Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to James Hegarty. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi James, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

There have been many teachers in my experience that have been very generous in helping me learn to play and to compose. As a young child, some of my earliest memories are me standing next to my Mom as she played the Hammon spirit organ we had in our home. I nagged her to teach me to play but she said I needed to learn to read first. So when I was in first grade she started to teach me. That was the beginning and along the way I took guitar lessons, jazz piano lessons, and saxophone lessons. In college I took theory classes and composition lessons and eventually completed two Masters degrees in music composition. The first in traditional scored music and the second in computer music.

Now, many years later, I have been a music theory, jazz, music technology, and composition professor at colleges for well more than 25 years. In my experience, this activity complimented my personal journey as a composer.

The thing to note is that no matter how much a teacher wants to help, in music we all must ultimately figure out what we are doing on our own. A teacher can give us very valuable skills and guide us in our journey but we must actually travel the road and discover what is there for us, each individually. Part of what makes me most excited about teaching is to see a student take something that we have discussed and make it their own in a way that I had never envisioned!

I realize that this is not a fast process but based on observing many students over the years, anyone progresses most quickly who are willing to at least try suggestions and actually devote a significant amount of time to the work. The overall time frame can be compressed to an extent by intensive daily work, but to reach new plateaus and climb up over them, often takes a continuous, unrelenting effort. Unfortunately, talent, brilliance, and spontaneity only takes normal people so far. Yes, there are a few that are so amazingly brilliant that the creative process is so intuitive that it seems easy but for most people, there is a lot of craft involved. Craft – meaning knowledge and learned skills gained from personal work and experience.

Essential skills – openness, curiosity, sincere and unrelenting dedication, ability to overcome setbacks and disappointments, networking skills, an eye for promotion, the ability to ask for opportunities without feeling self conscious, as thorough of a knowledge as possible of the repertoire within the field one is working – one really needs to be absorbed by what is happening in the field or scene one is working, ability to find funding from grants and donors and venue owners. Have a ready answer to these questions: who are your favorite artists; who are you most inspired by; what does your music sound like?

The main obstacle for me was head games – feelings of inability, geographical limitations, distractions.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My work involves composing and performing music that falls across the genres of jazz, electronic music, experimental music, and contemporary classical.

Some of my music is free improv, either as a solo pianist or electronic music, or in groups that I collaborate with. This is collective improvisation where we interact spontaneously in real time without any prepared charts or frameworks. Because I have had the opportunity to work with a group of musicians over a long period of time, we have developed a very high level of intuitive communication that allows this kind of music to have continuity and coherence. But it is a “learned taste” like certain foods! It tends to be complex music that aligns with expressionist painting.

My group, Off-Topic is either a trio or a quartet and we have made many recordings and youTube live streams.

I was also the founder of the STL Free Jazz Collective that was formed in response to the Michael Brown murder here in St. Louis. The purpose of this group was to share a view of brotherhood and justice through free, collaboratively improvised music and featured the poetry of Missouri Poet Laureate Michael Castro. These are two of my most satisfying small group activities.

In the past I composed, as in actually writing out scores and rehearsing, a multimedia opera funded by the NEA entitled “The Soul of the Rock” about non-violence.

The music I perform is essentially an expression of the unity and freedom of ideas, a communication that I feel is on a spiritual level that illustrates the complexity as well as the beauty of diversity and individuality. To me this is a musical portrayal of my view of the world, of the countless layers of expression in a landscape or a cityscape – a vast sense of harmony that is ordered and made real to us by a higher power, something beyond our conscious deliberation and ability. Could any one person design or construct the magnificent multiple layers of beauty of a forest or a place like Shibuya Crossing? At least for me, collaborating with others and giving them the open opportunity to express their own creativity is a way of approaching this magnificence.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

For seven years I taught music at an urban community college. I founded the music technology program and taught many classes in MIDI and ProTools to people who wanted to make music. Some of them were interested in making beats. Because I had played in jazz and rock bands and learned traditional music arranging, I knew how to “compose” and notate a drum beat. But I noticed that the students in the class that made the most interesting beats were people who had virtually no training in theory or experience playing in a band with a real drummer.

I really gave this a lot of thought because the conventional wisdom is that “knowledge is power” so to speak and that knowing how to do things the “right” way could only make one better at whatever. But these people completely negated that thinking.

I decided to have conversations with these people, ask them how they made their beats, ask them what they were thinking, how they made their choices, how they knew when something was cool or when something was stupid.

Over a couple of years I continued to explore this. But, it didn’t take me very long to realize that from what these people told me, they were very deeply immersed in the genre.

First: they lived and breathed this stuff. This gave them a very strong sense of when something was either in or outside of the expectations of that style.

Second: they didn’t second-guess themselves. As I watched them make beats in class I could see that their decisions were fast and unequivocal. Especially when something wasn’t cool – just delete it and go on, no hand-wringing, no pondering or trying to tweak it into something better. Just delete it and hit record and try again.

Third: they worked fast. It’s tempting to think that the creative process is all about gestation – taking the time necessary to have perspective and awareness. But for some things that are as immediate and highly concentrated as beats, the immediacy of the energy that is transmitted into the piece is really essential. S

Not all kinds of creative activities should follow this kind of regimen but for things that are aspiring for immediacy and highly charged intensity, spontaneity and the energy or creation can be really important.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

As mentioned elsewhere, my concept of beauty involves multiple layers of ideas harmonizing under the order and unity of a spiritual or higher sense of power or governance. It is a somewhat intuitive and also very personal approach that is related to my religious beliefs. But as applied to the arts, I take a lot of inspiration from John Cage who said, “There is music in all things.” And I recall an interview where he is sitting next to his apartment’s open window in pre-air conditioned New York looking out on SOHO and saying that he loved to listen to the sounds of the city. That they were the music beautiful things to listen to. My music does not sound like John Cage’s music but I greatly value his appreciation for the infinite nature of the concept of a soundscape as beautiful music.

Perhaps that explains why I find interest in compositing for voice, acoustic instruments, ensembles, synthesizers, and computers. I guess I’m searching for ways to express this infinitude in sound and in forms.

I think of myself as a post-modernist because I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of classical elements – forms, sounds, organization – with cutting edge elements. I have composed orchestral works, string quartets, piano sonatas, an opera, some cantatas, and a musical theater piece. There are several pieces that I have composed around these influences that appear in the ambient world under my moniker, Noise Reduction Society.

I am also considered by many as a noise artist because of my use of electronics and especially computer manipulation of environment sounds and realtime processing of instruments such as violin, piano, and voice.

The spontaneity of collaborative improvisation sometimes puts me into jazz, free jazz, or European free improv genres.

To me this all is part of one concept but I realize that some might think of me as a chameleon because at first these pieces seem pretty different. That’s why I share the ambient stuff under a different name.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jimhegarty.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jameshegartyvision
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jim.hegarty.9
• Twitter: twitter.com/JamesHegarty
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JimHegartyMusic
• Other: http://www.noisereductionsociety.com https://jimhegarty.bandcamp.com https://jameshegartyjazzvisions.bandcamp.com https://noisereductionsociety.bandcamp.com https://stlfreejazzcollective.bandcamp.com

Image Credits
James Hegarty