Addressing a need.

I love music. So, so much! I also love the environment. But go to a major performance, and other than the performance itself, what do you get? Lights, amplifiers, air conditioning, rows and rows of cars, hundreds and sometimes thousands of programs printed on paper—all kinds of things that are bad for the environment. People often drive, sometimes even fly, hundreds of miles to catch these performances. Seems like a lot of energy to consume just for a few hours of live entertainment.

This is where I step in and say, "Let me make a suggestion." Everyone is responsible for conserving resources, so I don't see any reason why we eco-minded musicians need to compromise our integrity by putting on evening performances in windowless halls with lights and paper programs, or even use sheet music printed with toxic ink on the chemical-treated remnants of tree corpses. My goals are to eliminate as much stuff from my compositions as possible and to greatly reduce the amount of energy and paper that performances consume. What effect this has on my music remains to be seen.

My first major project in this style is a small musical. It is still in the early planning stages, but it will have no set, use no electronic instruments or amplification, and have no programs. Because the cast will be very small, introductions and credits can be done orally, eliminating the need for the audience to be given any paper. To conserve or perhaps even prevent the use of electricity, the performance will be held in a sunlit room. The artistic challenge here is to make it a moving and involving show without a set or lighting or any other such effects. All I will use are music, words, and the performers because that's all I'll need. People need even less than that to be wrapped up in a conversation, so I don't need anything else. This also makes the show extremely portable. A show that requires no specific physical setup other than the absence of a specific physical setup can be done anywhere. I won't be making the story public for a while, but I think there's no problem in discussing the general setup. If anything, this paragraph is for my own benefit, to get some juices flowing.

I have a few other minor ideas for compositions, but none of them includes any sort of staging requirement. It's just standard piano music, but that should be fun as well. And, sadly, I may even have to print it and perform it in the evening in a windowless hall with lots of lights.

It begins!

Well, here I am. I feel that I need a blog related to my adventures in creating music, and my personal blog isn't really suited for this. So here it is! I call it Practically Minimal. What on Earth this means will become more apparent to you and me as time passes. Hopefully.

Unfortunately, I don't have much to say in terms of what I've done so far. I've written a few things, sure, but this post is more of a ribbon-cutting ceremony than anything else, and with luck, this blog will give me a little extra motivation to create what I need to create.

Here we go!