Sadie & Ruckus Sonic & Yarro (Yarro is the dog)

 

EMAIL Comments on First Version of Street Dogs

Dear Matt and Jake

When the piece started, I was captivated even though I didn’t know
where I was going. Part of that was due to the rhythm of the bites,
the street percussion. I was engaged by the musical quality in lieu
of an apparent narrative.

Your structure, though, is more literary than radiophonic. Each
grouping of voices contains all four speakers, separated by a block
of narration. But this is not clear to the listener because we don’t
recognize their voices. I didn’t know it until I looked at the
script. We can’t tell them apart because we’ve just met them. They
are a faceless chorus to us. Your arrangement schematic in a way
that makes sense “viewed from above” on the page doesn’t translate
into the linear “on the ground” movement in time.

Can we consider laying out the piece musically, disregarding the
notion of all four getting a chance to speak on each theme? Maybe
they interrupt each other, or share in telling some part of their
reality by cutting back and forth between them in much faster style
occasionally. No listener will be able to discern individual
identities, so think of them as libretto. The score is the music,
and the street sounds, their calling and cooing to the dogs, the dogs
themselves.

Let the piece sound the like the broken, vulnerable reality it represents.

Jax

Let things happen gently and also suddenly. Loud and soft. Overlap
and weave. Re-use sonic elements: “Jax!”

Cut EVERYTHING that doesn’t relate to dogs, unless we can jam it into
the preamble.

Did you get any other great tape besides what’s there? When you
think back does anything stick in your mind that didn’t make it into
the piece?

all for now…

-Jay

What are your thoughts about the two versions of “Street Dogs?” Join the discussion…

“Blue” in downtown Seattle