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!

Major/Minor Dilemma (Part 2)

About a year ago, after receiving my annual royalty statement, I posted some musings about my top-selling compositions - specifically, I noticed that a lot of the better-selling pieces are in minor keys. This led me to wonder if maybe I should just focus on minor-key music when writing for student orchestras.

Well, it wasn't long before I received an e-mail from someone who had read the post and had a different theory:

Of the 5 compositions you posted, the top 4, besides being in minor keys, have really "cool" titles.
I know this seems arbitrary, and it is, but I think we underestimate the value of the titles of our art.

He has an interesting point. I'm always trying to pin down what it is about certain music that appeals to people and maybe an evocative title can set expectations. Titles have always been tough for me and I frequently put off titling my pieces until days before sending them off to my publisher for consideration. So I wrote back:

I wonder if you'd be willing to help me put your theory to a test? My three newest pieces this year
are "Quicksilver," "A Hero's Welcome," and "Porcupine Pantomime." All three are in major keys.
If you'll make a prediction of which of the three will be the best seller, I'll check it against the results
when I receive next year's sales report.

The challenge was taken up:

I'm going to guess "A Hero's Welcome" will be the highest selling. This guess is somewhat arbitrary,
but my rationale is as follows: kids will like the title "Quicksilver" and adults will like the "Porcupine
Pantomime." A Hero's Welcome has universal appeal between the age groups. That's my best guess.
Hope they all do well for you, though.

That makes sense to me. So the sales numbers are finally in and the rankings for the newest pieces are
(*drumroll*):

1. Quicksilver
2. Porcupine Pantomime
3. A Hero's Welcome

Obviously, there are a lot more factors at play than tonality and title. First: exposure. Quicksilver was
performed at last year's Midwest Music Conference, which features huge audiences of music-buyers. Second: Tempo.  In my experience, fast music is more popular than slow music and A Hero's Welcome is a lyrical moderate-tempo piece.  Third: Degree of difficulty.  Beginner orchestras are always larger than intermediate and advanced groups, so there's usually a higher demand for beginner-level music. Porcupine Pantomime was the only early-level piece of the three. I suppose the moral of the story is that the appeal of a piece of music doesn't rest on anything as simple as tonality and title. 

So I'll put it to you, reader. I invite you to predict which of this years pieces will be the top sellers:

• Star of Valor: A medium-to-advanced concert overture with fast, heroic melodies, a little bit of shifting, and a fast tempo.

• Storm Trail: A fast, minor-key, intermediate-level piece in 12/8 time.

• Sneaking Suspicion: An all-pizzicato, minor-key piece for beginners with a moderate tempo.

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.

Midwest Clinic

The annual Midwest Clinic is only a few weeks away and, sadly, I won't be able to make it to Chicago this year.  Midwest is a huge event - a giant convention for music educators around the country to learn from each other in seminars, find out about the latest products, and hear the best of the best school-level, college, and professional bands, orchestras, and ensembles. 

This year, if you go, be sure to wake up bright and early on Wednesday, December 16 and head to the Skyline Ballroom at 8:30am to hear the J. Frank Dobie High School Chamber Orchestra of Houston, Texas.  They're going to play Quicksilver and I'm sure they'll do a spectacular job.

I found a performance from the Midwest Clinic on YouTube to share - the Hershey Symphony Festival Strings playing Zydeco Two-Step at the 2006 convention.  The intonation is perfect, but the tempo is way too fast.  Still, it's an honor to have my music selected for such a prestigious event.  Just one more thing to be thankful for this holiday weekend!

Got My Proofs

I'm up to the next step in the exciting publication process - my editor sent me proofs of the engraved music. When I submit new music, I mail a recording and a printed Finale file of each piece. When they tell me which pieces they've selected, I e-mail the digital Finale file their way. They then mark it up with changes (more on that later) and send it to the engravers, who make a final, finished version of the score and parts. So in this step of the process, my editors send those engraved versions back to me to double-check and make sure everything is correct and there are no typos before hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent printing out all the music.

It's not a foolproof method, but in my experience it is 99% effective. In my ten years as a part of the process, there's only been one serious mistake: in "Flambeaux," some of the measures got mixed up near the beginning in the 'Cello and Bass parts. I didn't notice until I heard the recording and I went back to look at my original file and the proofs they sent. Everything matched, so it must have gotten mixed up between my approval and the final engraving.

So this week, I received proofs for "A Hero's Welcome" and "Quicksilver." The editor, Bob Phillips, had a few editions, which he penciled into my original score. They never make changes to the content - only to little things. Mostly he recommended more bow markings and fewer double-bars. Also, I prefer to use ties, where Bob recommends using more dotted notes. Other than that, it's pretty straightforward.I only found a few minor changes - two misplaced bow markings and a missing dynamic.

Sometimes pieces check out with no changes at all. A few times, it requires a complete overhaul. As it was explained to me my first time out, the folks who do the engraving don't necessarily know music, so besides obvious stuff like wrong notes, clefs might be mis-aligned, articulations missing o,r sharps and flats in key signatures might appear in the wrong places.

I'll be looking for the proofs for my third piece , Porcupine Pantomime. The next step is to send it to press.