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name: Canary L. Burton
occupation: freelance classical composer, owner Seabird Studio, new
music radio DJ on WOMR FM, Provincetown, Ma, #SCIComposers chat
channel on ChatNet, reviewer and writer for Alternative Music
Press
http://www.tiac.net/users/elements/amp/
what that means: Business to add music to private and commercial
websites, promote my own work, possible future CD label.
I want to echo many who have said, "If you don't HAVE to write/play music, do something else". Music is one of the hardest professions to get paid for doing, in fact, this is true of ANY art form. This fact may be one of the reasons I press on...no way can I conquer this complex, rewarding and frustrating medium of expression in one lifetime.
Being an artist from birth, I revel in creating something out of nothing. As a child I was coercing my playmates into acting in my plays with the costumes I created out of curtains, old clothes and scraps of cloth and paint. Reading was my favorite solitary activity probably as a way to leave the cold, depressed family I had been adopted into at 6 days old. Consequently, I learned the possibilities of being alive far beyond my family's ability to perceive. This made me an outcast, however, another frustrating and liberating force. My parents had great dreams for me and I not once, fulfilled their expectations! Instead, I followed my internal drummer, you know, the one who beats to a different rhythm...or no rhythm at all.
Having spent my teens and 20's pursuing art forms like massive embroidered tapestries, singing in contests, huge gardens, two children, a house interior that could be entered in House and Garden(all with no money), a sewing business, and little theater, I left the married state, left the state and went to a commune deep in the Washington State, Spokane river canyons. Yes, I was a hippy as was half my generation. I left behind my super woman status that was exhausting me, then left behind my "inferior" status as a woman. Yes, I was and am a feminist. And the older I get, the easier it is to go deeper and deeper into being my own woman, beholden to no one except myself.
To paraphrase Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own", "men are given the opportunity to become artists if they will accept being ignored by the society and left to fend for themselves....but they are not actively stopped on all sides like women.....who are not only trained from birth to commit to other people and not themselves, but actively stopped by verbal, emotional and physical means by everyone around them". Actually I said that, not Virginia, but this is what she wrote about. I experienced fully the anger, derision and destruction of my efforts by both men and women around me until living in that commune(anarchistic, still active) where I struck out on my own, with no partner to commit to myself.
This was harder than I thought as I had to overcome not only the outside barriers, but the one's that I unknowingly had absorbed in my 30 years. With a great deal of fear and bravado I decided one evening, after leaving my third marriage, out in my woodpile chopping wood for my cookstove, that I could do anything I wanted now...and what did I want? I said out loud to the chipmunks and squirrels, "I can draw, write and play the piano" Piano being the one I knew absolutely nothing about, of course, I chose that. Within three months I had moved to Moscow, Idaho about 100 miles to the south, asked for and been given a terrible Farfisa rock and roll organ, taught myself the basics of reading and playing using John Thompson's book #1 and entered the University of Idaho in the music department. There I heard I was too old and was called "The Hippy" (consider.....I was one of about 50 hippies in the department!) Unknowingly I was a composer even before school because, in order to teach myself, I wrote little tunes that I would improvise on for hours, to the consternation of my house mates who bought me earphones. In my first year, I took the basic piano class, got a student teacher and worked my *** off trying to get good enough not to waste a "real" teachers time and mine. Later I worked with two great teachers and studied harp and flute. I cooked for a fraternity and helped create one of the first whole town recycling systems in the nation in order to support myself and children(mostly grown now).
In school, I took nothing but music courses, not feeling any need for a degree as I had no desire to teach. I figured my "degree" would be paying jobs playing in clubs and restaurants. My first love was Jazz, but, of course in that time, there was no real study in that genre. In fact, it was through my bitching that the music school library finally bought the American Jazz series of recordings from the Library of Congress (I think). After becoming the first woman (along with my organist friend, Bonnie) in the history of the school to take a composition course and entering every contest I found, (did I win? NO!) I started noticing my work was as good as any other that I heard around me. I loved theory every morning at 9 and took the information home and along with what I learned from friends, wrote music. I wrote EVERYTHING down deciding that I would take myself seriously even if no others did. I simply acted "as if" in anticipation of a time when I would feel "real". (Remember, I was terribly fearful inside and doubted myself at every turn). After taking acoustics, physics and every music course I could, non stop for three years, I Aced a jury with a Scriaben and Bartok piece. (no one noticed I improvised some of the Bartok when I blanked out) At that point I left school and formed three bands, one rock and roll and two jazz. I played in local restaurants learning I had a talent for melody when I'd come to work and the waitresses were humming my tunes.
After a lot of years, much writing and dealing with a ton of doubt, I entered therapy to deal with the huge amount of abuse I had suffered in my life. After 10 years of this on and off, I lost my fear and learned how to be on the inside as I was on the outside, only more effectively. You see, this is a totally non-traditional approach to LIFE, much less music. At some point, after moving to Cape Cod by way of the music scene in Washington, D.C., I found myself writing more and more classical music...or at least something that could not be recognized as anything else. I decided that as a performer, I was a good composer and stopped putting my audience into trance causing them NOT to drink more beer and making my bosses unhappy.
Throwing myself into composing led me by the nose until I realized I had a concert list that was respectable by any standard and enough people had encouraged me and PLAYED my music, enough reporters had written articles for the papers, and I got my first commission...to finally believe I was "real". I kept a scrapbook of my adventures in music, channeled my writing and drawing skills into that effort and talked enough people into giving me money for equipment, that I wrote my first resume. This included my piano repair skills, my show producing skills (I never told you I produced huge two and three day shows for small towns in Idaho as well as small venue stuff presenting anything that would work on a stage), my organizing skills (I swear this is what makes me a composer), and my people skills.
So I wrote. I wrote alternative pop songs, classical music of 18th, 19th and 20th century styles, jazz and what I called fake music for a long time until I found out it is called new music and/or ambient/minimal. You know, just playing off the top of my head with no plan in mind. I coerced other people to play with me in this manner (much like I had as a child), calling it Sound Paintings until I learned this was called performance art or sound art. I always wore costumes. Forever. They created moods in me. I could be anything that I dressed like (talk about techniques to overcome fear!) I spoke to my audiences and encouraged them to join in with me even if they had never played an instrument in their life. (was this called "teaching"?)
One year I decided I needed to be less isolated musically and tried to enter Berklee School of Music and/or New England Conservatory. I was baffled when NEC told me I didn't know enough about music to enter there, but I was a wonderful composer!!! I understand this now, (I didn't have enough of certain skills to keep up in some classes) but was perplexed, being a westerner used to going where I wanted and for not much money. Heck, I asked for a scholarship or don't call me to the interview. I didn't know no one was paying attention. After a grueling 5 hour interview I was so angry I played some violent sound art, left the tape in the interviewer's box and said "Phuck You! I wouldn't go to your school if you paid ME!" and left. At Berklee they got a hold of some of my sound art by accident and had a hullabaloo, calling a teacher of theirs on the carpet for writing a letter of recommendation. He told me that at a Christmas party later there was a group talking about me saying, "she is either a genius or an idiot". Now, parts of both are probably in order. This happened to me because I thought people in these schools were as widely listened and read as myself. Shoot, I'd still done nothing that wasn't training music...all done long before I'd come along. Sure, I had huge gaps in my training, that's why I wanted to go to school!!!! So I got private teachers, cheaper and more effective in the long run.
Now, after getting a computer, teaching myself how to use Finale(notation program) and Vision (sequencer program) I write articles and reviews on new music for Alternative Music Press at http://www.tiac.net/users/elements/amp/ online, I have a chat channel for the Society of Composers, #SCIComposers on ChatNet, I write music both for live musicians and for computer, I pursue commissions, am working on my first CD, participate in music lists online learning a heck of a lot, have a new classical radio show on WOMR FM in Provincetown, Ma, create music clips for MMIComputing (a local company) company videos, background music for videos such as The Center for Coastal Studies, and music for private/commercial webpages (including my own at http://www.capecod.net/~cburt/ ). How do I support myself and my music? By any job that uses my body rather than my creative talent. Right now I clean houses or shop for rich people (compared to me) living on Cape Cod. I live alone with my brown kitty in my tiny cottage with a water view and little garden on Drummers Cove, off Wellfleet Bay, off Cape Cod Bay and am perfectly happy at 54 and growing.
This is a long statement, but I really want to encourage young women...and men for that matter, to go for it! There are many ways to get what you want and the going is at least as much fun as the getting anywhere! I want you to know your own path is worthwhile and feeds into what your music or other art sounds/looks/feels like. Being in the mainstream is fine...has it's drawbacks. Mainly having to follow the leader. Being totally independent has it's drawbacks. Mainly isolation and having to do way more to get accepted anywhere later. You may learn more technique and have more opportunity for plugging into a system by going the college route, but you will develop a perfectly unique style by going it alone. I would say a mixture of the two would create something really fine. Go for it!
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Copyright September 1996,
updated February 2004.
Kristine H. Burns,
Florida International University
Questions? Contact me.