Online Concert Winter 2014

A quick announcement first: I'll be giving a presentation at the Indiana Music Educators Association conference in Ft. Wayne on January 16th, 2015. I'm going to lead an open rehearsal of three of my pieces - Avatar, Winstride and Gauntlet. Bring your scores to follow along, think of questions to ask me afterwards and listen to me show a talented group of young musicians how I like to hear my music performed!


On with the main event: Halloween concerts are done and it's Holiday concert time here in the States - and that means a bunch of new concert videos have popped up on YouTube. Let's have a look at a few of the really good ones:

Up first is the Vivace Advanced Orchestra killing it with Pioneer Sky at the Central Indiana All-Region middle School Orchestra Festival. They perform some nice dynamics and give the piece the right energy - bristling accents in the ostinatos, soulful legato in the lyrical parts. Nice job!

Next, the Mansfield Youth Strings of Mansfield, Ohio open their concert with North Pole Workshop, complete with percussion parts!  Fantastic tempo, nice precise playing and good style. I hope this one catches on. Great job, MYS!

Up next, Angie Cimbalo leads the Region 24 Sinfonia Orchestra at the Middle School Texas Music Educators Association All-Region Concert with a furious performance of Dragonfly. This is a piece that requires intense focus and these young musicians are right up to the task all the way through the end, never letting up. An arranger did a really great job with the harp parts as well - writing for harp is one of my favorite things to do but I seldom do it because so few school orchestras have harp players. But it really works well in this setting and it makes me wish I'd written that part myself. It's a fantastic performance.

Finally, the Olentangy Orange Middle School 7th Grade Orchestra performs Gauntlet. It's a good performance made all the more special by some awesome rock star stage lighting. Excellent tempo, nice expression, and they stick the landing beautifully. Nicely done!

Sales Statement 2014

The good folks at Alfred Publishing got a jump start on their end-of-year schedule and surprised me this week with my 2014 sales statements! Every year, they send me a list how many pieces of music I sold in different formats (score and parts, score alone, parts alone, digital downloads, MakeMusic files, etc.) And every year I sort through it and see which are my top sellers of the year. So here are my top five folios of scores and parts from April 2013 through March 2014 (domestic):

1. Dragonfly
2. Across the Wind
3. Gauntlet
4. Gargoyles
5. Avatar

Nice! The two newest pieces came out on top, followed by my two all-time classics. Gauntlet and Gargoyles have consistently been in the top five since they were first released nearly 15 years ago. I'm happy to see so much enthusiasm for Dragonfly and Across the Wind as well!  Avatar dropped a little this year, but, shockingly, it remains in the top five - most likely bolstered by people who mistake it for the theme to James Cameron's movie (for the record, my piece was published four years before his movie came out). In my opinion, Cameron can't release Avatar 2 fast enough.

That was sales inside the US - now for the top-selling scores and parts in foreign markets:

1. Dragonfly
2. Gargoyles
3. Beale Street Strut
4. Samba del Sol
5. Across the Wind & Avatar (tie)

Interesting!  I can't remember when there's been this much crossover between the two lists. Usually the top foreign sellers are a completely different set of titles, but there are four names in common this year! I'm most surprised to see Beale Street Strut on this list - it's a jazzy piece and I just figured it would be too American to appeal outside our borders.

Here's the list of top-selling scores:

1. Gauntlet
2. Gargoyles
3. Avatar
4. Las Mariposas Exoticas
5. Agincourt

Teachers buy extra scores for the judges when they take their orchestras to contest and all of these pieces are popular contest pieces. I'm most happy that Agincourt getting on more and more lists.

Finally, something relatively new on the sales report is a list of print licensing and mechanical fees. When a group records a piece of music or makes photocopies for extra parts, they're supposed to notify the publisher. So thank you to all the honest directors out there who did what they're supposed to do.

This list also includes the number of digital downloads, so I'd like to remind everyone that you can listen to and download fantastic professional recordings of my works at alfred-music.com.

 

Online Concert Spring 2014

The school year is wrapping up and that means lots of Spring concerts!  Let's have a look at some really good recent performances from YouTube.

Up first is the James Bowie High School Sinfonia Orchestra of Arlington, Texas performing Avatar.  They have a very precise and articulate sense of rhythm, their intonation is really good and, best of all, they do some really interesting things with dynamics. Please enjoy:

Up next is the Prelude Chamber Strings performing Across the Wind. They do a fantastic job navigating the corners and emotional changes and technical demands of the piece.

Next is a rousing performance of Dragonfly, performed by the Marina High School Orchestra. Very precise ensemble playing. Nice job.

Finally, here's a slightly older video of the ISTA Honor Orchestra in Iowa and their intense performance of Agincourt.  I appreciate the musicality and the dynamics. The intonation is good and they finish strong. Nice job, ISTA orchestra!

A quick note to YouTube posters: There are lots of videos that I'd love to feature on this blog but I can't embed them if you don't check that box on the upload page. Please make your concert videos sharable!  Also, if you could include more info about the location, conductor, and date of the performance when you write out the video's info, that's nice to know too.  Thanks!

Sales Statement 2013

I got my annual sales report from Alfred Publishing recently, in which they compile and break down sales of all my music for the year, from April through March, 2013. Unfortunately, sales were down a little bit from last year and the report showed some interesting trends.  Here are my top domestic sales of scores and parts in 2013:

1. Maharaja
2. Avatar
3. Gargoyles
4. Gauntlet
5. Agincourt

Avatar has been the top seller for the past few years and was unseated by Maharaja. I'm still surprised at the popularity of Maharaja but that piece was all over YouTube this year. Gargoyles edged ahead of Gauntlet for the first time in a while - both are usually in the top five and are very close, but Gauntlet is normally slightly more popular. In truth, Gargoyles sold one more copy than Gauntlet this year.

It's important to note that this report predates the release of Dragonfly and Across the Wind, my newest pieces. That means that the newest pieces on this report are Harrowland, which would have come in 7th, and Beale Street Strut, which would have come in a distant 8th.

Foreign sales are a different story. Sales abroad are usually much lower, because the system of music education is different outside the U.S. and many countries don't have group music instruction in schools. Here are the top five sellers of scores and parts outside the U.S.:

1. Harrowland
2. Beale Street Strut
3. Samba Del Sol
4. Sneaking Suspicion
5. Avatar, Gargoyles, Gauntlet, Maharaja, Porcupine Pantomime

A complete inverse of the Domestic Sales list! And a five-way tie for 5th place! I honestly don't know what to make of this, other than deducing that foreign orchestras gravitate toward the newer titles. Also, there are more minor-key pieces on the Foreign Sales list than usual. Usually, this list is full of major-key tunes.

Finally, I'll include a list of the top five selling scores. This is important because orchestras buy extra scores for the judges when they take a piece to contest. And when a piece is included on contest lists, that speaks to its long-term popularity and quality.

1. Gauntlet
2. Avatar, Gargoyles
4. Las Mariposas Exoticas
5. Agincourt

Gauntlet is the runaway winner in this race, selling more than Avatar and Gargoyles combined. All are popular, time-tested pieces (Agincourt being the newest), which makes sense on this list. I'd be shocked if something from the last three years showed up here, but I expect that Maharaja will work its way up this list in a few years.

I'd also like to give a shout-out to the handful of honest folks who went through the proper channels and paid licensing fees to copy, record, and re-arrange my music.

So sales were down in general, but I got some good data from the report. Hopefully, things will turn around next year with five new pieces in the works. Look for March of the Wood Elves, Winstride, Zuma Breakers, Pioneer Sky, and Woodpecker Cha Cha later this year. Also, my next report should include Dragonfly and Across the Wind, which I suspect will make a major impact.

The Avatar Debate

A friend of mine who teaches middle school orchestra recently asked me to settle a debate he'd been having with his class over my piece Avatar. The argument centers on the very last measure, which looks like this:

His 'cellos and basses prefer playing all of beat 2 as a three-note slur, rather than slurring just the 16th notes and playing the upbeat as an upbow, as written. So my friend, the orchestra teacher, turned to me to judge the case. Here's my response:

The reason it's a two-note slur instead of a three-note slur is:

1. That same rhythmic figure appears a two-note slur throughout the entire piece (practically every odd-numbered measure) so playing it that way at 59 keeps things consistent. It's an essential part of the piece's DNA. Changing it on the last rhythm of the final measure would be weird.

2. Playing a two-note slur at m. 59 ensures that the last note is played with a down bow, which naturally has more power than an up bow and results in a natural accent.

3. Playing a two-note slur and ending the piece on a down bow keeps things consistent with the violins and violas, who also end with a down bow. Everyone ends together on a strong down bow, which gives the piece both a sonic and visual sense of finality.

4. I'm the composer and I know what I'm doing.

There's plenty of room for interpretation when it comes to expression, style, and even flexibility in tempo and dynamics (within reason) but notes, rhythms, and bowing are all carefully chosen and shouldn't be messed with. Especially in this piece, which requires precise, articulate playing.

Let me know what you think – which elements of written music are open to interpretation?  And if you have your own debate about something I wrote, I'd love to hear about it and make a ruling.

Sales Statement 2012

Every year, the good people at Alfred Publishing send me a report showing how many of each of my pieces have been sold in the past 12 months. It's always exciting to get that kind of quantifiable feedback. When I first started getting them, they were much simpler, but since the advent of digital printing and different combinations of scores and parts became available for sale, the sales reports have become a lot more complicated. So, filtering through the many lines of data, here are my top-selling sets of scores and parts within the U.S. for 2012:

1. Maharaja
2. North Pole Workshop
3. Avatar
4. Gauntlet
5. Agincourt

I submitted Maharaja with little hope of it ever getting published and was shocked that it was accepted. I just thought it was too odd or too technically demanding to be taken seriously. A year later, looking around YouTube, I was shocked to discover that it's popular. And now I'm shocked to learn exactly how popular - nearly twice the sales of my next-best-selling piece! New pieces for tend to make a big splash in their first year, but Maharaja goes beyond expectations.

Gauntlet always makes the top 5 list and I'm excited to see that it remains popular. North Pole Workshop was also a new piece this year and it's great to see that it did so well.  Avatar was the top-seller for the past two years and I credited that to people mistaking it for the theme to James Cameron's movie, but it still has a strong showing, so I think it's safe to start attributing success on its own terms. Agincourt is one of my personal favorites, so I'm thrilled that it remains popular. Gargoyles usually makes the top five list but this year it was edged out by just one sale. Another newer piece, Shadows of Venice, would have taken the #7 spot.

Looking at the data for foreign sales of scores and parts is a different story:

1. Maharaja & Shadows of Venice (tie)
3. Agincourt & Sneaking Suspicion (tie)
5. Mambo Incognito & Star of Valor (tie)

There's a different system for music education abroad, which often doesn't involve classroom music ensembles, so foreign sales are far lower than in the U.S. But still, this year's numbers show an increased interest in some of the newer selections. If I was shocked to see that Maharaja is popular among American orchestras, I'm floored to learn that it's popular in other parts of the world. Major-key novelty pieces tend to dominate this list, but it's wonderful to see music like Agincourt and Shadows of Venice catching on.

Here's one more list - domestic sales of scores:

1. Gauntlet
2. Gargoyles
3. Avatar
4. Agincourt
5. Las Mariposas Exoticas

This list is important because orchestras need to buy extra scores to give the judges when they go to state Solo & Ensemble contests and high sales mean a piece is popular at contests. It takes several years for a piece to build enough credibility to be included on contest lists, so big sellers here are usually older pieces, but it's good to see Agincourt surging ahead.

There are a lot more ways to break down the data - digital scores and parts, print licensing, MP3 downloads – but that's enough for now. If you bought one of my pieces in 2012 (in any format) I want to thank you for a great year!

Doug Spata's Olympic Dream

The Olympics begin this week and it's always an exciting time for the world. I love watching the opening and closing ceremonies and the Parade of Nations, though I don't have a specific sport that I follow. The first Olympics I was aware of was the 1984 games in Los Angeles and I remember that for a long time all anyone could talk about was the U.S. gymnastics team.

TV coverage does a good job of highlighting the dramatic stories that drive the competitors and led the athletes to the games. They all have that "Olympic dream," to achieve at the highest level in front of the whole world.

Even though I'm not an athlete, I have an Olympic dream of my own: it would be an epic thrill to hear one of my compositions used in during Olympic competition. I'm not talking about the opening and closing ceremonies – that's way too much to ask. But it would be amazing to hear one of my pieces accompany a gymnastics floor exercise, a synchronized swimming routine, or, at the Winter Olympics, figure skating or ice dancing.

As a kid, I especially enjoyed hearing the music used in the gymnastic competitions because it's so full of color, energy, and emotion. I think some of my pieces would be suitable. Need something with a dark energy? Try Avatar, Elementals, or Storm Trail. Something more rhythmic and angular? There's Agincourt. Need a bright explosion of sound? Quicksilver or Star of Valor. For something more lyrical, have a listen to A Hero's Welcome. And if you need something fun and sassy, I recommend Violet's Tango, Samba Del Sol, Lemon Twist, or Mambo Incognito. Of course, Gauntlet is good for any occasion.

Professional recordings of all these and more are available at alfred-music.com.

So if you're an Olympic-level gymnast, synchronized swimmer, figure skater, or ice dancer... you're probably training really hard and don't have time for music classes, so you've never heard of me. But if you're someone who knows an Olympic-level athlete, maybe suggest one of my pieces and help make my dream come true!

 

Sales Statement 2011 (Part 2)

As I mentioned in Part 1, my foreign sales make up just a tiny percentage of my annual total. But it's still interesting to see what sells. Here are my top five foreign sales of scores with parts in 2011:

1. Sneaking Suspicion
2. Gargoyles & Star of Valor (tie)
3. Quicksilver
4. Avatar, Gauntlet, Hot Potato, Porcupine Pantomime (all tied)
5. Lemon Twist and Storm Trail (tie)

The new ones are popular and some of the old favorites made the list, but a lot of these entries are surprises. Sneaking Suspicion seems to be a breakaway hit overseas.

Alfred Publishing also sells scores alone, without the parts. You'd need extra scores to give the judges at contests, so the best-sellers on this list are the ones that are popular at contest season:

1. Gautlet
2. Gargoyles
3. Avatar
4. Las Mariposas Exoticas
5. Crusader

No surprises here. Except maybe for Mariposas - I suppose that explains its resurgence in the score-and-parts list.

Again, if you bought anything of mine in the past year, thanks very much!

Sales Statement 2011 (Part 1)

I got my annual sales statement from Alfred Publishing recently! When I first started getting these, they were listings of how many copies each piece of published music was sold that year and, while that's the same basic principle for current statements, there are major changes from those early days. Now, each piece of music is available in multiple forms: Score and parts, score alone, parts alone, digital parts downloaded through SmartMusic, digital score downloaded through SmartMusic, print licensing, mechanical licensing, and photocopy licensing.  Then all of those are divided into domestic sales (inside the U.S.) and foreign sales (everywhere else), meaning that each of my published works has a potential for 16 revenue streams.

To be honest, though, each of those revenue streams accounts for very little on its own. My foreign sales are a fraction of a fraction of my domestic sales and only one honest director paid Alfred after making photocopies like he's supposed to do. But those few dollars here and there accumulate and, added to sales of scores and parts (which make up the bulk of the sales), they added up to a significant increase in overall sales from last year.  So if you bought something of mine this year, thank you!

Now comes the fun part: discovering which were my best sellers of the year.  Here are my top five best selling folios of scores and parts (domestic sales):

1. Avatar
2. Gauntlet & Sneaking Suspicion (tie)
3. Gargoyles
4. Las Mariposas Exoticas
5. Agincourt

Avatar was last year's number-one seller as well and I credited that to people mistaking my piece for the soundtrack to James Cameron's 2009 movie. I suppose this either means that people haven't caught on yet or they really like my piece.  Gauntlet and Gargoyles always seem to make the top five and Sneaking Suspicion did well, mostly because it's brand new.  Star of Valor and Storm Trail were also new and had respectable numbers, but didn't crack the top five. Agincourt stays strong, but this year's surprise is the resurgence of Mariposas. It's an older piece that usually stays in the middle of the pack, but has rallied for some reason this year.

Overall, it was a good year! I'll have more information and top five lists in a later post.

Royalty Statement 2010 - Part 1

I got my annual royalty statement from Alfred Publishing recently, which outlines how many of each of my pieces they've sold in the past year, and first, let me just say

THANK YOU JAMES CAMERON!

You see, James Cameron decided to name what would become the highest-grossing movie of all time after a piece of music I wrote five years ago (kidding - the fact that we used the same titles was a complete coincidence).  Anyway, it seems a lot of people mistook my music for James Horner's film score. Or they really enjoyed my music on its own considerable merits.

Here are my top five sellers this year (4/1/09 - 3/31/10):

1. Avatar
2. Gauntlet
3. Gargoyles
4. Agincourt
5. Quicksilver

So Avatar comes out of nowhere to become this year's number-one seller.  Gauntlet and Gargoyles are perennial favorites and always seem to make the top five and I'm pleased to see that Agincourt has retained its popularity.  Quicksilver was a new one last year and music often sells well in its first year.  Plus, Quicksilver was performed at the Midwest Conference last December, giving it a huge boost.

Last year's other new pieces were Porcupine Pantomime, which would have come in sixth place, and A Hero's Welcome, which has a place further down in the rankings.

Now, this is just domestic sales of scores and parts. Scores are sold separately, for when orchestras go to contest and the judges need to follow along.  Here are the sales of just the scores:

1. Avatar
2. Gargoyles
3. Gauntlet
4. Crusader
5. Westward Motion

Interesting - perhaps Avatar is becoming a contest staple like Gargoyles and Gauntlet.  Or maybe people just want to see the score to Avatar, thinking that it's the film score.

There are still foreign sales and mechanical fees to report on as well as a certain long-standing bet to settle, but that's for a later post.

More Like Gauntlet

I recently decided to do something about the rhythm that has been nagging me from the back of my mind and incorporate it into a new piece.  The result is a fast, advanced-level piece in D Minor (occasionally going into F Major and flirting with Phrygian mode) with frequent meter changes.  I originally thought Agincourt, with its 7/8 time signature would be a good rhythmic challenge for advanced students, but now I see that middle school kids are playing it with no problem.  This new one (still untitled, of course) should be suitably difficult.

But while writing this new one, I got to thinking about something.

People always ask me "why don't you write something like Gauntlet again?" To which I have two responses.  First: I thought I have.  I'm not sure exactly how I bottled lightning with Gauntlet - it seems to be a product of the very specific state of mind I was in for two weeks in 1998 and, despite my best efforts, it remains a unique anomaly.  I think that Agincourt, Elementals, Avatar (no relation to the new movie), Gargoyles, Crusader, and Storm Trail all have that same "dark and fast" quality.  I also have dozens of unpublished pieces in the same milieu, but I still get asked why I don't write more pieces like Gauntlet.  I'm not sure what quality it is that people respond to and want me to reproduce, but it seems beyond my grasp.

My second response is: why would I want to write the same thing twice?  Even if I could write a piece like Gauntlet again, would you really want to play a piece that's exactly like Gauntlet but not Gauntlet?  Would teachers buy a piece that's really really similar to a piece that they already have in their library?  I still like Gauntlet, but all these years later I see a certain naivete in its construction and I'd like to think that I've grown as a composer since then.  While I sometimes try to emulate the dark style and fast tempo that made Gauntlet popular, I'd rather write a piece that is unique and interesting on its own merits than a complete re-tread of something I've already done.

Let me put it this way: What if the Beatles kept writing songs like "Love Me Do"  over and over for their whole career?  It was a huge success for them early on, but what if, instead of exploring new sounds and growing artistically, they kept focusing on the same jangly rockabilly sound they started with?  Another example: Hootie and the Blowfish, a band that stuck with its middle-of-the-road frat rock long after the public's taste for middle-of-the-road frat rock had faded.

My hero, Igor Stravinsky had this problem (on a much larger scale).   He spent a long lifetime writing an amazing string of masterpieces, but all anyone wanted to hear were the three ballets he wrote in his early 30's.  He never revisited the early style that made him famous and instead, focused on constantly exploring new sounds.  Still, he made a career out of it, so it's not the worst problem to have.  Another extreme example is Carl Orff, who lived to be over 100 and wrote tons of beautiful music, but all he's known for is the first five minutes of one piece that he wrote back in the 1940's.

So this new piece I just finished is like Gauntlet in that it has a fast tempo, a minor key and a legato section in the middle, but it also has unique challenges.  If it gets compared to Gauntlet that would be great, but I hope that it stands apart and can be appreciated on its own merits.