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Artist Spotlight - Michael Klinger by Lori Russell With the click of the mouse, musician Mike Klinger selects the style of his newest composition from the menu on his computer screen. Another few clicks and he's laid in the chord progression, tempoand title. His fingers tap a melody on his "midi" (musical instrument digital interface) piano key-board, and the software in his laptop generates an accompaniment of drums, bass, piano, guitar and strings. Within minutes, he has an entire musical arrangement-complete with sheet music and anaudio track that he can play back, burn onto a CD, or email to friends or other musicians. People from all over the world come to Carson, Washington, to learn from Klinger the art of link-ing symphony and software, melodies and megabytes. Some are school-level music teachers tasked with inspiring the musicians of the future; others minister in churches, transforming music to prayer for their congregations. In Klinger, they find a man with a passion for combining music and computers, and the teaching skills to make it all look easy. Mike Klinger has been fascinated with music technology since the day he first plugged a piano keyboard into his Macintosh computer more than two decades ago. Before creation of the iPod and the MP3 player, this jazz pianist and former music-composition teacher at Mt. Hood Community College saw the potential for computers to change the way musicians wrote and shared their music. As he began to explore the possibilities, Klinger chronicled his findings and his excitement in letters to executives at Apple Computer Inc. "I sent 18 letters," he remembers. "I never got one back." Then one December, Klinger received a call from someone at the company's western regional office in Lake Oswego. Would he be interested in giving a one-hour demonstration at their upcoming holiday party? The celebration was well underway when Klinger arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon. "I sat down with 16 recorded tracks, three keyboards and my Mac, and showed them what I could do," he says. Afterward, a senior manager asked him how he would like to be compensated for his time. "I told him a new Apple computer would be nice," grins Klinger. The next day, his request was granted.
The success of the endeavor enabled Klinger to launch his own business. In the early years, he lugged 15 keyboards to the college comput-er labs in which he taught his workshops, arriving a full day early justto set up his equipment. As he traveled, Klinger began to dream of creating a retreat center, where music educators and ministers could studyusing state-of-the-art equipment. That dream materialized five years ago, when Klinger and his wife moved to the town of Carson. The Mike Klinger Music Technology Retreat, surrounded by woodlands and a wildflower meadow, hosts a 12-station computer lab loaded with all available music software, andthe latest midi and digital audio equipment. Students have come from Indonesia, Portugal, Africa and Japan to study music technology in the woods. Klinger teaches eight four-day seminars at the 3,800-square-foot facility during the summer, and weekend workshops each winter. Musicians and teachers who want one-on-one instruction can also come for private two-day retreats. In the studio, teachers learn to use integrated hardware and software to customize their music curricula and meet the needs of individual students. "A student or teacher can hook up an inexpensive midi keyboard to their computer, load the appropriate music-composing software and simply play the song in their head into the computer," explains Klinger."The computer reads exactly what they played and prints it out." With song-creation software, a student can type the chord progression, style and tempo of a song, and the computer will generate an accompaniment. The composer can then add vocal tracks using a digital audio program and then burn the new creation to a CD. Musicians who want to make their practice time more interactive can play along with an entire orchestra or band, using software that allows the student to play his/her instrument into a computer via a built-in microphone. When he's is not teaching in Carson, Klinger travels to visit teachers who can't visit him. Thanks to the improvements in computer technology, he can now carry his entire lab system in just two cases. Last summer, he flew to Wiesbaden, Germany; Atlanta and Tokyo to give workshops to more than 250 people who teach music to the children of U.S. military personnel at Department of Defense-sponsored schools around the world. Shortly after an exhausting trip, he received an email that made all that long-distance travel worth it. "One of the teachers wrote and said she had a student compose and record a song during their session together," he says. "They then emailed it to her father, who was serving in Iraq. He was able to listen to it that night when he returned to the base."
"With the affordability and ease-of-use of music software today, I see more non-musicians getting into this," says Klinger. "Eventually they do become musicians because of this technology. This then increases the pool of musicians and introduces more creativity in the music we hear today. This is the technology that is pushing music forward in today's world. "For all its benefits, technology cannot replace the experience of playing side by side with other musicians, says Klinger, who has four jazz albums to his credit. "My greatest joy in music comes when I can sit down at a grand piano and play with other 'live' musicians and hear and feel the instant interaction between them. Music technology is a wonderful tool and if used in a creative way, can greatly enhance the musical experience and growth of the individual." "With the affordability and ease-of-use of music software today, I see more non-musicians getting into this," says Klinger. "Eventually they do become musicians be-cause of this technology. This then increases the pool of musicians and introducesmore creativity in the music we hear today. This is the technology that is pushing music forward in today's world." Reprinted with permission from Columbia Gorge Magazine - 2006 |
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By the new year, he had been hired to teach workshops for school andchurch music directors at Apple dealerships throughout the Northwest.
The use of technology in school music programs is on the rise. Most colleges and universities worldwide have computer labs that are loaded with music theory and ear-training software that enable students to privately drill and practice. When the State of Washington implements a Music WASL(Washington Assessment of Student Learning) test system in 2008, students in the fifth, eighth and 10th grades will be required to compose a piece of music and digitally record its performance.