Lauren Elizabeth Baba: Fundamental Freedoms – To Be Free to Create Without Fear

Last year, I was the proud recipient of the inaugural 2022 ISJAC “Fundamental Freedoms” commission for my big band composition “Frankincense” which was premiered at ISJAC’s Symposium in Austin, Texas by the John Mills Times 17 Big Band. This opportunity from ISJAC was invaluable to my compositional journey and I’m very grateful for the experience and knowledge gained from the writing process.

For my blog, I’m going to walk you through my compositional process of “Frankincense” – the growth and metamorphosis of the conceptual and how it exists simultaneously with the tangible structural. This piece began as a search for new compositional ideas and experimentation with new sounds that were veiled deep in my “mind’s ear”; sounds I’m still in the process of finding and expanding upon. “Frankincense” is part of my continuous search to conceptualize time + music + existence and acknowledge the extent to which our perception impacts our reality — understanding that the past, present, and future are simultaneous experiences — as well as exploring the realm where the music sounds and feels like it already exists.

So, a little bit about the commission: the piece was to be composed based on the theme of “Fundamental Freedoms” and what that meant to me — fundamental freedoms gives me feelings of hope, persistence, peace, equality, clarity, and most notably, to me; the strength to face your fears and confronting the vulnerability necessary to do so. Composing for big band is a form of solace and a safe place for me to exist within the unknown, so inevitably, like most of my big band compositions, this piece was and is extremely vulnerable for me. It is an expression of my story in the fight against abuse, injustice, and inequality, and how that story transformed throughout my compositional process into an understanding of the heavy repercussions caused by generational and personal recurring repression.

“Frankincense” was conceived as stagnant motion. It’s the recurring repression that produces the fear to move forward and the ruminating + recycling of ideas as you are trying to figure out why things don’t progress or change. A personal musical mantra of mine is “to be free to create without fear” and remembering that mantra always centers my focus back to embracing the inevitable unknown and the creativity in unassuming openness; and back to the music — and through the music, we can encourage others to be free to create without fear.

The persistent drive for peace and openness around the unknown creates a deep awareness in your life and in the lives of others, and allows for deep healing, which only Ume can provide. There’s peace in knowing there is a continuous flow of creativity, understanding, equality, and limitless boundaries present for us in each moment; especially in times when our fundamental freedoms are being challenged. If we are able to, we should strive to express for those who can’t; to find a place that encourages others to be free to create without fear and bring us back to our fundamental freedoms.

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Composing and improvising are two sides of the same coin for me, and I can’t do one without the other, so I incorporate improvising (singing, playing, dancing, imagining, drawing, moving) into my writing at every stage. It’s a series of improvising + transcribing + rearranging + improvising, on repeat. I listen to every idea that speaks to me and then try to figure out what I meant to say or what I was trying to actually hear in my “mind’s ear”; all to create an even more thoughtful idea to improvise with next. This process shapes new ideas that have only been existing in your “mind’s ear” thus far – ideas of which you can’t quite put into music yet; but ones you know and feel viscerally.

I initially composed a 64-bar melody to create stagnant motion that hovers as incense does – it represents the persistent drive for freedom from adversity; and although it questions a way out, it never progresses. When you light frankincense, it sits in the air surrounding you. It comes up from the resin in these beautiful transparent layers and fills across the entire room; then it hovers in stagnant motion. I wanted to compose this piece to sound like Frankincense looks and feels in the air.

The looped triadic progression became the representation of repression and stagnation, and the stark root notes represent the fight to progress by creating movement inside the stagnant motion of everything existing sonically above it. The melodic pyramid clusters represent the fear that hovers and muddles the melody by its sustained and encompassing nature. The conceptual was molding the music and the music molding the conceptual – I was curious as to how I could develop and expand a long form melody while maintaining the intention of purpose behind its meaning. Side-pocket compositional goals I had initially set were to write in 3⁄4 time + slow tempo + melody and chords that looped and flowed seamlessly to the next phrase.

My handwritten sketch of the conception process of the 64-bar melody is in the first image below (this particular improvising and rearranging process is demonstrated through the colored highlights and arrows), and the finalized melody in reduced score (including the melodic pyramid clusters, distinguished by the dashed slurs) is below that.

In the middle of composing and conceptualizing, I became aware of an intense new feeling that was beginning to surface – it was the feeling of exhaustion from fighting and almost losing hope or worth, and the vulnerability in reaction to this fear. This new kind of fearful vulnerability surrounds you and consequently creates stagnant motion because of the recurring repression you receive from it. I had finally discovered the true meaning of “stagnant motion”, and it was necessary for me to discover it to thoroughly understand and compose this piece with full intention and direction.

Tangibly, this came out when I began to orchestrate. I heard the piece beginning with the pure tone of a brass chorale; hearing the melody in the trumpets with a subdued tone, and the trombones on the unwavering triadic figures below. As the piece developed, the melody is tossed around to the most powerful ranges of each instrument with dovetailed transitions to maintain an uninterrupted voice within the melodic line. The beginning melody is broken up with solo interjections and meter discrepancy to create a sense of searching within the long form melody loop. The middle section gives a breath of release with a fast driving 3⁄4 groove, but I continued the chorale theme with various counter line melodies in the horns – having two to a line of the same instrument and ending up with four separate counter lines. That deliberate tone color was my way of orchestrating the four counter lines to speak clearly, and its distinctive blend is also used as a reset from the massive amount of sonic overlap from the previous and later sections.

Another facet of this compositional process was pushing through my own known ideas into the unknown – I was so stuck on the idea of having the 64-bar melody stated in its entirety with the brass as the main sonic medium – but I had to let go of how I thought it should be due to commission factors like time constraint and other such details. This is an important component to the conceptual and structural aspect because conceptually, I was still holding on to some aspects of stories and how I thought things should be – and as soon as I let it go, the structural aspect of the piece blossomed into something I had never imagined.

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I’ve always been interested in the difference between composing and then analyzing what I have composed, later. A lot of my music seems to be based on symmetrical shapes from collections of notes – elements of jazz dancing around diminished scale and harmonic minor tonality, as well as my own made up “scales” and “theory”. Shapes and lines are usually what develop the material, as opposed to coming at it in a theory-based aspect right away. I compare it to practicing improvising – you shed scale patterns, transcribe solos, study theory, etc. but when you go play with people or the trees or the stars, you let it all just happen. It’s the same idea I have with composing, and specifically with an original composition – I do all the work prior and when I compose, I let it all just happen. Listening to where the music wants to go, then analyzing it later – and that’s what I call a fun Tuesday night staying in – 2am with a glass of scotch analyzing and figuring out what my brain was trying to create earlier that day.

Here is a reduced score of the 64-bar melody, color coded to match my melody analysis in the image below that. Each of the four melodic phrases use the collection of notes delineated by the similarly colored sections.

Melody collection of notes consist of 1⁄2 + W + 1⁄2 x2, connected by harmonic minor tonality; which I sometimes hear as V to I. There is a rogue note of Gb, which is the tritone of the “root” and only appears 3x in the entire melody. Its placement in the melody is solely dependent on whether the melody is ascending or descending, so it’s not linear in its modality.

Chordal collection of notes consist of triads in root position or 1st inversion. The notes that stick out to my ear are the mi 9ths and MA 7ths. The pull of the mi 9ths from the root to bottom note on the outside chords sound like a very weighted and unsettling pull. Those chords surround the middle chords which include mi 9th and MA 7th (there is a typo in the PDF, sorry), where the pull is more settled because it’s in the middle of the triad – the 9th sounds serene and settled and the 7th sounds serene yet unsettled.

Like all things in existence, there are a number of ways to analyze this. The first four bars are an A triad over Ab. One could think of as A major triad over Ab or 5th mode of Db harmonic minor (if you combine the melody notes in the note soup) or like a dominant either loosely resolving to Db by way of Db harmonic minor or as an Ab7 sus b9 b13, which is why the resolution to C as the “root” in the next chord is so satisfying or the melody as a C augmented shape of 1⁄2 + W + 1⁄2 + mi 3rd or as the pull of time as a tangible being or as the sound of the feeling of numbness –––– I personally think this is the coolest part about music theory. There are countless ways to analyze music. It’s easy to get sucked into the theory hole wondering “yes, you write a chord this way but inside that chord is a whole universe of notes and tonalities, so why should there only be one way to write it”…because yes, it’s a C7, but what feeling of C7 do you want to explore in that exact moment in time? And what if you’re hearing it differently than someone else but can’t yet explain why? Yes, C7 goes somewhere (to F Major, as example) but it can go so many routes and can imply so many questions.

The best way to observe these many routes and many questions is through the series of improvising + transcribing + rearranging + improvising, on repeat. I incorporate it at every stage of composing, and it allows me the freedom to listen to where the music wants to go and what the music wants to say next. It’s easy to confirm our beliefs and ideas by dismissing something and burying inside our comfort zone, but I’ve always found that the magic comes when I ask questions and embrace all challenges as opportunities to enrich my creativity. Remembering my mantra of “to be free to create without fear” always centers my focus back to embracing the inevitable unknown and the creativity in unassuming openness; and back to the music.

The process of composing “Frankincense” within such an emotionally heavy theme was, and still is, extremely vulnerable for me; – even writing this blog was an emotional yet beautiful journey! I’m very grateful for the opportunity from ISJAC to compose and share “Frankincense” and for the community that I’ve gained through ISJAC. It was an invaluable experience and I’m honored to be the first recipient of the “Fundamental Freedoms” commission, and very excited to support the future of this wonderful commission and of ISJAC!

Here is a video of “Frankincense” performed by my big band theBABAorchestra at my music series Big Band Nights in Los Angeles at The Mint. Performed March 6th, 2023.