Welcome And Meet Mark Hayes

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Quran Director Podcast, the essential resource for choir directors, conductors, and vocal leaders who want to build stronger choirs, run better rehearsals, and create outstanding musical experiences. Welcome back to the Quira Director Podcast with me, Russell Scott. This is episode 31. And today I'm delighted to welcome Mark Hayes, an internationally recognised composer, arranger, conductor, and concert pianist, whose music has been sung in churches, university, and concert halls all around the world. Mark's written over 2,000 published works, conducted major premieres at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, and we'll explore today how he writes music that is ambitious yet singable, how different musical styles can serve a choir, and what choir directors need to do to help their singers make a piece come alive. We also talk about the options of choir directors actually writing their own arrangements and how they differ from published pieces. Please welcome Mark Hayes. It's so lovely to have you on the show. Thank you for spending time with me today, all the way from Kansas City, Missouri.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Missouri, right. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Now I'm an internationally recognized composer, arranger, conductor, concert pianist, and of course, so many of our listeners will have come across your fantastic arrangements. Tell me a little bit about your background.

From Church Pianist To Freelancer

SPEAKER_00 1:30

It would be lovely to know how you got into composing and arranging, um, and why you chose specifically to do this for choirs.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Um I started piano when I was 10 years old and just really took to it. Well, um, because of my family life, we were at church a lot and they needed a pianist at this very small church in northern Illinois. So at about 13 years old, I started playing there. I wasn't very good, but you know, that wasn't that big of a deal for that group. You know, the need was more important. Ended up um studying piano performance at Baylor University for college. Um, and that was a great place to be for me because there was also um uh a sacred choral or sacred music publishing company called Word Music in Waco, Texas at the time. And I got to do a little bit of work for them, kind of contract work, like writing out lead sheets and listening to back in the day when they had cassette tapes and all that. And then I also had a um a singing group, a kind of a gospel group of about seven singers, and I was there a companist, an arranger, you know, a drum and a bass player, and we traveled around doing concerts on the weekends. Well, this company that I had cut uh contact with, they gave us a recording contract. So when I was 23, I got to arrange an entire album, orchestrate it. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did it anyway. And I thought, this is fun. And so I got published really early on, and I thought, well, maybe this is something, instead of being a concert pianist, which requires so much practice, you know. I realized that when I finally got my degree, that I thought maybe I could be involved in the music publishing business somehow. And I started out primarily as an arranger because I thought, well, I had two years of composition at Baylor, but that was not my reason to live. And so I thought I don't want to call myself a composer because I didn't feel like I have the credentials. So I'll just be an arranger. And I did that for many years and uh got some things published. I I got um a piano book published, which was kind of my goal in life. If I can get one piano book published, that'll be great. And I think I have like 112 books in print now for keyboard. So, but that though that's very easy for me to do and write out because I improvise. So, anyway, um I moved on and and people began asking me, commissioning me to write write a composition for them. And I demured and said, Oh no, that's not what I do, but then finally just said, okay, I'm gonna try this, and got some things that I composed, published as well. And that um the company I moved to Kansas City to be a music editor for uh a sacred publishing company here. Uh I knew a lot about how to put things on the page back in the day, you know, and um was a detailed person. And then they went out of business in 1980, and I thought, well, what am I gonna do now? And I thought, well, I'll be a freelancer just for another year until I get another job. And so um that was 46 years ago, and I've been self-employed as a composer and arranger and you know, conductor since then, and no other job. I don't teach at a school, at a university, I play the piano at my church as a volunteer, uh, travel as I want to. So it's a definitely a life path I never would have thought would happen for me, but I'm very, very grateful for it.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

It's it's fascinating because there's always a journey, isn't there? There's always a journey of how people get from A to B. You know, how do you get here to here to here? And you you can look back on your life. I I can look back, I know I don't look it, but I can look back 30 or 40 years. And uh and you you you know, you you think to myself, to yourself, you don't realize it at the time where you're gonna end up, and you never know what's gonna what's around the corner. And that's what's very exciting, I think, about music and and the creative industry as a whole. And it will be very interesting seeing seeing what happens in the years ahead, especially with uh with AI and everything else and what effect that has. Yeah, yeah. But it's it's it's fascinating that people don't always think about where people have come from. They see an arranger, they see a composer, they see a musician, a singer, a songwriter, a conductor, and they don't think about all the training they would have had to go through, or perhaps career change, or paths that they've gone down where they've had to make difficult decisions. And it's wonderful that that you've been able to stay on this path. And it and it actually just sort of almost happened organically, and then you've ended up still doing that.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah, yeah. And I I mean, I don't really want to retire because I love writing music. I'm getting to write some things now. Uh royalties, you know, come and go, but it they've been sustaining my life for a long time. I have savings and all those kinds of things. So I'm at a point where I can say, I'm gonna choose to do a project that may not pay a lot or finance a project myself, um, because it needs to be said and I want to write it because I definitely kind of paid my dues writing things that the market needed that still have musical integrity, in my opinion, uh, but that pay the bills. And so it's been, I think, I think one of the keys for me too was early on I said yes to pretty much everything I could, every opportunity that came my way, because I needed it for the paycheck, but also the experience of like, oh, that's how you write country western music or grunge rock or uh choir music or how to orchestrate. Um, and I learned as I went along.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

And I think I think that's something we've all had to learn to do is I I think we've all taken everything we can at the beginning. And I think you start making choices once you've had the experiences or or understand more about what you love to do or what you don't want to do again, and also sometimes the the unfortunate uh situation of accepting everything and then having to say no to other things, and you have to choose very wisely what you end up doing, otherwise, sometimes you don't get asked to do things twice, you know. It's it's it's tricky. How do you you went from playing the piano which which you spoke about um and said that you you didn't enjoy practicing that much. I I know that from experience myself. My having to basically beg my son to practice every day. Uh and it's it's uh yeah, that's that's just complete contention, you know, it's it's it's an area of great stress in my life. But

Practice, Improvisation, And Influences

SPEAKER_00 7:50

it's very important, isn't it? I mean, I mean that that practicing, I mean, we're practicing every day at what we do in our jobs. I mean, we're practicing every day, we're learning every day, and it goes back all the way to the beginning of learning an instrument, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

It does. The very first teacher I had, um, we we were in a small town and we lived there for maybe two or three years, and then we moved. But she's she taught me how to take a hymnal, a church hymnal, and look at a hymn and go analyze the harmony and then say, you can add extra notes. Because of course, hymnals are vocal music, not piano music. And and then I learned to kind of just add extra notes from this first teacher I had, and that helped me through the rest of my journey at the piano. The next teacher was not big on improvisation, but I kept doing it on my own. And then when I went to college, I was in bands and heard a lot of um contemporary music that was coming out and learned more jazz harmonies, and that kind of made its way into my music. But now I as I play some concerts from time to time on the piano, solo concerts, I'm thinking about um how I wish I had practiced more on my scales when I was in college so that when I do my thumb under, there's not a blip in the sound. And probably no one can hear it. I feel it more than here, but I think compared to people that make a living doing piano concerts, uh, you know, I could have practiced more on that. But but I also am very grateful for my piano teacher in college because she she taught me to play artistically. And whether I'm playing a gospel song or Chopin, I need to play artistically, and I feel like I have a sense of that now. That I didn't value that back when I was asked to do it.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Who who are your musical influences and have they have they changed from when you did start out to where they to who to who they are now?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah, um, I was not raised in like high church. Uh we didn't have an organ in my church that was worth playing. So it was all kind of piano-driven stuff. It was more gospel, not southern gospel so much. So when I went to Bale University, uh the first time I heard a really wonderful pipe organ and more classical music, um, you know, that was like, ah, there's a whole new world out here. Um, so when I was in college, I think I was interested, influenced a lot by some of the contemporary Christian writers of the day. And I I can name names, but probably some people wouldn't even know most of those people. And some of their jazz influences, I think I was influenced by some vocal jazz group that were secular uh in my harmonizations, uh definitely by like black gospel artists like Andre Crouch and the Disciples, you know, and people like that back in the day. And then some of the classical stuff was woven into that Bach drums, uh, but but I liked I like romantic composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. And I think now in my orchestration and writing, that that finds its way a little bit more in some of my compositions for like larger choral works with orchestra uh that I've written recently. And and then I also always wanted to be a movie score writer, but living in Kansas City, that opportunity did not present itself. I didn't want to move to LA or New York, and so I didn't follow that path. But in a lot of the things I've written for the church market, there's uh extended orchestral interludes that you get to write, and maybe they're underscores or whatever, so some of my uh movie score of uh passion hopefully comes out as I write those things.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Have you have you ever thought about when you when you started composing? Um, and you spoke about composing for voice and you've you've composed for orchestra and you've composed for small groups and and church and so on. How did you you get from where you started to arranging and composing for voice? Because r writing in, you know, for an instrument or writing for an orchestra is incredibly different in many ways

Learning To Write For Voices

SPEAKER_00 12:33

to writing. I mean, the you know, the vo the voice is an instrument, but you've got you know, you've got your traditional SATB scores to think about. You've got to understand the voice, you've got to understand their range and how they work to be able to write for voice. So, how did you get to that point of of realizing you could do it and learning about it and writing to the you know, you you are an amazing choral writer. How did you get to that stage?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Um, part of it was I was an accompanist, and they call the collaborative pianists now for voice studios at Baylor a lot. You know, if you're good, if you're a good accompanist, then you get asked to do that. So I was like having a voice lesson every single time I was sitting there playing for a friend of mine and learning about range and timbre and and how there's this do duet thing that happens between like art song kind of thing between the voice and the piano. And um I love accompanying singers, and so I got to do that quite a bit. And then I had this little group, seven singers, where I was writing for them. It was like a workshop. I'd go, oh, that didn't sound like I thought it would. And that note seems fine on the page, but when I heard my soprano sing it, it was like shrill. So I began, you know, or I didn't hear that alto polyphonic line come out like I thought because it was mashed up against the tenors or something else. So I I learned that in college, some with those couple things like that. And then coming out from there, I just began writing it and I would go do these weekend composer festivals. Sometimes churches would invite me to come, and it was a typical volunteer choir. Um, and I would see what worked and what didn't by them singing it, and go, Oh, I thought that was gonna really work well and it didn't. And I got educated every single time I was out on the road about how it worked or didn't work. And then I also, one really cool thing is I uh early in my career I got to be involved in a lot of producing and recording of the demonstration recordings. I know earlier we talked about, you know, uh one of the songs you might be doing of mine on tour. Well, I was in the studio conducting the orchestra, conducting this the session singers. And of course, they're people that can sing it perfectly almost the second time through, perfect intonation, all those kind of things. So if when they sing and it sounds bad, I know that it's because I wrote it, not as good as it could have been, because I can't blame it on, oh, I didn't have quality singers. So I got to do that for 30 years, where I had some of the best singers in Nashville, or I worked a lot in Indianapolis sometimes. I worked one time in London uh a long time ago. And also, so that that informed me uh this is how the voice works, this is how choirs sound, you know, in various ranges. And then also the other thing was huge was how does a choir sound against an orchestra? I mean, because an orchestra, especially if you put a couple trumpets up against the voices, bye-bye voices, you know, you have to know how to like orchestrate with choir. And I've done a lot of that and learned learned by mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

It's funny because I've I've sung on countless recordings and soundtracks, um, film soundtracks and so on. And uh it's it's always interesting, it's always fascinating. The composers are almost always there, obviously. Um and I can remember singing, uh I can remember recording at Abbey Road in London and working on a on a couple of pretty major uh soundtracks um and things just being tweaked and changed as we're going through it because the composers are hearing what the voices are doing. And as you say, we we sing it pretty much straight away. We've got it the second time we're in it and we're recording and you know everything else. But meanwhile, he's he he he or she are sitting there thinking, oh actually, now why don't we change that? Sopranos, why don't you do that? Can we have a couple of voices up there? And you're you're editing on the fly.

unknown 16:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

And then the other thing is, of course, you can make it all work perfectly in the recorded studio. Live performance. Oh my gosh. I've I've done these things where I've done a big musical or something like that, larger work, and a live performance. And it's like there's no tweaking here. Even if you have a sound console in the back of the auditorium, it's pretty much like you gotta write it so it works in a live situation, because that's who I'm writing for, is that audience. It's I don't usually do that many albums just for listening purposes. They're demonstration recordings for live performances.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

How have you how have you found moving digitally? Because you obviously

Studio Truths And Orchestra Balance

SPEAKER_00 17:03

you wrote straight onto manuscript, and then you've had to move over the years, you know, it's transitioned, and we're using things like Sibelius, and you know, we're writing writing them very different way. How have you found that creative experience?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Um, I resisted that for a while, and then I realized how helpful it would be. And so I got on the finale wagon, you know, 30 years ago or so, and just have kind of stayed on that because it was comfortable. Also, the publishers I worked with at the time were kind of finale-based, so it's like easy to send that file to them. And of course, I work with Sibelius people now as well, but I've kind of stuck with that. And of course, finale has kind of dropped the ball and closed their kind of support system and all that, and it's all about Dorico. And I do have that on my computer, but I've not spent the time to learn it, and and it feels a little um apprehensive because I was like, I'm so I'm too busy to learn that, but I know that eventually I have to face the music and probably go to that uh as well. What do you use?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

I use I use Sibelius. Um, if I want to do something quickly, I'd just rather write it out myself. A bit of manuscript. If I've got something really quick in my head, I'd just rather get a grab a bit of manuscript and write it out because it it's just I find I just find it very clunky, but it's an amazing thing. And it's and obviously you can print things and you can split the parts and combine everything. I mean, it's fantastic uh what you can do. And now it's available on you know mobile devices and iPad and all that sort of stuff as well. It's fantastic. What's interesting is a lot of uh a lot of choir directors will write their own arrangements um for a number of reasons. One, they don't want to be buying music, uh, hundreds of copies for uh all their members, uh they they they want to have the creative input, they want to be able to write it how they hear it, how they feel it. How how um it's slightly controversial, I suppose, in many ways, because there's two sides of the coin. One is we, you know, as a choir director, you go to an arranger, you find an arrangement of something you love that's been published, you buy copies, uh, you acquire all the resources and off you go with it, and you just replic, you know, replicate it, perform it. Or you can take a piece and you can create it from scratch. But not necessarily these the choir directors don't necessarily have the same experience, but they're getting a different kind of uh a different kind of creation, I suppose, because they're getting something very personal that they have the the the chance to change because you see you can't change someone's arrangement, you can't get take your arrangement and say, I don't like that bit, cut that bit, change that. So they go and rewrite it. Um, without copying, obviously, that's that would be ridiculous, but um but to rewrite and to have their own creating uh creative ideas is a wonderful thing, very time consuming, and they're constantly, as I've done over the years from time to time, I don't write very often, but when I do, I find I'm editing permanently because I'm a perfectionist, I get into rehearsal, I hear it one way, and I want to keep changing things. How important do you think is that creative um input of a choir director in writing their own arrangements opposed to grabbing something off the shelf, so so to speak? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I think it's extremely important, Russell. I would definitely encourage people to be doing that. I mean, I know in some sense I'm like they're taking away revenue from me if they're not buying my music, but but but basically I'm all for uh finding your creative uh muse

Finale, Sibelius, Dorico Decisions

SPEAKER_01 20:23

and and experiencing it and experimenting with it, which of course you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said that it's like you've got all the your rest of your life, and then oh, I need to fit in, and it's like five minutes tonight, a new piece for my rehearsal tomorrow. And I know it's really hard for them to find that, but they're never gonna get any better until they do that more and more and more. And then it's it's such a custom, tailored, like a bespoke music piece, because they know that they their tenors are not real great, and they can write to that, you know, those strengths and weaknesses. So I I think it's I I get lots of people that send me things, would you take a look at this, you know? And I do have a couple, right now I have three composition students. One is in the UK, uh, and he's actually from Nigeria. No, can't yeah, yeah. And um, and then I have one in Houston and one in LA, you know, and we do Zoom, you know, and just have and I charge them by the hour and we talk through their pieces and they're and some of them are published, some of them are not, you know, but they're wanting to kind of move toward that. And so I'm adding, I'm uh aiding them with my experience of the publishing industry as well as my experience as a composer or arranger, how to get it to that next level. So I'm for people that really want that, you know, they're not usually saying, I want to make a living doing this, they're just wanting to do it because it it gives them joy and it serves a very practical need for their particular choir. So I'm all for that.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

And you're mentoring them, and basically you're mentoring, you're using your huge experience. So yeah, and that's uh and that's a great thing because I think people people need to to be mentored by great leaders, by great people in their industry. Do you have a favorite kind of music that you enjoy writing for and arranging for?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Um gosh. I love lots of different things. I mean, I I I love kind of uh like old standards from the 30s and 40s and that have a jazz sensibility, you know, which you can have a rhythm section with it, and there's like all these fun tiny. Harmonies with the singers and then little improvisational things and licks that kind of set it all up that

Should Directors Write Arrangements

SPEAKER_01 22:38

just make you want to dance. Um, but then recently I did a project called Salmos, which was commissioned by one of the concert agencies I work with to do a Carnegie Hall premiere, and we decided to do um psalm settings, seven psalm settings, and they were original compositions with a real wide variety of styles, some laments, some psalms of gratitude and joy and all that with full orchestra, with tenor and soprano solo. And I really pushed myself to go beyond my typical uh sacred choral work kind of thing and write a little bit more outside the box for me. And I'm not at all, you know, esoteric or abstract, you know, tonally, I'm pretty conventional. Um, but that gave me just a great joy to be able to do that. And the I've had the honor of conducting at Carnegie like probably 15 times. And this last time I did it in April, it felt like the best experience I've had there because the choirs that came together for the festival chorus were well rehearsed, and it was the world premiere of it, and so that felt really, really great. And then pivoting a bit, um, totally different. I'm writing a Broadway-style musical right now. And it's um I'm writing the lyrics and the songs. There'll be nine songs. The book has been written by a friend of mine that I hired, and I'm very involved in in my church with a group called Allies for Racial Equity. It's about anti-racism, and I'm as a white man, I'm learning about my you know, white privilege and all those kinds of things that I want to learn to be, you know, uh a better ally and all that if I'm invited to do that. So this is a musical. It's called Waking Up Is Hard to Do. The idea of the whole woke woke thing. And and my friend Michelle, who wrote that, and she's a black woman who's a playwright, and and we are friends. And so we've she's got this script written. I've got one out of nine songs written, and I'm in, I will be financing this myself, probably a premiere of it in Kansas City sometime next year. That is so totally different writing like internal rhyme and theater music is like not even anything I've ever done. And I I love the I love the challenge of that. So I'm listening to Stephen Sondheim and all these things now to kind of just have my mind be working on that. And that's way outside the whole sacred choral market that that I'm known for.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

And you must have listened to challenge. You must have listened to Neil Sadaka as well, having come up with that name. I must do. Right, right, yeah. Right. Well, Stephen Sondheim's I mean, I mean, you know, is an inspiration to anyone in the musical theatre industry particularly, um of which I'm a a massive, massive fan. Um do you find when it was interesting you were talking about conducting? So when you're conducting your own piece, um do you find that more challenging because you constantly hear things that are either not exactly as you wrote it or interpreted how you wrote it, or intended it, I should say. And are you are you inclined to want to make changes? And how often do you make changes when you when you start conducting a br a piece for the first time with an with a with a great big choir? Are you tempted to think, oh actually, I might change that now and I'll go back to the drawing board, I'll go and write that, rewrite that bit again, not necessarily at that time, but maybe later for a V2, you know?

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Yeah. Um I don't do a lot of changing, usually in those circumstances, because it would just be kind of havoc to go to a hundred singers, okay, that note, you know, needs to be different. But I do hear, okay, that didn't work as well. So oftentimes at that point it's already published, and so the publisher's not really excited about reprinting something for one measure change. Um so and I'm also a person when I'm in the composing process, I have a kind of a form in my mind, you know, and who this who the audience is for and what's it supposed to achieve, and all those things that you do within that all kind of organically morphs as you're actually putting the notes down. And so, but I'm one of those persons that goes, oh my gosh, in this measure, there's like 60 possibilities for the melody. Which one do I choose? And that can drive me insane. So I pretty much make a choice and stick with it until it just really feels wrong. And that may be two or three days later when I'm playing it back for the first time to my ear and go, I thought that was the perfect sequence there of progression, chordal regressions, and now it is sticking out like a sore thumb.

Psalms, Carnegie Hall, And New Musicals

SPEAKER_01 27:18

I'm going to change it. But I tend to be kind of a quick decision maker about things, which means that when I when a piece is done, it feels like it's done. When I am conducting my piece, though, I do hear, you know, uh I'm kind of I'm a perfectionist as well. So I I and I've worked with a lot of elite musicians over my life. And then, but typically I'm working with amateurs or volunteers, we'll call them volunteers, you know, who are maybe not as motivated or as good. And so I have to kind of go, what do I want to get out of this rehearsal or this performance? And I thought about that question too before we started, and probably my my first answer would be I want them to have a really positive experience when they're done. And my level of expectation sometimes lowers just because it's not about me fulfilling my ego and saying, Well, they just really kick that, you know, they did a great job. And don't I feel proud as Marte is the composer? It's more like, how can I express the joy of the lyrics and all those things through my conducting pattern, my facial expressions, all those things, so that they go, I loved being in this choir. And I felt the music and I felt the lyrics, and I'm so glad I was here. And I've come to that after many, many years of kind of having going, being disappointed that it didn't turn out like I wanted it to be. And as I get older, I'm I'm getting wiser about what is really important in life. And I'm all about all the all the things that you would know in this podcast about how to good choral, good get good choral sound. I understand it, I I work for that, but when it all settles down, it's like, how is that experience for the singer? Which then translates to the experience for the audience as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Absolutely. It's it's interesting because I I was I was talking to a choir about that last night about the importance of singing the words, not singing the notes. Because the notes all very well and good, and and an audience will assume that the choir can sing, and the the the you know, the tune and the melody is all great, and and people like love things that they know and they're but they're willing to listen. But if if they don't know a piece, the first thing that's gonna get to them are the words, and because it's communicating those words to an audience to move them, and that expression is really important, isn't it? Yeah, so what what I'm also interested in is is is about interpretation because when I've I've I've worked on uh many of your arrangements I've we've performed uh with with choirs I've worked with over the years, and like many of the other great arrangers, and there's probably about half a dozen that I I think most choir directors will go to generally for certainly for more popular music or musicals, pop music, jazz music, and so on. It's interesting that that you you can take, this is the great thing about live music, of course, but you can take your one of your arrangements and you have no control over the interpretation. That's all up to the choir director, that choir leader who's gonna interpret the music, interpret the words, interpret the feelings, the harmonies that you've created. They're going to relay that to their choirs. They're gonna try and get those choirs to feel the same thing they're feeling, interpret it together and perform it. And you can have 10, 20, 30 different interpretations of the same arrangement. Now

Conducting Priorities And Singer Experience

SPEAKER_00 30:48

that must be really interesting for an arranger and a composer. Uh that sometimes may be challenging and frustrating, but also very exciting to hear, I can imagine.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah. And right, I I totally agree with you. I think it's it's like as a child, and you've let them go, and hopefully that child is treated well in the world. So um a thought comes to mind back when I was in my early uh you know, 30s, and I got connected with a director named Dr. Duncan Couch, and he was at a local university in Missouri and then went to the state universities, and he liked my music a lot and actually commissioned me to write things and things for his choirs. And um he interpreted one of the pieces I had written. Um, and it was he found such nuance in it that I didn't even know it was there. And I heard him do it, and it was so totally not how I would have conducted it, but I fell in love with his interpretation. And what it said to me was, you don't know nothing about your pieces sometimes. You're not you're not as equipped to pull all the music out or that you think you do. And so it it allowed me to trust the the the uh the user of my music, the you know, that to to do what's necessary. And sometimes it's not worked out, you know, because of tempos or whatever, but but basically um that's been a fun thing for me, and I'm glad that people get have that permission to do it.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

And what what in what inspires you now? Because, you know, as an accomplished, as a musician, composer, arranger, pianist, conductor, what inspires you to keep going? You you know, you said you have no intention of of retiring. And it's it's interesting for me. I I don't either. I mean, I'm I'm I'm a little younger, but I but I still don't I can't imagine that day when I say I'm done, you know, unless you know I'm on my deathbed or whatever that may be. I can't imagine that moment because it's inside of me. It the music is the soul, it it's right inside, and I'm sure many, many others feel the same. But what is it that keeps you going? What keeps driving you, Mark Hayes, as an arranger and a composer?

SPEAKER_01 33:05

I think I would just say the joy of the creative process, which sometimes as a man, I would never know what it likes to deliver a child into this world. But I feel like there's a birth process to a song sometimes, and sometimes it's painful because, like, gosh, I can't, you know, I can't find the right melody for that lyric, or I don't like that that word, or whatever. But eventually it it moves through the process, and then there's that joy of like, wow, look what I created. And that that's such a personal solitary experience in my office at my piano with my computer, but it feels organic and it feels like it's I'm being alive in a way that nothing else can touch. And then not every performance, but lots of the performances that I get to conduct, there's a joy that I see from the choir to me, and I I'm intentionally giving back to them, projecting it to them through my facial expressions and all that. And and so that that communion of joy, um, it feels I mean, it's I guess it's kind of like an entertainer in some respects. You know, any singer is on stage, they they feel the applause, but it's it's not even so much the applause that the audience is giving. I it's it's the connection I feel with the choir. Because we've been in rehearsal usually. I've heard heard them grow and be get better, and then when they achieve something that wasn't there when I first started, that feels like, wow, I contributed to this moment, which will never happen again. And those are things you just can't take for granted. I I want to keep experiencing that more and more.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And they are amazing moments. You you can never get those moments back. That partnership between you and a and a and a singing group, the the the when you're on stage between you and an audience, you know, you've got you've captured that for that small amount of time, and it's very exhilarating.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Now there'll be, I'm sure sorry, I was gonna say there'll be no, it's okay. There'll there will be some um choir directors on here, perhaps perhaps less experienced at writing their own arrangements, who have just got this idea together and they've they've got this song, they would love to try and put it together for their choir. Can you can you offer some sort of beginner tips, I suppose, without without it sounding too twy? I sort of want to make it a little bit more interesting for people to think about what they could create for their choir.

First Steps To Write Music

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Where do they start? I mean, how do they start formulating plans and starting to try and compose something for their choir? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

A lot of times when I'm talking with somebody about how to like start writing a song, because I really believe in melody as the driver, you know, because you can have all these four-part kind of block chords that go by, but if they're not really moving you anywhere up or down, there's no landscape emotionally, then it's boring, you know, it doesn't pull in the person. So I say find a set of lyrics, you know, that maybe out of a hymnal or a pop song or whatever, and then see if you can divorce your mind from that melody and write your own melody to this set of lyrics. Because especially like hymn lyrics, usually are strophic. They're, you know, in four-measure phrases oftentimes. So there's an organization which it's important to have a sense of organization because we've all heard music that feels like a big run-on sentence. It's like stream of consciousness and it has no form. And I'm really big on the form of it, you know, is important because it helps you take takes you somewhere. So that might be like a then start write write the write the melody to those words, and then take the words away. And you have a melody, and then think what what words could I put to this that have nothing to do with the original words? And then um I would say if you understand harmony at all, any chord symbols, maybe learn about that and say, Can I put in here's the melody in a lead sheet form, can I put in like a chord symbol above the basic harmonic changes that I want to go? And and you'll find places where I can have like three different options for chords there, and just make a choice, you know, knowing that there's no wrong choice, or if there is, you could correct it later, and then kind of get a roadmap like that. And then I would probably um if I'm if I'm wanting to write a four-part like chorale-like thing, once I've got the melody and the uh harmonic graph, I would write the bass line first. So like the top and the bottom, and then what other notes are gonna go in the middle there to fill out the alto and tenor parts that have good part writing, you know, where it's not too awkward of a leaps, or you don't have double thirds everywhere, or something like that. They kind of just make it flow and see, see what happens there. Um, that might be a way I would start it. And that could be an end that end up being an a cappella piece, or you could say, I'm gonna write out kind of a piano part or fake a piano part and have it be unison melody and then two-part. But then you have to have a sense of organization, like how many verses, you know, is it ABA, is it verse chorus with a bridge, you know, and and map that out and go, do I want to modulate somewhere? Uh is it ending big, you know, like people are gonna clap, or is it really a soft, reflective kind of thing? Graph the emotional arc of the piece throughout so it's not just like because like when when I'm asked to do hymn concertatoes or arrangements of hymns, I mean they're basically the same melody every single verse, and you have to kind of figure out how to change that up so that after three or four minutes people aren't asleep because you just did the same thing over and over again. So I do that with I change the harmonization, or I'll I'll take one of the verses and maybe write a new melody to it and then come back to the original melody. Or lots of different ways that you can kind of so you're taking your original song and melody and arranging it. So there's actually kind of a component of both arranging and composition when you're doing an original piece.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

It's funny. I was just thinking, when you were explaining all that, I was just thinking, you're selling both sides here because there will be some people that think, oh my goodness, I can't do all that. That sounds ridiculous. I'll go and buy Marker Isis arrangement, and then there'll be the other people that think, oh yeah, I'll have a go at that, and then that's a great idea, and I'll try and figure out. So that was win-win, whichever you whichever way you said it, it was gonna sound great.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Well, I mean, I tell people too, you know, when you're trying to look, what how's it supposed to go on the page like notation-wise? Look at some published music and see what they're doing, and you know that the stem should go up and not down, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

So and I don't think there's I don't think there's a composer out there that hasn't looked at another piece of music, particularly classical music, and thought, oh, just that's a great idea. I'll use that one. I have you and you hear it in composers all the time. You hear them quoting other other composers, it's it's a thing that goes on. Uh Mark, it's been so fantastic talking with you and and really understanding about the life of a composer and arranger.

Listener Feedback And Closing Notes

SPEAKER_00 39:58

And I think our listeners will will have absolutely loved this interview. Thank you so much for your time. I really do hope we get to perform lots more of your work. And um and I I I can't wait to see what's next. Okay. Well, I I appreciate you asking me.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Thank you very much, Russell.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Mark Hayes there, talking about arranging and composing. It'd be really great to hear from some of our wonderful listeners to hear what they do and whether they are using published materials or a combination or whether they're composing arranging and how they go about doing that for their own choirs. Do get in touch with us here at the studio. Thank you so much for listening to the Choir Director Podcast. It's been wonderful having you here today. And if you found today's conversation valuable, please take a moment to leave us a rating and review. It genuinely helps us reach more choir directors and grow this community together. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you know a fellow director who'd benefit from today's conversation or any of the amazing guests we've had on the show, please share it with them. It means the world to us and it could make a huge difference to them. To stay connected between episodes so you never miss a thing and receive exclusive content, do join our mailing list. The link is in the show notes. And if you have a question about today's topic or any of the topics that we're covering, perhaps a question to our guest or something you'd love us to explore on a future episode, you can email the studio or leave us a voicemail. Both links are waiting for you in the show notes. Well, thanks again for being part of the Choir Director Podcast. I'm Russell Scott, and until next time, goodbye.