Melodies Across Genres: Exploring the Musical Tapestry with Composer Roger A. Reed

Welcome to the latest edition of Caricature Conversations! In this issue, I am thrilled to present an exclusive Q&A session with the remarkable Roger A. Reed , a composer, musician, multi-instrumentalist, and music teacher extraordinaire. With his extensive musical background across various genres, Reed has shaped a unique approach to composing music that transcends boundaries. He graciously shares his insights on how his diverse influences have impacted his compositions and how he navigates different styles with finesse. Join us as we delve into Reed's creative process, his encounters with legendary musicians, and the profound connection between music and dance. Get ready to embark on a captivating journey through the living history of the musical landscape with Roger A. Reed as our guide.

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How has your extensive musical background across various genres influenced your approach to composing music, and how do you navigate different styles across in your compositions?

My music can come from an inspired thought, an intense emotion, or as the result of being asked to write something for someone to sing or dance to. Other than some 8mm home movies, I haven't had the opportunity to score a film, which I would still love to do.

My earliest influences were not the music of the late 1950s, when I began playing, as I never liked most of it, though I was an Elvis fan before he joined the army, playing his records when I was 18 months old, according to my sister and mother.

Piano rolls left behind with the player piano in the house my parents bought when I was 2, a mix of mainly 1920s-1940s pop and classical stuff, played a role. There were records in the house, vinyl LPs, 45s and a foot-high stack of shellac 78s. A lot of that music didn't suit me at all, but I heard it nonetheless.

Hawaii was getting statehood and we were inundated with pseudo-Hawaiian sounds, plus the Cha-Cha and Bossa Nova were big. The 78s gave me a glimpse into the earliest recorded sounds, acoustic recordings of Collins and Harlan, Mr. X, Honey Duke and his uke, plus some Tony Bennett, Glenn Miller the Dorseys and others.

I got some good LPs from my uncle Billy, a mailman who'd stop by every so often with "undeliverable" albums. That's how I first heard Les Paul. My mother was in the Columbia Record Club, so we had plenty of Johnny Mathis, Robert Goulet, Mitch Miller, Percy Faith, Rosie Clooney, and Jerry Vale albums. One day the soundtrack album for "Porgy and Bess" came as a bonus; she put Side 2 on first, "Morning; Catfish Row," and when she heard the beginning, a slow drum hitting at about 30 beats per minute, she took it off and started cursing the record for "skipping." I grabbed that album and still have it.

When I was around 8 she realized that I could play any song just from hearing it, and a decade-long sentence of entertaining her daily robbed me of all joy of playing. It was the chore I most detested, favoring dusting, dishes, trash, raking, anything over playing for her. Luckily, in 1966 I got on the Beatles bandwagon when I heard "Paperback Writer," and they showed me that there could be more to my musical life than playing "Alley Cat" and "Java" every day.

As importantly, from that point, I became open to more diverse influences because they set such an incredible example of that. By the time they broke up, I had been struggling but learning how to play guitar, writing and recording for over a year, and before long discovered a vast world of music outside of the pop charts. Miles Davis, Weather Report, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok and others became my gold standard.

At 16 I met Buddy Rich! He and his big band blew my mind. I had a golden opportunity at 18 to sign with Warner Brothers, so long as I agreed to be their John Denver. But I felt this would be a regression musically at a time when my palette was expanding, so I passed.

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Could you share some insights into your creative process when composing and recording music using multiple instruments and tracks? How do you ensure each instrument complements the overall composition?

Usually, I'll let the music form in my mind before starting to record. Then it's a matter of making the recording match what I imagined.

I'll leave some things for the player in me to invent while recording, for example a guitar or other solo, but most of the production, say 95% is pre-conceived, any backup vocals or horn parts, the reverb, the placement of instruments in the stereo field, the overall sound.

Depending on the arrangement, I'll start when possible on an instrument that plays throughout the piece, piano, guitar or drums, for instance, then fill in the blanks as I go. With true multitracking, it's a breeze (more or less) to mix things to my liking after the last track has been laid down.

Many years ago, when I was working with a machine that made "Sound on Sound" recordings (this was how Les Paul made his most iconic recordings), it was important to get the mix right the first time, as everything ended up on one track, and the end result was monaural, not stereo.

I learned to put bass on last, as it was most susceptible to "dropouts" and getting muddled after being transferred from left to right and back again a few too many times. Also high-pitched sounds (cymbals and other percussion, mainly) would end up "essing," a mishmash of high-end distortion, if put down early in the process and rerecorded more than once or twice due to the pre-emphasis built into most tape recorders to overcome the sound of tape hiss.

For 40 years all my recording was done on tape, including digital recordings on VHS cassettes with an Alesis ADAT machine. My favorite program, Adobe Audition V1.5, allows me 128 tracks; the most I ever used was 81, half of them for violins, violas and celli.

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You've had the privilege of crossing paths with a lot of other musicians including artists like Thelma Jones, Les Paul, Laurie Anderson, and Barry Harris. It is clear that you not only have a passion for creating music, but also have a deep passion for appreciating the talent of those around you and the living history you have been a witness to. How have these relationships influenced your musical and life journey?

I'm supposed to be this intelligent guy, but honestly, the only thing I truly understand in any real way is music.

I can appreciate the hard work involved in many disciplines, and had I not focused almost entirely on music, I probably could have excelled at something else in life. But music got hold of me at an early age, and my home life was such that my connection to it was my life raft, and even when I hated playing, I still listened to the music I loved.

So, when I encounter someone like Les, Buddy, or Jimmy Slyde (who was a superb musician with his feet), or am in the presence of someone like Miles, who I saw many times and interacted with on a few occasions but never formally met, or Jaco Pastorius, that is my idea of royalty. Those are the ones whose greatness I can wholly appreciate and feel comfortable emulating.

Politicians, preachers, people who call themselves "influencers," none of that means anything to me. Show me how you think with your playing. One's playing is like a fingerprint.

So, those interactions reinforced the idea that I need to be genuine in my own playing, to be faithful to the one thing that enabled me to end up an artist, and not a matricidal maniac.

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As an experienced musician and music teacher, what advice would you give to aspiring musicians who are just starting their journey in the world of music?

I teach aspiring musicians, but try not to advise them, if that makes any sense.

One thing I would deeply regret would be to pass on my distaste for what others might love.

I once had a very talented student who decided to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston. I wrote him a letter of recommendation, never betraying my true feelings on the place, having known many players who attended and graduated from it, some good players, some merely degreed.

I sat in on some classes there in my last year of high school, and while a couple were interesting and informative, I found the prevailing attitude in the place nauseating. Very competitive and equipment-envy-oriented, lots of big egos. A 45-minute analysis of two measures of Bartok's music without so much as a piano demonstration of how it sounded made no sense to me.

But I never burdened Ryan with all that. He got in, and after just one semester called me, saying "Can I come back to lessons?" I said "Sure, but what about Berklee?" His answer still makes me chuckle; "Place sucks. I learn more from you." So I taught him for another year or two. This guy is now a professional entertainer, gigging 5-6 nights a week. And he's written some great songs.

So the only "advice" I'm comfortable giving is:

1. Always play in time. Scales, songs, difficult passages, in time with a pulse, not just a beat, in order for every note you play to have significance;
2. Get as much as you can from your teacher if you have one, but do your own research as well. Don't expect one person to give you all the information. Even if they had it (and no one has it all), it takes years to share and secure that much knowledge;
3. Learn how to read music. Illiteracy is never an advantage;
4. Play every day, even if it's only for a minute or two, it's better than nothing. If you have time to brush your teeth, eat a meal, shower or bathe, watch TV, play video games or surf the Internet, there's time to play;
5. Read about the lives of the great composers and players; inspiration may be found there as well as in the music itself;
6. Never take Music Business advice from me.

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Your personal history with art across disciplines (music, art, graphic design, printing, dance, etc.) is quite fascinating, including your marriage to a Broadway dancer and dance instructor and friendship with tap legend Jimmy Slyde. How has your connection with the world of dance impacted your musical compositions, and what role does movement play in your creative process?

Dance, with which I only became familiar through my wife, has had a huge impact upon my music.

When I was on the road in the Top 40, restaurant, night club and hotel circuit, the dancers, to me, were attention-starved drunks that we had to keep sweating and thirsty on the dance floor in order to get paid. This aspect of The Biz was anathema to me as my father was an alcoholic, and not a happy one. When I was 24, I'd had enough.

Then I spent 7 years as a 2-way radio bench tech and salesperson, a position I studied hard to be good at and enjoyed. It was beneficial to have steady paychecks, time and money to devote to writing and learning more instruments.

When I began writing for young dancers in ballet, modern, jazz and tap classes, it was revelatory. Now, at 31, I was composing and recording music for specific classes, solo dancers and singers. My wife would ask me for a Fred and Ginger number, 2 and a half minutes, or a delicate 1-minute piano solo for a pre-pointe soloist, and she'd have it within a day or two.

Now that illness has more or less stopped me, looking back on my prolific years, I'm a little astonished. When I was doing it, it was just life.

One night one of Kathy's students asked me if I'd teach her guitar, and I couldn't think of any reason to say no. Then another wanted piano lessons. This was early in 1987, when I was running an offset printing press for a publisher of educational pamphlets. I've been teaching ever since, as well as making ends meet as best I could with other printing, electronics and painting jobs.

The printing jobs, from running a press, to camera room, pasteup, platemaking and 4-color stripping added a keener sense of layout and clarity to my musical manuscripts.

The electronics experience helps every time a piece of equipment breaks down, or a guitar cord needs fixing. I can solder, baby! Even housepainting, which I did much of with my father in the 60s and early 70s, trained me to swing a violin bow steadily, and on one plane. All that "cutting in" on windowpanes and door frames paid off.

Nearly every unmusical task that I've taken on has had a musical byproduct, and vice versa. When I ran a Rachwal platemaking system in the 80s, my supervisor refused to believe that I could shoot some number of pictures in a certain time period. 408 per hour, I think it was. He could have spent a minute observing my technique, but preferred walking away, shaking his head "No." I had learned the rhythm of the machine and worked with it. I timed myself. He wouldn't hear it, though.

Jimmy Slyde often said "If you can walk, you can dance" and I'm always imploring my students to use the same motor skills that enable them to walk at a certain rate to help them maintain a playing tempo, though sitting. "You don't have to wiggle your butt or make silly faces" I tell them, but, as Jimmy said, "Use the body. It's available!"

If dance can make someone move, a certain kind of dance is helpful in making music move. Very few musicians sit or stand motionless while playing. Even symphonic players move in time, most notably the flautists. You can even see toes moving in the highly-polished black shoes of the string section. Music is like an invisible dance.