Episode 3.8 - Tyler Mazone
Episode 8 welcomes Tyler Mazone, composer, clarinetist, educator currently based in East Lansing, Michigan. Tyler is incredibly open and honest with us, talking about his musical journey as a deaf musician, ableism within the academic scene, and the fact disabled musicians are often left out of the DEIA space. There is so much to be done in the musical community to bring true accessibility to disabled individuals, and we chat about a few of the changes that can be done at any level!
To learn more about Tyler and the resources he recommended, visit the links below:
This is the joint account of multiple disabled students who were kicked out of John Hopkins University when they needed accommodations and were met with horrible treatments. Content warnings for anyone triggered by abuse and harm in some of the stories, but this is an excellent resource to really understand the wide range of experiences of ableism in academia.
Full Transcript
Carrie Blosser 0:00
Welcome to the third season of Diversify the Stand. Together, we speak with a wide range of musicians who talk about topics that are important to them. I'm Carrie Blosser.
Ashley Killam 0:08
And I'm Ashley Killam. We're so excited to dive into talks with a whole bunch of guests to see them. If you like following along and are a fan of our podcast, please leave us a five star rating and review.
Well, Tyler, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to talk with you.
Tyler Mazone 0:29
Oh, thank you for having me on today. I'm Tyler Mazone. I am a composer, and musician and clarinetist. Well, I mean, it's just, I just kind of do a lot of things. I am someone who enjoys video games, reading books, walking outside. In fact, today I was on a walk just to get some fresh air and things like that. And, and then I got lunch on the way home. And now I'm here. And essentially, that's just my introduction for you today.
Ashley Killam 1:00
Awesome. Well, we'd love to start just by hearing about your musical journey and kind of how you got to the point that you are.
Tyler Mazone 1:07
So as I said before, I'm a composer. But I didn't start off like that. So essentially, my musical journey starts off back when I was a kid. I never really participated in music class that much like I was just kind of mostly just kind of mumbling through the songs that we were doing and everything in general music classes, and it was just kind of hard for me with all the lyrics and everything. So I never growing up, I never really listened to a lot of music that has lyrics in it like fast anything with lyrics, literally. And then essentially we started playing the recorder in third grade. And that's when I found Oh, you know, this is an instrument that, like I don't need to understand the lyrics to be able to digest the sounds and obviously it was the typical very bad third grade recorder playing the kind doctors gives you tinnitus and everything. But even then I, I was interested and part of why I was interested was, if anyone knows the show SpongeBob than I was interested in the recorder as a way for me to get to the clarinet. And there is a character if you don't know the show, there is a character named Squidward who, ironically, he's an octopus. He plays the clarinet. And he was my fav- one of my favorite characters in the show growing up. So that's why I fell in love with the clarinet. That is why, that is why I went for clarinet when my first choice on this sheet of paper was trombone to how did that happen? Then around that time, I started playing video games, and my first real video game that I was actually dedicated to was um Super Mario Galaxy. Now if you're not aware of what Super Mario Galaxy is, it's a video game about the video game character Mario going into space. And you know, I love space. So that was an attractive video game for me. But the music in that video game is kicker that got me into music is the kicker that like exploded my love for instrumental music because the soundtrack of that game is just amazing. Like, I'm getting emotional just talking about it. And, and the soundtrack in that game is what got me to really love instrumental music in general. And, and again, being deaf. It was always a challenge, just understanding the music and getting familiar with the sounds and all that it's just, it was a challenge to wrap my head around that. So like, you know, even though I love these video game soundtracks, like learning how to play the music, and like sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade band, it was a challenge for me to kind of wrap my head around concepts like articulation and intonation both of which I am good at now, like, you know, but it was just, it took me a little bit longer than everyone else to wrap my head around, and my teachers really had to work with me one on one a lot. And that continued through high school, and through college, even when I had to learn how to sing for the aural skills classes. And yeah, that that was a struggle that I went through. But through that struggle, I discovered the art of composition because that started because that was something I was interested in creating my own sounds. And I found Noteflight which is like you know, this very crappy notation software, but you obviously have to start somewhere. So that's how I found it. I was like, oh, you know, I can make something cool. I like what I'm hearing in my band classes, like I can make these cool sounds. And it was cool for me to be creating. And I wrote my first big piece in high school. Like I wrote a couple of big pieces in high school and And I wasn't very serious about it, I was more of a hobbyist at that point. But when it came to junior year and trying to decide what I was going to do, I had just written my um one of my big suite, my big Suite for Band that doesn't exist anymore, but it was a big suite that was super ambitious for a high schooler to do, and I had played some pretty influential music at that point in my life, like that was a year of playing First Suite in E flat. That was, the year before I had play, I had one of my own pieces played by the high school band. And I had played Frank Tichel-, I had played a couple of Frank Ticheli tunes up to that point. So I was exposed to some pretty good stuff at that point in my life. So that was why I wanted to become a composer because I had heard all this awesome music that not all high schoolers get to experience but they should. And that was why I wanted to become a composer. And fast forward to college, I've had a lot of experiences that have only strengthened my goal to become a composer. So last century, my musical journey in a nutshell,
Carrie Blosser 6:10
That's great, thank you so much, you were just talking about the pieces that you started writing in high school, and you're continuing to write pieces, we would love for you to talk about how you go about starting a piece, and what your compositional process is like,
Tyler Mazone 6:27
okay, so, um, my compositional process has changed a lot through the years I've been composing for 10 years now. And it's changed a lot. And it changes from piece to piece, like if I'm running a trumpet piece versus a clarinet piece versus a band piece, versus a string ensemble piece, versus a vocal piece, which are all things that I have written in the past, the process differs. And there's a couple of factors that kind of go into that, which is mainly just the message that I want to convey and the sounds I want to convey, like for a trumpet piece the trumpet piece triumph and scherzo, obviously, I want a triumph and a Scherzo. So my process is going to involve building that world in which I meet the expectation that I am giving you, you know, and I've added in other pieces, like my symphony, that piece is extremely emotionally charged. So essentially, is a grade six, bam, piece is quite difficult. That Symphony was about me going through a dark time and how my dreams helped me get through a very hard time in my life. And for that the process was different. That process was just mostly about the journey and how I wanted to express it, how I want to express that journey. And I was writing a piece as I was going through the journey, but I knew what my goal was. So my process was very much about that goal. And getting there from where I was from the mental space I was in at the moment. So like, it was a weird process where I began the peace knowing where I wanted to go. But I didn't know how I was going to get there. So essentially, that's what that was. So it differs from piece to piece. But But across all of my music, there's one thing that is very prevalent, and that's improvisation and being able to kind of build a piece off of an idea, essentially just an idea on motive that keeps coming back. And I'm just like, Okay, here's the parameters, I the emotional parameters, I want the sound parameters that I want, and my instrumentation and my format. So I'm improvising within the parameters to get me what I want. And it can be a long process if you don't quite know how you're going to get some place but it can be quite rewarding in other aspects. So I'm going to forward you a piece off To Be Free. And this is kind of relevant to you guys because that was the first band piece that I used Flugelhorn in and essentially To Be Free is about an emotional transformation and learning how to deal with my own emotions and to learn how to be fully engulfed in my emotions and love. So essentially the piece is um, a tour there for stuff that goes through that journey of understanding your emotions and opening up and the cover photo is very beautiful is a flower and its about you know, it's about letting your emotions blossom. And I think you'll all like it
Ashley Killam 12:59
I'd love to hear about just your experience moving through academia and kind of things that other musicians and educators should be aware of in regards to composers or musicians with disabilities.
Tyler Mazone 13:13
Yeah, I know this is where the diversify comes in, in the interview, because you know, disabled people often left out of DEIA efforts and whatever. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. That's something I want to touch on a little bit later. But as far as my experience, I talked a little bit about it in my introduction, but my experience in my early years versus my experience in late high school, college I'm very are night and day essentially. So my early years I was always super supported by the DHH faculty. So if you don't know what DHH is, it's a program that I was in, its Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It was a program that I was in and essentially we were given a classroom by ourselves and and it was just a classroom filled with Deaf people signing we, our classes were taught mostly through ASL, which is American Sign Language. And about and most of us, like, maybe, yeah, I think I want to say most of us were mainstreamed, which means that we were we would go to the classes that were just the classes, you know, I don't want to use the word normal because that's just like, you know, that separates us and I don't want to do that. So we were going to the mainstream classes, and it would just be us learning alongside other kids. And that was a good experience because Because essentially it was just and now some of the people would be in a DHH classrooms for most for the core subjects but for things like music gym art, those big three other core subjects that everyone participates in, we will go to those classes with the other classes, you know, and there was plenty of people on my DH DHH program that were in the bands, orchestras and choirs in my school district. And that was because we were encouraged by the staff to do so we were encouraged, Hey, you want to go do orchestra go do orchestra, we're going to send an interpreter no problem. And, and in that respect, it was accessible, because we were always pushed to do things outside of the classroom, because they understood that disabled kids should have a life outside of a classroom, you know, and, and that was wonderful in my school district to be doing. And, and that continued through middle school. But then the other flip side of that was in my college experience, where I attended my undergraduate, and I was expected to have to sing not in my aural skills classes, and be able to recognize all these other insane aspects of music, like, you know, hey, we're gonna make you listen to chords that have five notes in them about, and that was hard for me to wrap my head around, because, you know, I'm having to hear these things. And it's hard to describe it to people who can hear, but essentially, that was my experience was, you know, I, I'm not able to hear certain frequencies that other people can hear. So that was, that was a cluster to get through and essentailly, with the ableism that I've faced, it was always expected that I will be able to do things, just like the other students. And that's where my experience with ableism, as well as many others experiences with ableism come into play is that we're disabled people. And you should use the term disabled people because that's a because that does not detract from the fact that we are human. So that's, that's just a little note. But a lot of disabled people are expected to be able to do things at the same capacity as others. And that is very difficult. Because with classes you're expected to be there, you're expected to hand in homework on insane deadlines, you're expected to be focused every second, every second in the class, you're expected to be able to do public speaking flawlessly. Like those of the expectations are placed on a lot of people. And, and for me, my specific experience was that of being able to hear essentially something that I do not do as well as other people. And it took a long time for me to get through that, like even one professor told me that I should just do a non Music Major just because of my hearing. And, you know, she was like, you know, I'm not convinced that you could be a music major, I think you should just go make your own major that doesn't require that theory classes. And yes, Carrie that is exactly my reaction. I know, this is audio only. But what Carrie is doing right now is essentially a double facepalm. Thats the reaction that I had, but it was just really difficult. But I got very lucky because I got my third semester of taking aural skills one, I was lucky enough to get a professor that was like, Okay, we're gonna de-link music theory and aural skills, we're not going to make you take music theory again, because I had a chain four O's, and the past two semesters of theory, so they weren't going to make me do it again. So essentially, it was, like, once or twice a week, or something like that. Sitting in his office, just doing aural skills and learning how I hear and how I process things. And that extra time that he took out of his day to do that, like it was essentially, just a private lesson at that point, and in three months I went from being able to do absolutely nothing to pass in aural skills one with a 70. And I, that was the happiest day of my life when I found out. So it's just like, you know, that is a lesson and what can happen when you and a professor works together when the professor is willing to work with you to overcome something like that. And it's like granted the class that classes should be designed in a way that that shouldn't have to happen in the first place. The students should just be there thriving, like, you know, you guys know, Eris DeJarnett, Eris put out a tweet, they were saying that they had a class, and they did all these modifications to their syllabus, and their students thrived. And I was like, you know, that's what should be happening in the first place is essentially just allowing your students to thrive regardless of individual ability and being able to work at it together. Like that is what should be happening. And that's not what happened in my undergrad at first. But thats just a microcosm of ableism in the music world. It's just a microcosm. My experience does not speak for everyone. Because there are people who have had much worse experiences, anyways, thats essentially what happened with my specific experience to ableism in the music world like granted, I had good experience in the first several years of me doing music. And I think that's why I have a good foundation because I was allowed to thrive. But after that, it was just the music school had such a rigid environment that only allowed certain kinds of students to thrive advice very difficult for a lot of disabled people, especially when the music world is made up of a whole lot of disabled people.
Carrie Blosser 20:50
I'm so sorry that that teacher was so ridiculous. You mentioned earlier, disabled musicians are sometimes kind of left out of the diversity, equity and inclusion scene. And obviously, that is like a huge error that needs we need to be correcting in terms of, of music as a whole, just as you were mentioning, and you can speak to your own experience, or maybe some other things that you've seen, but we'd love to hear like your advice for improving kind of the inclusivity and accessibility in terms of music.
Tyler Mazone 21:23
Yeah, so all of them are glaring obvious of including disabled musicians in those spaces in the first place. I'm not going to talk about that, because that is an obvious like, obviously, you should be doing that one should be doing that. The I, the inclusivity is the part that dei committees and initiatives fail the most at. Inclusivity means accessibility to everyone. To me, personally, I don't care if they change it to an idea or not. I just think that inclusivity includes accessibility. So I think that's the part that I would think about. And I would also think about in terms of academia, but there was so much that is such a loaded question, but there was so much to cover in that like, especially like, um, experiences related to concerts, especially neurodivergent people who do not sit still for very long, very well. And I am one of those neurodivergent people, like I fidget when I am in a concert over two hours. So I'm not really going to talk so much about that. But as far as academia, I think what we could do what what hap- should be done as universal design for sure, in classes. And essentially I talked a little bit about that with um Eris's tweet, and Eris's class, you know, they were given open deadlines, they were having a not so stringent attendance policy, and a couple other things that I don't remember off the top of my head, but they had all these awesome things in their syllabus that should be done, you know, and our students are able to thrive, like allowing technology to facilitate learning, allowing for people to zoom in, if necessary, or record in your class so that it can be given to those who cannot come into the classroom, especially since we're going through a global pandemic right now. But there are many people who cannot be in a classroom. Like I am not in that category. But I know many people that are and essentially they are left out those disabled people are left out of the active academic sphere when it comes to the pandemic. And essentially the pandemic were supposed to be this great equalizer where, okay, we need to learn to accommodate everyone, because now we're all in this online space, which is the most accessible space that you can have. But for as far as in person classes. I think a lot can be done regarding attendance policies, homework policies, and access to General Accessibility and format that can be adjusted a lot to help that inclusivity environment, because Eris reported that every single one of their students thrived in that environment. So it's like, you know, if you want your students to pass your class, like I see so many professors preaching, hey, you need to pass this class, why don't you give them the opportunity to be able to pass and for them to be able to engage and be interested in the subject matter? I think is super important for that inclusivity bubble that we often fail at in dei communities and initiatives. So essentially that's my advice is universal design. And I'm teaching lessons right now for composition. And I am doing that I am not giving my students a whole lot of work, I am very open, whether they want to meet on Zoom or in person, things like that. And when I start teaching next year as a graduate assistant, I'm going to be importing those things, because I think it's very valuable, it would be very valuable to see what kind of effect that has on students being able to learn, you know, because you can't learn if you're not at your best. That's my philosophy.
Ashley Killam 25:33
I mean, I think a lot of that too comes down to communication, and just keeping the communication open and not being afraid, ask what people need, so they can be their best self. And then you can take that advice and continue to apply it in all future classes.
Tyler Mazone 25:51
Yeah. And the thing that I would, that I would also consider is like, you know, for classes and things like that, consider having, the bases, basics covered by video captions on your videos, and audio recordings or a transcript handed out to the student, those attendance policies, because there are people with chronic illnesses, that they have a flare up, changing the attendance policies will allow those people to thrive as well. Also recording your classes, if someone can't come into the class for any reason, like having those basics covered, like often it is a hassle for disabled students to get paperwork and things like that through the accommodative Services Office, or whatever it is called at an institution. It is a very long and difficult and sometimes debilitating process, especially for someone who may be undiagnosed. So having those bases covered ensures that your student can thrive sooner, and not have to ask for these things and not have to fight. Like obviously, if there's something extremely specific, then yeah, you can work that that can be worked out. But otherwise, just having the class be universally designed, will ensure every single student their best chance of success, even if they might not understand the material, well, they at least have a road to success, they at least have that you know,
Ashley Killam 27:19
Definitely to all of this, Carrie and I know we both completely agree and none of this work to make spaces and make syllabi and make your classes truly inclusive doesn't take that much work. But it just takes thinking ahead to make sure you know, you, you know you have that mutual respect in the classroom. So if someone needs something, or if they have questions or anything that students can come to you to ask and you know, we have an open mind to make changes that will better everyone.
Tyler Mazone 28:03
Yeah, and essentially that's also just kind of being a respectable human being and just be understanding and commute. Ashley communication. You talked about communication earlier, I think that's a very big part of it is communicating that, hey, I'm someone you can trust on your guide in this journey.
Ashley Killam 28:23
And then our final question for you today that we asked all of our podcast guests is what's on your music stand this week? And how are you diversifying your stand?
Tyler Mazone 28:35
That's a hard question for me to answer cos my stand has always been diverse, you know, it's always been diverse, like I I've always filled my um. I've always done score studies I've been I like, obviously there's some things that I play thats like, you know, diverse, you know, as far as my score study and the music that I taken is by all sorts of different people. But what I want to talk about specifically is I have a research project going right now that's, um, very wide, very a wide swath of people, essentially my research project from last semester that I'm continuing right now we're just talking about is finding music by a bunch of disabled people. I have Stevie Wonder on there, David Byrne, he is neurodivergent not a lot of people know that David Byrne is neurodivergent um, I have Dame Evelyn Glennie. I have Christine soon Kim, who was a sound artist, so I don't have classic, I don't have just classical. I have Gabriela Lena Frank. I have all these different kinds of people that have different experiences, like some of them are neurodivergent. A couple of them are deaf one is blind, one is neurodivergent and I'm gonna be continuing this work. And essentially, I'm going to be designing a class about experiences in music like how how do you move a lot of people's experiences differ from the typical model American music education, like that is a very specific context that I'm putting it and but it's important that I do that because I'm like, you know, this is how I can connect, can contextualize all this information and be able to have students speak up about their experiences that may be different from a typical expected classical music experience. So it's just um, that's essentially how I've been diversifying my stand for the past semester or so. And as far as playing my band conductor at Michigan State, Arris Golden is doing a program with the O'neal Douglas there's um, Julie Giroux is on there, Dwayne Melbourne's on there, Hailstork is on the program. So she's and she, so she's programming a lot of this music to tell a story about like, not as well known facts of American history. Like, you know, there's a piece on there called Harriet, that is one of my favorite pieces of all time. It's very cool. And Douglas O'Neal kind of goes into some not as well known aspects of the Underground Railroad. And he explore some folk tunes in the piece that are very good. And it's such a great piece. And as a bass clarinetist, there's, I'm enjoying it 'cause there. There's a huge bass clarinet solo in the second movement that's based off of one of the songs that O'Neal is using, you know, so that is a really cool part of things that I'm doing this semester in Concert Band with, Dr. Golden.
Carrie Blosser 31:54
that's fantastic. Tyler, thank you so much for joining us.
Tyler Mazone 31:58
No problem, there's a fun time to talk about this kind of stuff. And just to give a different perspective on a very common, but often underlooked experience in music, because because it's it's it, the statistic that I talked about with someone recently was pretty harrowing, you know, like, you know, like, you know, when you consider undiagnosed people, 75% of people in the music world have some sort of disability, whether that's on neurodivergence, a mental illness, or on physical disability, 75% of people in the music world have something going on. So it's important that we do not exclude that 75% Because by doing that, 75% of your force is gone. 75% of your potential pool of creativity is gone. I think that so many more people could be "successful". And I put that in quotation marks because because you know, success is relative. And it's important that we that we nurture all kinds of ideas of success. Like personally, my success is to help people with my music and help and help someone see the beauty in life with my music making. And that's why I write accessible music because there's so many community groups out there. There's so many amateur musicians out there, there are so many young musicians out there. So that's what that's what I'm after.
Carrie Blosser 33:37
Thank you for listening to Diversify the Stand. To support us and our projects, visit our website at diversify the stand.org.
Ashley Killam 33:44
And a huge shout out to Eris DeJarnett, who wrote the intro and outro music, the piece that we've been playing is Bored Games for two trumpets and fixed media, links to their website are in the podcast description.
Carrie Blosser 33:54
And as always, we ask our guests, what's on your stand?