EHM: What do you think is the most important thing when selecting music for choreography, especially in dances that will appeal to young audiences?
MMM: I feel the most important thing is that you should try and find music that is unique in some way. People are drawn to sounds that are different. Your job, as the choreographer, is to pick music that doesn't turn off your audience, but makes them enter a new world that they can appreciate. If you pick music that is too well known and popular your audience often will go to a place in their own minds where they have memories of what they were doing when they [first] heard that music. If audience members are in their own special memories, they will not be open to the world that you are creating in your dance.
EHM: Can you talk a bit about your collaborations with composers? For instance, what was it like to work with Dartanyan Brown, the composer for your dance, Symbiosis?
MMM: Collaborations with composers can be very rewarding. Dartanyan was a phenomenally inventive musician. The personal computer had just made a splash [1984]. Dartanyan had a Commodore 64, and being a musician who wanted to try new things, he wanted to use something he called computer-generated sound. After our talk together about the dance Symbiosis that I was creating, I told him that sounded [like a] great [idea]. He gave me samples of the different sounds he could make and I chose ones that I thought would fit the work Symbiosis. It was a lot of fun and at the time, the early 80's, it was very unusual, which fit the nature of the dance.
When you collaborate with a composer you can tell them how long to make a section of music. You can say that the dance you are creating will have so many numbers of sections or that parts of the dance have different qualities. The composer may want to change instruments for different places in your work. They may have ideas about what they think is best after they see your dance. It's great to have this give and take, and in the end you will end up with a brand new piece of choreography and a brand new piece of music, which is a great way to make a new and different statement in art.
EHM: When you create your own scores, what are some of the techniques you use to construct the music?
MMM: I have been making music since the beginning of my dance career. In the very beginning I was fascinated by reel-to-reel tape recorders and even the lowly portable tape cassette recorder. The sound quality was very much limited on cassette but the portability was fantastic. You could collect live sounds of people talking at a party, just how the waves of conversation sounded so amazing when recorded and played back. I captured the sound of rhythmically hitting my hand on a tubular aluminum bridge in a park [for one dance] and I had a dog that would howl. The possibilities were endless and it was great fun.
I'll never forget how tape delay was done. You would take two reel-to-reel tape recorders and have the tape stretched across the room. The farther away the tape recorders were, the longer the delay. I just loved delay and it is still one of my favorite effects. However, now I have a simple pedal that I step on to make delay without all the complications [such as the] disaster of [tangling and] tape breaking.
So in the beginning I also learned how to splice on reel-to-reel tape recorders. You would use a razor blade, slice the tape on an angle, cut out the tape or add a new part and use an adhesive tape to put the two parts together. The joy of a reel-to- reel tape recorder was that you could [physically]"rock" the tape with the sound on. You could hear where there might be a sound that you didn't want, and then you could splice that part out. I once spliced out 250 pops as I was playing with having the sound go from speaker to speaker; a true surround sound. [This is] when you use four speakers and the audience hears the music spiraling in circles around them as sound comes from speaker to speaker to the next and so on. The reason why I had to do all splicing was because the mixer I was using made a pop every time I had the sound come out of the next speaker. So there I was, armed with my trusty razor blade, as I rocked the tape to splice out all the pops. [He laughs.] In the end this score was so well received that the Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, Dan Perrino, said it was the coolest thing he had ever heard. [He laughs again.]
EHM: Can you talk a little about technology that you use now to generate scores?
MMM: I have tried to keep up with technology in sound recording, as it has progressed. I play many different instruments, which has always been a benefit for making scores because I have so many "colors" in my palate of sound that I can choose from. Now with the technology of looping sounds, my musical compositions have come easier for me. Looping is something I just love, and there are so many ways you can make it fit your purposes in choreography and making the score. I have two BOSS loopers which is a real benefit because I can have one looper doing short phrases and another doing long passages. Pairing them gives you amazing possibilities.
[In addition,] with all of the expression pedals on the market for guitarists, you open the door to a myriad of textures and voices that you can use. These pedals are not limited just to guitar. I use them when playing flute or saxophone as well as guitar and bass.
EHM: What are the advantages of creating your own scores as opposed to using what is readily available?
MMM: As much as I love working with other composers there is a great economy of time, effort and cost, especially, if you are someone who plays instruments. There is no "middle man" to work with. You already know the sounds [you want] and how competent a musician you are, so you can craft the score exactly the way you want it to be. Obviously within your own limitations as a musician/composer and choreographer/dancer! I enjoy doing both, and my creative filters are set to let both happen. If I do have trouble on the musical end, I have many people I can reach out to for help and I am not averse to doing that at all.
One more advantage to making your own score is that you have all rights. You control the copyright to whatever you want with your score. The product is yours and yours alone.
EHM: What computer programs do you use to create your scores now?
MMM: I use GarageBand exclusively. I know there are many other programs out there like Pro Tools, PreSonus, and others. I am not a computer whiz and GarageBand is set up in a way that I understand. I do not use any of the canned music or sounds that are on GarageBand. I really use it like an old fashioned tape recorder. [One] that has tremendously more capabilities of recording several tracks than the old tape recorders! The ability to record many tracks of my own, playing on multiple instruments, lets me create scores that are unique for the dance that I am choreographing; and probably for most audience members, different than what they normally hear.
EHM: How do young audiences respond to music that is different than what is frequently used for children's performances?
MMM: In my experience, kids love the new. They get excited and the difference sparks their curiosity. Because I play instruments that many people play, my music is not just strange sounds (however at times it is!) But, it is not that different from what people are used to. Perhaps the way I put it together is different, but in the end, children and other audience members enjoy the fresh quality of seeing a dance they have never seen before and hearing a score that they have never heard before.
EHM: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to venture into the world of creating scores for dance?
MMM: The best thing to do is just start trying. Looping pedals are expensive, so my suggestion would be: go to a pawnshop or look on the Internet for "gently used" equipment. Like most things in life, the only way you can do it is by putting one foot in front of the other. If you play a musical instrument [that] it is an advantage. However if you don't want to buy expensive equipment or if you don't play an instrument, you can [still] make your scores on GarageBand because that program gives you copyright free music and sounds that you can loop or change by using the many effects offered. GarageBand is not the only program that is out there; there are other programs available for the computer.
