. I work with Alfred and make music publications and make music itself.

So I’m doing a whole other world of things, whether I’m working with other composers or whether I’m creating new material that’s going to work in a digital platform. So that’s another side of what I do.

So I’ve got to make sure that I don’t lose who I am, my core identity as a composer. And so starting each day off that way, it’s kind of like working out the first thing you do.

There’s a sense of completion, a sense of self, a sense of just joy, knowing that, okay, I’ve created some music today.

All right. Follow up to that. I imagine you often have multiple pieces going at a time.

Maybe you’re more organized than that. You can respond, but when you’re writing to a deadline and you’re not feeling inspired about the thing that’s due, but you are feeling inspired about something else, right?

If you have an idea for a different piece, how do you handle those sort of push and pull in different creative directions?

Yeah, that’s a good question. So first of all, I don’t typically have more than one project going on at the same time.

I think if I have too many things going on at the same time, I get lost in where I am in each one, and you kind of lose the form and the structure of each piece because you kind of forget, oh, wait a minute, it was that piece that I was doing that

in, not this one. And I think you see this with a lot of younger composers, too, where they might spend an hour orchestrating a certain passage, and then they’re like, okay, I’ve been in this section for an hour, now I’m going to go explore a new

idea. But when you play that back, you realize that that hour was spent on 10 seconds worth of music, and now you’re going in a whole completely new direction.

So I think for that reason, I don’t like to have multiple projects going on at the same time.

That being said, there are occasions where I will be working on something, where I’m either getting very stuck, or it’s just not coming to me, and I have a very strong pull to do something else.

But if that happens, I will literally immerse myself in that other piece entirely and finish it, and then come back. I will never go to one, oh, never mind, let me come back to this one.

It’s the one, and if I get stuck there, and I’m getting a big push from another idea, then I’ll go to that other idea. Deadlines. What happens when I have a deadline, and I’m not feeling, the muse is not sitting on my shoulder.

There’s a lot of things that you can do to kind of help work through that. First of all, everybody always says, how do you deal with writer’s block? And how do you deal when you run into that brick wall?

And I say, number one, every time we talk about it, we give it a voice. Like every time we say, oh, I’m dealing with writer’s block, we’re legitimizing it because we’re giving it a voice. We’re acknowledging it.

So I don’t really talk much about writer’s block. I will say, like, oh, I’m kind of struggling with an idea right now. But if you, if, if, if the only, the only reason we have a wall is because we have put it there.

Think about it, right? I’m stuck. I’ve got writer’s block.

Or I’ve run up against a wall. Well, the only person who put that wall there is you, because it’s your mind. So if there’s a wall there, then you have the opportunity to create a door.

And if you can’t create a door, you can create a window and open it. If you can’t create that, you can walk around the wall. Let’s say none of that’s working.

Then imagine where you’re going. Like stop trying to get through the wall and just imagine what’s on the other side. What are you trying to get to?

Well, there’s this big finale. Great. Write the big finale.

I always tell people sometimes when you’re stuck, skip ahead to where you know you want it to go. And if you’re not sure you don’t want it to go, figure it out, right? And start working on that, not related to what you’re doing at all.

And then use that as a GPS to get you there. Because let’s face it, if you turn on your GPS and you say go somewhere, it’s gonna have no idea what you want. I don’t know where do you want to go?

But if you say, I want to go there, then it’ll say, oh, here are four routes that you can take to get there. So writing music can be very similar. Like we don’t have to write through Compose going all the way through, we can skip around.

And there have been pieces that I’ve written where I started writing and I was like, well, I don’t know if I love this or not, but I’m going to just keep going, right? And I keep going and I keep going.

And I very quickly realized that like, wow, the beginning of this movement that I was working on, turns out that it was actually two and a half minutes into the piece and not the beginning at all. But I just had to keep going.

And then when you look back on it, you’re able to better do that. The other thing I’ll say about this getting stuck idea is that we need to accept the fact that not everything we write is going to be kept.

A lot of us write a lot of stuff that winds up getting obliterated, right? There have been pieces where 50% of what I wrote was complete and total trash.

And I just kept going, figuring that eventually this core of this piece will identify itself to me. It’ll show itself. And once I know that, then I can go back and edit.

But just like with writing the paper, there is so much more gratification when you can say, okay, the paper is done. It’s not good, but it is done.

Now I can become Brian Balmages, the editor, and start editing what’s there versus having to create all this new stuff. Now, will we create new stuff in that process? Absolutely.

But it just allows you to change your thought process and the way you’re interacting with the music you wrote or are writing.

Do you have a favorite shortcut in your notation software that you use, that you want to share?

I don’t. I’m not a big short-cutty kind of guy. I mean, I use it very often like I’m writing by hand.

I still use Finale. I’m holding on with everything I have. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to learn.

I do plan on learning Dorico. That’s what I want to go to. I think there’s going to be a lot of things that are great with it.

But as of right now, I don’t really think of it in terms of shortcuts. I just write what I’m going to write. I’m cautious about developing certain things that are going to change the way I compose because I don’t want to.

I know so many people that have changed the way they write because of the software. I know people that have changed the way they orchestrate because of the way note performer plays their music or anything like that.

And I think you have to be very cautious that we are not writing music to serve the notation program, but rather the notation program is serving our music.

I’ve heard a number of people express that sentiment. Do you have something more concrete to suggest as to how we do that? Is it an awareness thing?

Is it a question of like the order you compose? Or is it something different?

Well, I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. So for me, my background was as a performer. Again, I don’t have a performance degree, but that’s how I kind of cut my teeth, right?

I played in professional orchestras. I did a lot of playing obviously in college, both in orchestra and band. And so I got very used to seeing notation and knowing how to play it.

I tend to not over articulate my music.

And that was something you’re seeing less of it now with no performer because it’s got the AI kind of, the eighth notes are a little bit shorter, but you would see people put eighth notes on fast music on every single, staccatos on every single

eighth note and fast music because they wanted it to go, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, right? And this program couldn’t do that. So they over articulated their music to death.

And so I try to find that balance in something like articulation between what are my instincts as a performer and as a conductor. The other big thing that I see is people over the overuse of dynamic contrast.

I’ll see, you know, percussion playing piano and then the baseline is mezzo piano and the melody is forte and the counterline is mezzo forte. And so you’ve got like four or five dynamic levels going at the same time.

And I always say to them, well, if I take this in to work with my pro players, when I record it, it’s going to sound so out of balance. And they’ll say, well, yeah, but it’s educational.

We want, but we still don’t want somebody playing piano in another group playing forte, right? And so, but it sounds great in the notation software. And so, that’s another example of that.

And the best solution to that is to hear your music played live. That’s the best way to do it. You will discover that the way you orchestrate nullifies a lot of that need for dynamics, right?

If it’s orchestrated well, I shouldn’t have to say, this is forte, and then everybody else is piano, right? And so, getting it played live, and that’s been something that was a huge gift to me, right?

Leading up until my publication, literally everything that I ever wrote, I heard played live, whether it was recorded, or a read, or a performance, whatever it was, I heard it. And believe me, some of it was awful. It was tragic, right?

I remember the first piece, one of the first original pieces that I wrote was for trumpet ensemble. I’m a trumpet player, and I wrote this piece that I thought was great.

And then I heard it live, and there were some parts that were great, and there was a lot that sounded really bad. And I was like, why does it sound so bad?

And then I realized I wrote it at the piano, and the entire time I was holding down the sustain pedal. And trumpets don’t have a sustain pedal. I should know, I am one, right?

I am a trumpet player. And so that was a huge learning experience for me, right? And it changed the way I approach things like that, and how I can use the ensemble to create sustain, but obviously without a sustain pedal.

So getting it played, and because of that, those that are getting started, write for what you have access to, right?

If you’re just getting started, don’t write for full orchestra, because it’s just a lot, and you’re going to get caught up in orchestration when you really need to focus on composition. Do a sketch and write for a small thing.

If you’re a saxophone player and your best friend is a clarinet player, write a duet for a saxophone and clarinet, and sit down and play it, and find out what works and what doesn’t work.

Then expand, oh, my other friend plays trumpet, great, now write a trio, but get it played so that you can learn what works and what doesn’t work, because the notation program won’t share that with you.

40:19

You kind of alluded to this earlier, but I think for so many composers, it’s difficult to know that they’re on the right path to where they want to go.

I remember for me when I was trying to determine my major, I had a lot of anxiety about that because I would look at these examples in the professional field.

So-and-so over here is a composer, but their degree wasn’t in composition, or someone over here is a conductor, but they were a performance major. And you see it even more so in the industry jobs, in the publishing and that sort of thing.

And so, and lo and behold, I’d studied trombone for 25 years, and now I’m a choir guy, right? And so it feels like everyone in the music industry sort of ends up taking different paths to get to the same place almost.

And so as a young person trying to make a name for themselves, trying to break in, especially in this time where the technology is changing so much, and the publishing versus self-publishing, we haven’t even gotten to any of that.

But how do you, what would your advice be to a composer trying to put themselves on the right path to success?

I think at first, you need to really think about what success means. Like, what does it mean? Does success mean that you’re selling 800 copies of every piece that you write?

Does success mean that you had five performances of your big piece last year? Does success mean that I got a commission? And that one commission?

So, I think that’s the first thing you have to really think about. And success is very different for everybody, right? So what does that even mean?

Once you kind of define that, then working toward that is a big part of that. But everybody has a different measure of that. So there are, I mean, you’re saying we haven’t gotten into the self-publishing versus publishing thing, right?

For some people, success means I am a published composer, right? I am with a publishing house and now I am successful. For other people, it’s like success means that I am just, I’m self-publishing and people are buying my music.

How many people? I don’t know. I mean, do we want to grow that?

Sure. Right? That might be it.

Or for some people, it’s like, I want my first symphony orchestra commission, right? So I think you have to really think about what does that look like? Because for me, I’ve already told you, I don’t have a composition degree.

I mean, I don’t have a conducting degree. I don’t have a composition degree. I don’t have a music education degree.

I don’t have any of that and that’s my life. That’s what I do because that’s where I really found myself drawn to. Right?

So really thinking that through, it’s just kind of where the musical current was pushing me. When I was in college, I was a music industry major. I was already writing music.

I wanted to learn how to record it so that I would have a record of what I was doing. Right? And then friends started graduating.

They said, hey, I love what you wrote in college, but it was a lot harder. I don’t do hard music anymore because I’m now a middle school band director or a middle school orchestra teacher. Can you write something for my kids?

Sure. I’ll give it a shot. Right?

And so I would do that. I think there were a lot of failures along the way. I wrote music that I’m not really proud of.

And it took me a while to figure out. So what do I consider success? For me, I consider success this idea of being able to acknowledge when one of my pieces is not something I want to put out in front of the world.

That shows growth.

Another thing that I view as success is the fact that if you listen to my music now versus 20 years ago, you can see a clear evolution, whether it comes to the way I’m orchestrating or whether it comes to the type of music that I’m writing or whether

it comes to the actual subject matter of the music, and all of those things. Same thing with conducting.

I look at the way I was conducting 20 years ago, and I look at the way I conduct now and rehearse and engage with groups and just the way I respect the podium. That’s all showing success to me.

Everybody needs to understand that I am probably not successful at all if you are saying, my measure of success is John Williams. I’m probably not at all. I’ve done one film in my life.

I have not written, I’ve written for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, but outside of that, I have not written for most of the major symphony orchestras. I have not written for the Olympics. I could go on and on and on.

But I don’t, I don’t put myself up against John Williams. I admire him, he’s an idol of mine, but I have to create my own version of success.

I think that’s a great perspective, a great way to look at things. One final question before we let you go. You’ve been very generous with your time.

How do you get a song unstuck from your head?

Let’s do another one. It happens for me, sometimes it’s my own that’s stuck in my head.

That’s the problem, when it’s something you’re working on and you haven’t finished yet and it won’t get out of there, and it’s taking up space. It’s a very unique problem to composers.

Yeah, but it’s not taking up space. The way you get it out, I had a friend who, she would talk about this all the time, it gets stuck in her head and the only way to get it out was to finish writing it and get it on the page.

And so that’s what she would do. And so for me, sometimes when it can’t get out of my head, it’s like, man, this is great. I’m excited.

Like there’s nothing quite like getting to the point where you’re just so fired up to run to your manuscript paper and just work because you can feel that idea.

And sometimes I will stop writing at a point where I know exactly where I want to go because that’s a great way to start my next session. And other times it’s like, I got to keep going.

Like somebody else is going to have to cook dinner tonight because I’m just, I’m in the zone. And so I think sometimes when it doesn’t get out of your head, that’s a gift. Sometimes maybe not.

47:02

Before we go, you have two pieces of music to share with our listeners.

Do you want to introduce those?

Sure. I mean, I guess I can kind of introduce them from completely different worlds. Like, so one, I’ll do the self-publishing world and one, I’ll do the publishing world and one will be banned and one for strings.

So for strings, I’ll say, pick a very easy piece, create one and a half level piece that I just published called Sunset Suspended.

And that’s available through Alfred and it’s part of my Make Music Publications catalog that I started about three years ago.

And the reason I chose that was because it speaks to this thing that we talked about earlier about even though we’re writing music for younger musicians, in this case, grade one and a half artistically, that expectation still needs to be there that

we can make great music with it. And that’s a great example of a piece that I would hope that certainly a middle school group can do it. But at the same time, I would love for a college group to say, wow, I would love to dig into this with my kids.

And it’s sort of like my version of like a barber adagio for strings at a grade one and a half level. On the flip side, going to the World of Band, I could mention Love and Light, which is a piece that I’ve self-published, right?

And that’s not out with a publishing company, it’s just something that I self-published.

That was a piece written for First Lieutenant Elizabeth Elliott when she was still in the Army, and she went through this tragedy of losing her unborn daughter, Madison, and had to go through stillbirth.

And we talked a lot about this, but she just talked about the trauma of that entire thing and how she needed to figure out a way to process all that, and she was really struggling with it, and she wanted a piece of music to help not only her, but

everybody that’s gone through that. Because stillbirth and losing a child is not something that you hear talked about a lot, but yet there’s a shocking number of people out there that have gone through this.

And so Love and Light was a piece that I wrote, not with the education space in mind at all, but it was designed to help people heal. It was designed to bring beauty into the world that was initiated by tragedy, but to really show up.

And the interesting thing about that was, so NPR did this big segment on it, and then the US. Army Band Pershing’s Own premiered it in Virginia. Hall was packed, it was Rachel Schlesinger Hall, and the hall was packed.

Half the people in that hall, it turns out, had never been to an Army Band concert, but they had all lost a child. And so this speaks to this idea of, like, what is success?

Well, to me, success was, I just helped hundreds of people get some closure, some of which had lost a child decades earlier. And for the first time, they felt like they could breathe after that performance. So all of those are examples.

So anyway, a publishing example, a self-published example, both of them in my mind are successful.

Well, thank you again for taking the time to come on the show. I could talk to you literally all day about this stuff. So really appreciate it.

And where can our listeners find you?

I’m the only Brian Balmages in the world. It’s very convenient. So they can find me on Facebook, they can find me on Instagram and YouTube, although I don’t do a lot on YouTube, maybe I should do more.

But, and then they can find me on my website, brianbalmages.com. Very, very hard to remember.

All right. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Thank you, Garrett.