BOOKS
Making Music through Improvisation: 100 Exercises. (Oxford 2027). The central premise of Making Music through Improvisation is that improvisation goes beyond technique, representing a deeper connection between the musician, the instrument, and the context of music creation. The book features 100 open exercises that develop skills applicable across styles. Organized into chapters, it includes both individual and group exercises designed to foster spontaneity and creativity within structured frameworks, making it accessible to improvisers of all instruments at any level. Each chapter presents challenges tailored to a wide range of skills, allowing musicians of all abilities to develop their improvisational practice.
For instructors, Making Music through Improvisation is an invaluable resource. In individual lessons, the exercises can serve as creative projects to complement standard repertoire, encouraging students to explore beyond traditional performance. In group improvisation classes or ensemble settings, the book can help students develop their ability to listen, act, and react within different contexts. A standout feature of Making Music through Improvisation is its downloadable audio files, offering sonic frameworks for students to improvise over, enhancing the exercises' reach.
Additionally, the book includes sample curricula to guide instructors through a 12-week course, appendices with suggested listening to deepen students' understanding of improvisation, and short interviews with renowned improvisers and educators, providing insights into their pedagogy and creative processes.
"Making Music from Improvisation offers a well-organized, versatile approach to the instruction of improvisation. Its sample curricula and concrete exercises make it an ideal resource for educators, whether used in individual lessons, group settings, or improvisation ensembles."
Composing with Constraints: 100 Practical Exercises in Music Composition provides an innovative approach to the instruction of the craft of music composition based on tailored exercises to help students develop their creativity. When composition is condensed to a series of logical steps, it can then be taught and learned more efficiently. With this approach in mind, Jorge Variego offers a variety of practical exercises to help student composers and instructors to create tangible work plans with high expectations and successful outcomes.
Each chapter starts with a brief note on terminology and general recommendations for the instructor. The first five chapters offer a variety of exercises that range from analysis and style imitation to the use of probabilities. The chapter about pre-compositional approaches offers original techniques that a student composer can implement in order to start a new work. Based on lateral thinking, the last section of the book fosters creative connections with other disciplines such as math, visual arts, and architectural acoustics.
The one hundred exercises contain a unique set of guidelines and constraints that place students in a specific compositional framework. These compositional boundaries encourage students to produce creative work within a given structure. Using the methodologies in this book, students will be able to create their own outlines for their compositions, making intelligent and educated compositional choices that balance reasoning with intuition.
"Composing with Constraints is a serious primer for composers- an invaluable tool that can help them navigate their journey of personal musical development. In establishing artistic constraints through intriguing and imaginative exercises, Jorge Variego nurtures the seeds of creativity, enabling composers to sharpen and refine the focus that they need to succeed as artists." -- JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, Buffalo Philharmonic
"Composing with Constraints is a great book for composers and theorists and I highly recommend it for both composition courses at undergraduate and graduate courses as well as individual studies. What a joy to read!" -- David Cope, University of California, Santa Cruz
Composición Algorítmica. Matemáticas y Ciencias de la Computación en la Creación Musical (Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes). From the era of Guido D’Arezzo to the present day, algorithmic musical composition reaffirms the necessity of transversal thinking within the field, revealing its close ties to other artistic disciplines, as well as to science and technology. From this perspective, *Composición algorítmica* addresses issues related to historical evolution, analysis, and the concrete application of algorithmic processes in musical composition.
The book is organized into a series of independent sections ranging from controversial questions to informal interviews with contemporary composers (including David Cope, Roger Dannenberg, and Rodrigo Sigal). Far from attempting a study of compositional methods that might be formalized through the analysis of specific works, it proposes a perspective centered on the paradigms represented by compositional systems. The emphasis is thus placed on systems of rules, procedures, and instructions—rather than on compositional output *per se*—and these systems are studied (sometimes derived through analysis), explained, and applied in concrete examples.
The presentation of topics in a circular fashion—practice-theory-practice—is central to this book, which also includes programming code examples for the SuperCollider environment; these can be downloaded free of charge from the *Música y ciencia* blog.
"It gives me great pleasure to introduce Jorge Variego’s new book on algorithmic composition. As someone who has spent the majority of his life working in the fields of composition and programming, it is a delight to encounter a fresh perspective on the history of music—and of algorithmic music in particular.
Jorge has included a wide array of composers and theorists—such as Guido d’Arezzo, Fux, Hiller, Xenakis, Gerhard Nierhaus, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and many others—who have developed a rich vocabulary for students and professionals alike, serving as role models for both groups.
Jorge navigates comfortably across numerous disciplines—including sociology, politics, and philosophy—to formulate a far-reaching proposition.
The interviews with leading figures in the field of algorithmic composition are a stroke of genius: these conversations coexist with the main text, weaving themselves into it in a truly remarkable fashion. Furthermore, the code examples serve as a dedicated resource for readers seeking practical applications of the concepts understudy.
Jorge has interwoven various approaches to algorithmic composition, successfully demonstrating how they complement one another. Each chapter stands alone as an independent unit while simultaneously forming part of a cohesive, organic whole. The inclusion of musical examples, charts, and figures further enhances the book’s value, making it an exceptionally useful resource. Personally, I am thrilled by this new contribution, which I wish to highlight as filling a significant void in the Spanish-language literature on this subject. The deeper our understanding of the concepts, procedures, music, and composers involved in algorithmic music, the more this profession will flourish—as it rightfully should."
David Cope
18 + 3 Etudes for Solo Viola (Lalarva Music Publishing).
The book offers a vast selection of original new works for solo viola that address specific technical difficulties through musically appealing short compositions. The table of contents contains a detailed description of the technical challenges per etude. The first 18 etudes in the book are roughly ordered with an increasing level of difficulty, always having in mind a violist of intermediate level. The etudes labeled with a “+” present some more advanced challenges. Take a look at the sample images!
All original etudes composed for the viola edited by Hillary Herndon.
"The first 18 etudes in the book are roughly ordered with an increasing level of difficulty, always having in mind a violist of intermediate level. The etudes labeled with a '+' present some more advanced challenges."
"One of the things that I like most about this collection is that we are never left to guess at the challenges of each etude because Variego has elucidated them in a well-organized and highly useful table of contents. In doing so, he has also described each etude’s purpose pedagogically, which is important information."
"All this suggests that Variego’s etudes will please teachers and students, and they may in time prove as enduring as collections composed by those revered and venerable creators of the canon."
Kevin Nordstrom - Journal of American Viola Society