(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

On April 8th, Ohio will experien a total solar eclipse.

Students at the Bowling Green State University College of Music have created a series of compositions, which will be played during an event at the Perry Stadium that day.

We're gonna be joined during this as part of that public watch party.

Some of the students are here to talk about their compositions and how they came to put them together and the creativity behind them.

We're joined right now to open the show with Christopher Dietz, who is an Associate Professor of Composition at the Bowling Green College of Music.

And also we also have Colin Hochstetler, who is one of the student composers.

So welcome to the show, thank you for agreeing to do this.

Chris, tell us a little about this sort of the evolution of this project, because it's pretty complex, but it's a very cool thing because we've listened to some of the clips and it's just really a neat thing to take advantage of this once in a lifetime event.

So talk about a little bit about how you guys got to the point that we are today.

- Sure.

As far as how the compositions came into the project, my dean called me into his office and said, "There's a committee and we need somebody from our college to be on it.

It is the Total Solar Eclipse committee at the university, the program committee."

And, you know, usually from the College of Music, there might not necessarily be a representative for something that's associated with physics and astronomy, but, hey, we had a seat at the table.

So I was very glad to go.

And so I went to the program meeting and they started asking about what could be done for a watch party in the stadium for the eclipse.

And I didn't even know that was on the table in terms of what was possible to invite thousands of people into the stadium.

So the first thing that came up was the Falcon Marching Band, since that's their home turf, it's where they operate and they know how things go there, and so of course they would be involved and they are involved in that.

But as a member of the composition faculty, I started thinking about ways to involve our composition students.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And as the event plays out on April 8th, there's going to be some sort downtime in between, announcements about what's happening with the sun and the moon, in between the sets that are being played by the marching band, some other musical acts that are occurring.

And for that time, we wanted to create an atmosphere of wonder and awe, something different than a football stadium experience, something more like you would experience in a planetarium.

- [Steve] Oh, okay, sure.

- So a kind of giant outdoor planetarium where the sky is the dome.

- [Steve] is the dome.

Sure, wow.

- And to do that, we started thinking, as a composition area, started thinking about what our composers could do and to create music of that genre.

And the best avenue for that was to create music, electronic music, computer music.

And so I put out a call to our student composers, just an email to our group and said, "Dear, BGSU student composers, we have this unique opportunity.

It probably will only happen one time.

If you'd like to participate, please let me know.

And then this is the genre we're writing in, this is how long the pieces should be.

Other than that, be creative and let's do this."

- [Steve] Yeah.

Now, when you, when you sent that out, did you have more students than you thought?

Or did you have to turn anybody down, I guess is what I'm saying?

- [Chris] In fact, no, it turned out to be, I was looking for between 8 to 10 students and we have 9, so it was a perfect fit.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- We were looking for about an hour and a half's worth of music so each student composed about a 10-minute piece.

So we have enough to fill the space for the event that we feel we need from the program committee's point of view.

And from the aesthetic point of view, I think the students have come up with some really original and interesting and compelling pieces to go along with what is ultimately a very compelling event.

- [Steve] Right, and as you said, this is literally a once in a lifetime so, you know, obviously maybe the students sometime in the future could travel to where there are gonna be eclipses in other places.

But for northwest Ohio in this year, the next one's not until 2099, so the odds are some of us probably won't be there for that one.

Colin Hochstetler here, we're gonna hear a little snippet of your piece.

Unfortunately, we can't play the full length.

But talk a little about, you know, when you said, "Hey, you know what, that sounds like a good idea."

What was your first thought, did you change from your original thought to what people are gonna hear on April 8th?

Or was it pretty much locked in from the moment you started?

- [Colin] Sure, so I've been researching planetarium music for just about over two years now, and so I came into this project with a very clear idea of what I wanted to create.

I didn't really know what I was going to do at the start because I'm not a composer, I'm a music researcher primarily so this is my first kind of professional step into the composition world.

But I mainly wanted to mimic the stereotypical synthy eighties sounds that you would hear in planetary programs.

And so I started with kind of mimicking one of my favorite planetarium music composers, Mark Petersen, and so I created something very bouncy, very synthetic-sounding, and then the piece kind of evolves and changes over time to represent all of my biggest space music influences.

- [Steve] Okay, well, let's take a moment, we'll listen to a 30-second snippet of your composition right now.

("Eclipse Piece") Music Playing Okay, so, Colin, when you sat down, and you talk about composing, obviously on computer, and to me, my first thought was synthesizer, which tells you, but you said it's sort of an eighties kind of thing, and that would've been the era of synthesized music.

So was there anything, did you call on any, maybe like other influences when you did this and you talked about, you know, music in astronomy, in a dome, that kind of thing, but was there someone who influences you when you started to write that music a little bit?

- [Colin] Yeah, so besides Mark Petersen, there was also Vangelis.

So he was a very well known Greek composer and he did a lot of things that sounded synthy.

And so one of the sections of my piece kind of morphs into a very Vangelis-sounding climactic moment.

It's very like, exciting.

And so that was one direction that I took it in, but then I wanted to end it with another influence so one of my other influences was Jonn Serrie, he's a space music composer.

And so I tried to combine planetarium music sounds more of like eighties standard synthy sounds and space music sounds and space music is just like slowly evolving chords that are very meant to make you feel like you're floating in space.

- [Steve] Yeah, now, real quick, and you mentioned that, are we talking Western influence or are we talking- - [Colin] Yes.

Western, correct.

- Okay, all right.

Because I know obviously, and you guys obviously know a lot more about music than I do, but I know that, yeah, you could go in a number of ways because chord structures are totally different in Eastern music, that kind of thing.

- [Colin] Yeah.

- [Steve] So yeah.

- [Colin] There is a whole world out there.

And, you know, when we say space music, it's generally understood as a genre in and of itself, but it can mean a lot of different things depending on who you talk to.

So when I say space music, I'm talking about the very academic approach to synthesized music.

But there are also jazz musicians that identify with space music.

So you can take it in a lot of different directions.

- [Steve] Okay, great.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

We'll look forward to hearing your composition on April 8th, as will thousands of people, which is a kind of a cool thing for you guys, I'm thinking too, because you can't get a thousand people, 20,000 people in the planetarium, I'm pretty sure about that.

- [Colin] Right.

- So this would be a good thing.

So thank you so much for being on.

- [Colin] Thank you.

- We'll be back in just a moment.

A couple of more student composers talk about their compositions for the April 8th public watch party as northwest Ohio goes through the full solar eclipse.

Back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

We have guest student composers who have composed pieces for the total solar eclipse's going to take place April 8th.

And one of the events that's gonna happen is gonna be on the Bowling Green State University campus.

It is a public watch party at Doyt Perry Stadium.

And each of the students that we talked to in the first segment and the gentleman we're gonna talk to now have composed pieces for that.

So we're gonna start with our first guest, it's Jacob McFarland.

You've composed a piece for this.

Talk a little about the piece, give us, you know, talk about the title, how you came up with the title, and then we're gonna listen to a 30-second snippet of it and you can maybe make a comment about, you know, how great it was.

So go right ahead.

Go right ahead.

- Sure.

So my piece is called Sunset or "Sunrise from Space."

Kind of my idea was I had made these like really lush, beautiful sounds that kind of faded in and then kind of faded back out and it just seemed like, it reminded me, one, of like a sunrise here, but it was kind of space music.

So I wanted to kind of capture something that would be a little more, honestly, like more amazing.

Like imagine seeing the sunrise from space.

I used the software Ableton to create the sounds.

I had a mixture of synthesized kind of pads and acoustic samples of strings and pianos to kind of put some humanity into it a little bit because this is something that is of the natural world, but we're here to experience it.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, and not to interrupt you, one of the things that when we had someone on who was doing a presentation about this, and it was someone from the College of Music that talked about the cultural impact of the music and the eclipses and how that affected culture.

So the pieces you guys are creating are sort of an extension of that.

You're creating something that goes with this incredible event and we're gonna be influenced by the sound, by your interpretation of what that total solar eclipse is like.

When you thought about the title, well, how did you come up with that?

You just said, "I think this is a great idea, I'm gonna go with it."

- [Jacob] Pretty much.

I had written the piece because I knew I needed to write something that was gonna be spacey and beautiful and inspiring so I sat down and wrote it and then it needed a title after the fact so I kind of listened to what it sounded like and came up with it from there.

- [Steve] Okay, well, let's hear a little snippet of "Sunrise from Space," composer, Jacob McFarland.

("Sunrise from Space") Music Playing Okay, so if you were gonna do it again, after you've completed this, 'cause I know you had to have it in, as we're sitting here today, it was due today as part of an assignment, anything you would change now after you got it done or is it like a composer, you're always like tweaking, finding a little more perfection, a little more perfection?

- [Jacob] This one, I feel quite pleased with actually.

I did a lot of kind of experimenting and trying things out and I think it turned out quite nicely.

It's just kind of a wonderful sound world to just sit in and enjoy.

- [Steve] Okay, well everybody's gonna enjoy it that day, especially thousands of people so it'll good.

Elijah Stewart, you also have a piece too.

Talk a little about yours because it obviously, I mean, obviously this is immense because its title is "Totality," which means it covers everything that's gonna happen that day.

Not to put any pressure on you.

So talk a little bit about how you came about composing that and how you selected the title.

- [Elijah] Sure.

So when it comes to titles with pieces, I either have something right away or I decided at the last second.

This one was five seconds ago, I decided we're gonna call it "Totality."

So that's a little amusing.

But while working on the project, I found this painting by Antoine Caron and it depicts like a blood red sky with a solar eclipse.

And it has two different titles, or it doesn't really actually have an official title, but one of the titles says something about a dynasty and converting pagans, and for some reason there's a solar eclipse behind them.

- [Steve] That resonated with you.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the other one was just like astronomers observing the solar eclipse.

But the painting was kind of apocalyptic and it had a sort of like religious energy to it.

So I started my piece with this corral of sorts, just like kind of a really solemn, just like single synth sound, just creating an atmosphere.

And then I wanted to kind of depict, I think a lot of space music is really, has a lot of awe and wonder in it and it's usually pretty optimistic, and I thought it might be fun to kind of go in another direction thinking about how maybe people interpreted solar eclipses thousands of years ago and like how that might be a little terrifying, they don't understand why has the sky going black?

- [Steve] Sure.

- Like, all those different kind of things.

So I wanted to do something a little more ominous.

I wouldn't say it's a scary piece, but like I wanted to have that kind of atmosphere with it.

- [Steve] Yeah, well, let's take a listen to it and then we'll see how people interpret it that day.

If they all run out of the building, we'll know that you either accomplished what you were trying or you didn't, so let's hear a little bit of "Totality."

("Totality") Music Playing Okay, good.

Well, hopefully it will be well received that date.

I'm sure that it will be.

So yeah.

Now, our third guest here in this segment is Sam Scheele.

Talk about yours 'cause it's called "Kuiper Belt."

So explain maybe the sort of the evolution of that, why that title, and then talk a little about the composition.

- [Sam] Yeah, so the Kuiper Belt is a comet ring on the outside of our universe.

And I like deciding titles pretty much before I write the piece because it helps with inspiration and with the evolutionary process of the piece.

So I picked that, as people will hear in the piece, there's some like icy sounds, icy bells in it.

I was also influenced a lot by the synthesizers of eighties, specifically in sci-fi TV shows, like "Red Dwarf," "Star Trek."

So I have pretty rich multi-chord harmonies overlaying these kind of synthesizer tracks.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Okay, well, let's hear a little bit of "Kuiper Belt."

("Kuiper Belt") Music Playing Now, it's interesting because when I was listening to these clips, I said, "Wait a minute" it remind me, I'm thinking, eighties, I thought, "Wait, it's eighties science fiction."

- [Sam] Yeah.

- [Steve] Yeah, you you hit the target on that one too, so yeah, fantastic.

Well, obviously, and it's interesting because some of you select the title and work that direction, some of you do the composition, then to name it after the fact.

So it's interesting, that whole composition theory, I mean, I'm really always impressed by people who can be this creative and just come up with ideas and make this work like this.

So congratulations on this and look forward to hearing it that day and the reception you're gonna get as tens of thousands of people listen to your compositions.

Not something that happens to everybody every day at any university for that matter, so yeah.

Back in just a moment, we have two more student composers as talk about the April 8th watch party for the total solar eclipse at Doyt Perry Field.

Back in just a moment.

You're with us on "The Journal" and we're joined by a couple of student composers at Bowling Green State University who have some special compositions, which are going to be played at the public watch party April 8th at Doyt Perry Stadium as part of the university's public watch party for the total eclipse.

And we're joining this segment by Hayden Mesnick and also Yeonsuk Jung.

Hayden, talk about your composition because it's labeled "Drone 9561."

So explain the genesis of that and why those numbers are important and why you picked drones as your application here.

- [Hayden] Yeah, so 9561 is the name of this eclipse, so each eclipse has a number and this one according to NASA, is 9561, or 9,561, I guess.

And so the piece is titled "Drone Piece 9561" and it has that suffix to separate it from the original.

So this is an adaptation of an acoustic piece that I wrote back in July of 2023.

And each instrument in that piece has a set of pitches that they play through as slow as they can, and so even though each instrument is playing through the same pitches, they're moving at different rates and we get these sort of transitory harmonies that arise.

The piece overall should be meditative and slow-moving.

And I though it fit well when Dr. Dietz sent out the call for eclipse pieces, I thought that piece fit the mood well.

But the call was for electronic music, so my task was to adapt it for computer music.

So I made a system in a program called Max that moves through that same row of pitches with instruments that I built in the program with some like random timing and other random elements to create a new version of the piece for the eclipse.

- [Steve] Now, I have a question.

So can you actually now replicate that over and over again if you wanted to play like, the piece you're gonna play that day, can you duplicate that or is that sort of a one-off in the moment sort of thing as you decide how to basically bring things in and out and the timings?

Or is that something you could just replicate over and over again?

Or is this sort of each time you would produce this piece, it might be a little different?

- It will be different.

Max chooses the timing for me.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- Based on like a system of random that I created in the program.

So every time I press play, it's gonna be different.

- [Steve] It's gonna be different, okay.

Well let's hear a little bit of "Drone Piece 9561."

("Drone Piece 9561") Music Playing Now, Hayden, do you always work in drone music or is this just something, is this a different piece for you?

I know you talked about it's an adaptation.

Is that generally the area you work in, the genre, this sort of drone sort of music?

- More and more lately.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- I write a lot of different types of music, but I'm very interested in slow-moving, meditative music.

Yeah.

- [Steve] Okay, good, good.

Now, the other composer we have here with us, and, again, you've heard clips from all of these and obviously the clips are much longer during the event, we're hearing 30-second pieces of it, but some of them run 8 to 10 minutes.

So the event that day will be pretty impressive.

We talked about titles, and, yeah, so talk about the title for yours and how you came about that.

And then we'll listen to a little bit of "When Serpents Swallow the Sun."

- Yeah, so I don't exactly know where it came from, but I have this vague memory as a kid reading about solar eclipses and I think some culture study was like the serpent swallowing the sun and at the end of my writing process, that just kind of naturally came to me of like, this fits what I was writing for, what I was going for.

And I was just like, that's a good title for it.

So that's where it came from.

Yeah, I read a lot of books about it, just about, you know, those different eclipses and how people like thought about them.

I was really into like astronomy back when I was a kid.

So yeah, that's where the title came from.

I don't exactly know which culture it's from, I just vaguely remember reading about it.

- Reading about it.

Yeah, yeah.

- [Yeonsuk] Yeah, so yeah.

- Yeah.

Now, instrumentation-wise, what will we hear in just a second?

- So my piece is basically a live performance that I recorded for myself and I have a pedal board, so like a lot of guitars would have and I'm running my violin, I have a pickup on my violin that I'm running it through and I'm playing it and then I'm manipulating a lot of the knobs and buttons on the pedal board to kind of create a sound.

So I recorded that straight into Ableton Live and I did a little bit of post editing, you know, I moved some stuff around, I cut stuff, I added some sounds, but it's mainly just a live performance that I kind of did, you know, wrote out what I wanna do, and like, this the first section, this is how it's gonna be, and I kind of wrote it out and then I performed it.

I did it a couple times because I wasn't able to get it how I wanted it, like the first try.

So I kind of practiced like moving the knobs in time and making sure it was doing the right thing, so yeah.

- [Steve] Well, let's hear a little bit of this and then we'll talk a little more about.

Back in just a moment, we're gonna hear a 30-second snippet of "When the Serpents Swallow the Sun."

("When the Serpent Swallows the Sun ) Music Playing Okay, so we've got just a moment here.

Was this kind of a challenge for you guys?

I mean, obviously the call went out for this and you guys stepped forward to do it.

Would you, if you were, if somebody said, "Okay, today, create something else," would you create something similar?

Would you have a different view now after creating these two pieces?

- I think I'm very happy with how this came out, but if I was trying to explore something different, maybe I would explore more the side of planetary music that Colin was talking about earlier, like Jonn Serrie and Vangelis.

- [Steve] Yeah, okay.

And yourself?

- I think mine, it would be another like a live performance, kind of violin pedal board piece because that has been my, quite of interest of mine lately and I wanted to explore that and I just took this as an opportunity to explore it.

And one of my pedal is called Microcosm, so it kind of fits the theme of like space and it has a very spacey sound so I think that's a very good sound world to kind of play in and maybe come up with something different within that structure.

- Well, they've all been, they've all been intriguing.

I mean, you listen to 'em and you can hear, I guess the nice thing about all of these clips, all of these compositions you've done is people are going to hear, everybody's gonna hear something a little different and draw a different sort of feel from it.

You've got a general idea of what you wanted, but people are gonna interpret it and that says something about the compositions you've put together.

So thank you so much for being with us here today and good luck on the eighth and I'm sure the music's gonna be well received and once in a lifetime thing for you guys and for everybody else that day.

So thank you so much.

- [Hayden] Thanks for having us.

- All right, thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- [Steve] You can check us out at wbgu.org and of course you can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

(upbeat music)