Here is the stuff I’ve found online about playing for dance classes. I initially got inspired to learn how to accompany dance last year watching a composition class at Interlochen. Something about how human it was, the inclusion of open ended musicality, improvisation, the “reading of the room” all spoke to me.
Short aside in here
I have a phobic history re: moving my body (prom, parties etc) and I think this “other side of my brain” is appealing as an “inferior function” or represents the fearful sublime or something if I choose to explore it without the distortion.
So as a percussionist I’m always thinking “oh I could be good at this!”
Recently I super got into this guy, and realized body percussion might be a nice way for me to bridge into dance (functional, music first stuff). His group education videos are inspiring. I digress.
On to my finds:
Great website with lots of examples and talk about needs/problems finding excerpts. With FULL scores! Amazing.
This book– lots of background on the vibe, needs of teachers, the relationships. Similar to what I would write “ethnographically” about music accompaniment.
I just realized why drum corps kinda sucks now, and it’s something I haven’t been able to put my finger on until revisiting shows from ~2010-2013.
SCV 2013 has forms. The entire ensemble is committed to presenting a cogent set of images and there is “thematic development” of the imagery. Even when clusters form, they are dyads and triads of section members that eventually coalesce into an ensemble picture.
The forms back then were large scale, full ensemble presentations with a lot of marching and characteristic shapes like gates, diamonds to lines, rotating geometry, or interesting curvilinear abstractions, all in constant flux and reappropriation.
Nowadays the story is different, and I think it is falling out of genre and rigor for the activity.
We have different little cluster groups and scatter drill and randomness everywhere. It’s almost as fractured as our attention spans are, and to me displays a dilettantism or lack of respect for what the “craft” of idiomatic drum corps drill writing used to be. We now have theatrics and dance instead of marching, and I don’t think it reads well outdoors on a football field.
At that scale of a stage, you sort of need to limit what you do to get things across to the audience. Dilute it with bunches of activity, and you dilute the effect. Maybe you even pull the wool over everyone’s eyes because now you don’t have to clean forms or be committed to your product. You don’t have to risk anything because viewers can look everywhere and nowhere while apparently important activity is happening all over.
I hate to say that I see this as a symptom of falling standards for artistic and aesthetic awareness, and indicative of an overall decline in craft in the marching arts that is founded on a deep knowledge of the idiom.
We don’t need gestures, we need statements.
I don’t write or work in the marching arts, but as a curious bystander I couldn’t help but notice this transformation at the design level.
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Caveats
These are thoughts I have tonight.. could change as I watch more shows. Is all this scatter and dance stuff is what gets called WGI-ification of drum corps? Maybe I just like Peter Weber a lot? I don’t know. I watched Bluecoats 2025 just now, and they have forms, which is great, but it also makes me being a curmudgeon about the good old days a lot harder.
I found Beatrice and Virgil at Grounds for Thought in Bowling Green Ohio, over to the left of my tiny table perch while waiting to get my car inspected. This coffee shop has a wraparound floor plan and the secret back area is usually dead silent with a nice musty bookstore odor to accompany your glass-mug caffeine of choice. The floors are well worn, as are the electrical outlets, and the panoply of books and ephemera renders as intriguing than overstimulating somehow.
I look left and scan, noting known titles or popularities, or thinking up which “M’s” I know in my reading backlog and I spot Yann Martel’s books, and a cute hardback called Beatrice and Virgil with an appealing jacket and thick clean pages. I start reading.
It feels serendipitous: a returning to my essays on Life of Pi while young in college, and a reminder of happy naïve reading that for all of my twenties I abjured for intense philosophical study (which, philosophy for a twenty-something is a fine way to avoid one’s actual life problems… more on that elsewhere). Something like joy welled up in me.
Another serendipity looms, or more a synchronicity in Jungian fashion, where the topic of Henry’s book is the holocaust. Meanwhile, I’ve been watching The Man in the High Castle, a historical fiction just of the sort Henry is trying to get us to either make, or expand beyond in terms of fiction (I will find out). Sometimes when these “topics” congeal in my life it feels more than accidental.
Serendipity landed harder when the back cover mentioned “who we are and what we are capable of doing in order to survive”– which I read in the wake of finding out I needed $2300 in repairs on my car in the midst of a move and the weeks-long delay of my summer job starting with fall school fees looming. Still, I think these are pedestrian problems in light of people I know and people who I imagine exist. I can make it. Struggle makes me feel alive, said Alysa Liu.
I like to take these serendipities and run with them, because generally my question of “what to do next” has to be answered by a throughline where I grow my network of experience into a “pocket” of inquiry: Oh this part over here I connected to these other texts, which have such and such philosophical import overall etc. As Henry says: “stories…are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole.”
To pursue a throughline in our thinking is sort of banal, but it’s also existential: how do we choose what to do? Why pursue THAT? We either chase after things with rational justifications, or let the waters of life guide us. We vary in our authenticity when approaching the question.
This throughline is important compared to what algorithms give us. We have ANY sort of content thrown at us. There’s a haphazardness to it, and what Kierkegaard or Dreyfus would call a “leveling” of importance. Everything is treated as equally valuable.**
“What Kierkegaard envisaged as a consequence of the Press’s indiscriminate coverage and dissemination is now fully realized on the World Wide Web. All meaningful differences are, indeed, leveled. Relevance and significance have disappeared. And this is an important part of the attraction of the web. Nothing is too trivial to be included.”1
In contrast, I say to the serendipitous, only certain things are valuable, and they are related to what we already are in some fashion. That might sound like a contradiction: serendipity and what you already are. But for something to feel like serendipity it has to feel coherent. It “breaks in” somehow because it is relevant, and what is relevant is funded by a significant backlog of experience. It also contains its own numinous quality of being beyond randomness.
Anyways, the ensuing exposition reads much like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: A pseudonymous author self-narrates their philosophical aims and misunderstandings from the institutional guardians. It’s a sort of procedural, a story outside of the story before the story proper begins. But it’s also in the space of something working to be philosophical while being eminently readable, and itself indicates how fiction and the “low brow” can be deeply important:
“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it’s true.”
I am here in my present struggle, the book is tending to significance based on my personal history, and it’s been years since I let reading just be about simple truth in light of what I’m experiencing. Maybe it’s time to love what I read again.
**
**I think there’s a nice discussion to have there: we encounter randomness in life, don’t we? And the algorithm feeds us curated content, so it’s not “random.” But clearly unimportant, or trolling, or absurd or etc. content is rampant and it inverses what is “valuable” to humans in gaming the algorithm.
I think few would say they encounter numinous serendipity online, as I will discuss shortly.
1
Wrathall, Mark A. (ed.), ‘Nihilism on the Information Highway: Anonymity versus Commitment in the Present Age (2004)’, in Mark A. Wrathall (ed.), Nihilism and the Technological Age, in Mark A. Wrathall (ed.), Background Practices: Essays on the Understanding of Being (Oxford, 2017; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 July 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796220.003.0012, accessed 29 June 2026.
Gave a brief presentation at BGSU in Spring ’26 on Piano Phase! My main thrust was that phase music will make the perceptual states discussed in gestalt therapy very clear: figure/ground formation, how the organism searches for interest to meet its needs etc.
Any open jam has a secret “code” for what is going on that anyone trying to play will have to navigate. Here is one report of an evening out observing the goings on at a jazz jam.
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I visited Arlyn’s on April 22nd to check out an open jam. I didn’t realize there were faculty playing beforehand at seven, so hearing the tail end of that was a treat. Afterward a student jam started up and I will give a fairly candid “ethnography” of what I noticed through the night.
the tier system
I find it interesting to think about the social dynamics that come up at these gatherings. The dynamics are pertinent because any musician who aspires to play has to navigate the social scenario. At this venue there are a set of regulars who know how things go and see who is around to play. They field the crowd a little bit and find out what tunes they play, and there is a dynamic of sorting them into who will play when. The social nexus outside of the venue plays a role here, because friends message each other about their plans and this has an impact on the weekly happenings.
The regulars play first, and they know which other players are going to show up later, what tunes they like to play on. These logistics sort of decide the action and what tunes get called, which becomes a weekly culture for the jam session. After the regulars play a few, some younger players might swap in, which indicates a sort of tier system to the arrangement. Naturally, you can see some body language come into play when a more experienced player has to accommodate a newer player. You can see what people the musicians like to play with, and when they are putting up with certain people.
handling errors
Since the jam is somewhat open ended, certain things will fall apart and the musicians will find their way back to a familiar path. A drum solo might turn into an extended cadenza, and eventually a horn player will indicate the start of a new head. Or a newer soloist loses the form and you will see them look to the other musicians to try and understand when their solo should end. These are things I have experienced personally (in both the lost and confident roles) and it’s a regular part of a jam session.
being outside the fold
Sometimes I do try my hand at joining the fray despite being an outsider.
A drummer was talking to another percussionist about going up and when they didn’t want to I figured I’d go up and play a tune on drums. I’m more comfortable playing some general swing stuff and watching the ensemble than I am playing piano. It was some sort of ballad and one of my aural skills students played bass. It was fun to see a normally reserved student more in their element and interacting with the instrument in an open way.
While I wouldn’t succeed on an up-tempo tune, I can still feel comfortable drumming on an easy swing tune and didn’t feel very self-conscious about playing, in contrast to my general experience with jazz. The bulk of my experience of jazz is feeling like an outsider and like I don’t know how to do it, whether on drums or piano. That is a result of a background where I haven’t played in many combos and don’t have the specialized knowledge of standards and piano voicings or up-tempo drum chops to draw on.
As a jazz-adjacent person, there are a few tunes I CAN play on piano, but I sort of have to choose a time to go up to do that. If the group will be particularly up tempo, it’s probably better if I wait. Some tunes I have studied are Autumn Leaves, 500 Miles High, and There Will Never Be Another You. Certain things like Mack the Knife I can play if I pull it up on iReal. All in one key, I can just comp for people.
In the past I struggled with following form if players were particularly over the barline. Not having early experiences with jazz has led to me being less fluent at hearing the music in four bar chunks or chord scale sections. This means that I might lose the form and be the person who isn’t sure when to end a solo if I’m just hanging on with my ear.
I also find that some jazz musicians tend to feel time in a very frontside way and I find that hard to follow. For example, on uptempo tunes it can be hard to hear whether the hi hat is chomping upbeats or downbeats and I start to feel lost. These idiosyncrasies of jazz performance can undermine people who are used to feeling time in a different way.
freedom to fail in public
Despite all these traps and shibboleths set for people who want to “hang,” there is still an additional “live and let live” component to the social scenario that allows for mistakes to happen. Maybe a player gets up and doesn’t remember the changes and solos for a bit, people let it ride and things move on.
There’s a certain anonymity-in-public aspect to a jam session. It’s not a performance, and people are checking in and out while they have conversations and plug back in when applause happens for solos– the choreography of audience behavior creates a rhythm that everyone is a part of. Inside of this, there’s a little bit of freedom to be a beginner and make mistakes, but as I’ve outlined, there are several social dynamics at play that create an exclusion to people who don’t have the basic skills to read the room, mostly having to do with who gets to play when, and whether you manage to get up there for a tune you actually know.
people evaluating what they hear: how people talk at these events
Sometimes a solo will be a little less interesting than another one. I noticed a player whose figuration was quite repetitive and returned to a similar note at the end of every phrase. I am still happy to support and recognize anyone who gets up to play. That is part of community. Some people talked like “oh yeah sometimes I have to remind them to relax” but also gave compliments like “sometimes they really shred but it’s hit or miss.” There are players on stage reacting to their own playing, but also the audience has conversations about players, and that is a part of this mixed-public social setting.
I heard a separate conversation in the bathroom(?) where an older guy talked to a student and said “yeah the students are sounding good right now.” This reminds me that there are different kinds of listeners in the audience. There are regular community people, jazz students, older jazz players, professors, and community people who know a few things about music. All of these people are reacting in their own way to this relaxed but attentive atmosphere of a jam session.
closing time
Later on a couple old heads got up and played and Lucas was on piano. Although they called a tune I knew, I decided to let them hang and enjoyed listening to a more experienced piano player play voicings I liked the sound of. In general I feel my sense of being anxious in these situations is shrinking, but I am still aware of everything that goes on to create the dynamic culture of live jazz music. All sorts of people come together at a social event like this, and I feel there is a lot to see, hear, and try to participate in at varying levels of musicianship. I hope with more time I will navigate the shibboleth with ease.
My best friend and I are preparing to present at a conference and I realized it’s actually insane what we’re going to try and accomplish, and it could be a total trap that makes us look like fools. We’re presenting on quality wind band music. Which means if we don’t pick good pieces, we’ll look dumb. But also, I’m going up there and claiming to understand the philosophical ground that makes up good music, which is an atom bomb of a prerequisite.
It means I have to define the field of aesthetics AND have the taste to know a criteria-meeter when I hear it. And so I realized I accidentally waltzed into one of the biggest philosophical trenches I could’ve picked, all while not having much experience with aesthetics per se.
My definition of good music:
After a period of reflection I have decided how I’m going to characterize this perennial issue of what makes good music good. It’s not anything high-brow, but I think it’s enough to teach an important principle to both laypeople and composers of music.
My principle for goodness is this: “the music rewards multiple listens and continues to reveal itself.”
Are you still here? Love to learn and discuss? Join my list and let’s bring back serious thinking:
Nice versus good:
The opposite of this is “candy music” or music that goes down in one pass, like a Disney song: something so overtly accessible that you are challenged in absolutely no way. That is called nice music, but it is not good music because your expectations are rarely challenged.
Our programs can have NICE music. But I’m going to reserve the term GOOD music for something that aspires to guiding us toward the strange possibilities of cognition in response to sound, if not toward sublimity.
And I’m thinking of this in a balanced way. Things that “push the limit” can aspire to goodness, but by lacking balance they fail to activate the mind/heart in a humane way. I’m thinking of music that mostly makes us respond in a thinking manner with very little sensory or feeling engagement. Thinking is not wholly cognition and the heart is not only feeling etc. ***
***Stuff about Jung in here
(Jung’s functions are a fabulous thing to apply to musical response. For example, we can ascertain an overall picture of a piece using nonlinear intuition. Feeling and thought are not diametrically opposed, and are actually two rational functions etc. Hugely important for describing aesthetic response).
I realize I’m avoiding the question of what is “bad” music here, because I’m not going on stage and saying “this composer wrote bad music.” because I’ve just started composing professionally, and I don’t have a lot of good music, or even nice music!
Further, I think the question of nice to good is more interesting than what is bad, because it helps us distinguish between pieces that are fine, and pieces that elevate us aesthetically. In this terrain we learn something about our cognition in response to stimuli.
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The Aesthetic Response: Cognitive Formations
Let me talk about how music can ignite the play of cognitive formations, because this is an important part of a good piece.
Use the art comparison: When you look at a Kandinsky, it does stuff to you. Formations appear in your mind, associations appear, things bounce off of one another. It might even introduce a sensation ranging from a blissful glow to a curious delight.
I’m not the only one concerned with these “formations” I speak of. Langer wrote about music being an unconsummated symbol of human activity and thought in her book Philosophy In a New Key:
Some music can aspire to these heights of aesthetically representing the nature or quality of thought/activity itself.
But Langer went further and said music is an unconsummated symbol, meaning it is only fully activated once we relate the parts of the music to other parts of it. After apprehending it we can start to understand it. And thus we have an inroad to my thesis that good music must reward multiple listens, because to comprehend music at all, or at the level of a symbol of any significance will require multiple listens at the outset.
I’m going to introduce a big caveat or qualifier here.***
***The big caveat or qualifier***
***What do we make of a piece that we literally only hear once? What about jazz? Isn’t jazz good music when we hear it once at a club?
So clearly other features of musical interest can let us interrogate the good music question, but for today my adumbration is just on the fact of some music being interesting over time.
Or we could say.. WOULD this music I heard just once reward multiple listens? And that could bypass the issue I’ve raised.
If you wanted you could bring up a whole scheme about my discussion privileging European music and the centering of whiteness or something. Go for it!***
Here is an intro to Langer’s forms:
The discursive form of a piece is how it shows up to us when we first hear it. We relate nearby materials to nearby materials and it discloses something cogent to us.
The presentation form of a piece is how it shows up to us when we regard it as a whole. In this form we can pick at it and think about it.
So I want to use this terminology as a means for cataloguing “good” music in terms of listening over time.
Aesthetic responses as they relate to forms of temporality:
Can a piece withstand further listens after we’ve conceived of the presentational form? If something goes down immediately in the discursive form, there’s a good chance it won’t last in the presentational form. A good piece is dynamically updated, not lessened, once we determine the presentational form.
(here I am assuming ascertaining the presentational form is a sort of cognitive act, not entirely a listening one).
I find it unacceptable to think that ONLY our very first listen of a piece is the discursive listening moment. That seems too flippant and marginalizes listening to live music. I think repeated listenings are still discursive, because we haven’t built the mental structure to hold the whole piece in mind yet.
So I don’t think the forms are two kinds of listening. They are relations of cognition…There is plenty more thinking I can do here.
Somewhere in this economy of hearing a piece, being challenged by it, and aggregating a presentational form about it that informs our discursive listening, is what I’m offering as a framework for what a good piece is doing when we both enjoy it and can think about it for extended periods of time. It rewards long-term listening, and repeatedly reveals more of itself to us through our forms of cognition.
What is a masterwork?
Going beyond this, we have those works we find we can do extended thinking about and be impressed by intricacies contained within and find delight in those. I presume these are the kinds of works we canonize and pass down through history. Perhaps this is the territory of the masterwork, because further time and delineation allow the piece to CONTINUE to be revealed to us beyond the time we listen, conceive of our listening, and listen again. Its formulations make it an edifice unto itself and a body of theory will accrue around it.
In sum:
There we go: my formal definition of music that is nice, good, or a masterwork. Note that the term good is not merely “good.” I am conceiving of good as something that produces aesthetic delight, interest, sublimity, and enriches our conception of what cognitive formations are and what being minded means.
And my best clue for a “good” work that makes being human what it is? How many times you can listen to it and still find interest.
Thanks for reading.
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