Behind the Curtain with Stephanie M. Neumann - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 92: Behind the Curtain with Stephanie M. Neumann (part 3)

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week’s episode, we continue our conversation with E4TT Audio Visual Project Specialist and For Good Measure’s co-producer and audio engineer extraordinaire Stephanie M. Neumann, in our “Behind the Curtain” mini-series. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Stephanie M. Neumann, check her out here: www.stephaniemneumann.com.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
With assistance from Hannah Chen, Sam Mason, Renata Volchinskaya

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, artistic executive director of Ensemble for These Times. Today, we continue our interview with E4TT Audio Visual Project Specialist, and For Good Measure co-producer and audio engineer extraordinaire, Stephanie M. Neumann [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. So you perform and you write in a number of genres. Could you tell us about them? Do you think of them as separate worlds? Or do they kind of merge together? And do you prefer any of those worlds

Stephanie M. Neumann  00:45
Lately, my idea has changed on this, but a few years ago, I think, they were very separate for me, I was just stepping in to play my classical saxophone solo repertoire, which felt totally different when I'm picking up a ukulele and singing one of the songs I've written. My attitude, also, in those situations, were very different. But back to I think, your question of the different genres. Classical. I would say I'm a trained classical musician. That's what I did for years and years. And so that feels pretty natural to me to be in those settings. Actually, I do like picking up my saxophone and playing the transcribed, the cello suites on saxophone, or something, you know, like, because that, that gives me a good feeling to do that. But like I said, as a saxophone player, I was reaching for more contemporary stuff, which led me to experimental music and less of that "have to be perfect" feeling sometimes.

Nanette McGuinness  02:03
The more the stricture than the structure.

Stephanie M. Neumann  02:05
Yeah, yeah. So, now I'm writing more of that. And wanting to perform probably more of that it feels a little bit more freeing.

Nanette McGuinness  02:18
So you're really liking the experimental world?

Stephanie M. Neumann  02:21
Yeah, I think I've ended up like falling into that. Yes, I'll still do classical stuff and, you know, I can go play for a wedding or something, and I enjoy it, but I think that it's giving me a new challenge, a different challenge than classical music, for sure. So I'm doing more of that. And audio has been such a part of my life in different ways. So a lot of that is involved in the, what I'm writing, what I'm playing, mixed media things. And I still am playing and writing as a singer-songwriter, and also trying to incorporate everything together, somehow. Steel pan, saxophone, voice, what else can I put in there and make a sound world? Electronics? So..

Nanette McGuinness  03:09
A sound world that's your own?

Stephanie M. Neumann  03:12
Yeah, yeah. That's my new venture right now.

Nanette McGuinness  03:18
That's very cool. And you're finding it rewarding?

Stephanie M. Neumann  03:21
Yeah, yeah. And I like the idea of them all being influenced by one another. I can definitely tell that more now than I used to. And so in a way I'm, there is, I can see more similarities or crossover, that I wasn't really realizing when I was starting all these different types of ventures.

Nanette McGuinness  03:46
Right. Talk about your compositional process, if you'd like.

Stephanie M. Neumann  03:53
I have multiple processes that I like to use. One that I think I enjoy a lot is writing electro-acoustic music, which incorporates all of the audio training and my interest. Go out and record sounds that are from around, it could be, you know, birds, birdsong or, or the ocean, a lot of nature, but it also could be the refrigerator, or that one fan in the bathroom that's just really annoying. And I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna record this and see what I can do with this. And so I'll record it and then I'll sit down and create some sort of world with the sounds I've recorded. And then try to figure out how to bring out the musicality of those recordings using musicians but also, in contrast to that, not that it all has to be about the recordings, but what, what kind of fits together... I like the subtlety of, like, a singer coming or, or instrumentalist coming in, when there's this other pitch from a recorded sound, and you can barely tell which one it is. But then like bringing out certain aspects, either the acoustic instruments or the recordings and just playing around with that space a little bit and the sound, I enjoy that. So that's one main way I like to write using the sounds I'm hearing around me, the recordings as my inspiration. And then another thing I like to do is actually write game pieces, playing around with notation and using something else, other than standard notation. Like a piece, I printed out these mazes that they would have to go through with their eyes. And along the way, they would run into different letters, that meant different things. You know, they started with a melody, and they would play the melody over and over again, with space in between, and then they would get to "A" which told them that they needed to make everything really short or something. So they run into "A" and they're like, oh, I gotta change up, and now they're playing that same melody but you're getting it in a different way or something. And now we have thinking about like, eight of these people, you know, musicians playing this together, so it's interesting, seeing where that is going to lead. That type of piece, the performance could be really different, depending on who's playing it, right. And it's been pretty, like, there was a vocal group who's done it, there's like the electronic music computer group played it too, so like, that, it's just, it could be very different. But, um, so something like that, things with puzzles and lots of... it's fun playing around with that. Combining interests.

Nanette McGuinness  07:06
Yeah so you use the game or the recorded sound as your generative idea that you take off from? That's cool.

Stephanie M. Neumann  07:17
Yeah, so those are, those are two ways I really like, and then, other than that, as I was talking about, with like the singer-songwriter stuff, I'll just come up with melodies randomly, and will just add instruments to it. It's fun for me, and then creating sound worlds. That's kind of the thread in all of these, with my loop pedal or my loop station and recording myself and layering and playing around with different frequencies and all of that, it all kind of comes back to this love for sound and audio.

Nanette McGuinness  07:52
Also, it sounds like the improvisational aspect and the aleatoric aspect, that those really appeal to you.

Stephanie M. Neumann  08:01
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Nanette McGuinness  08:03
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Stephanie M. Neumann, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button, and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and designed by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure" [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS].