Ebuen Clemente's Piano Image from Unsplash

Composition Diary #3

7/3/22

Got this tune out of my head that’s been there since 2001 (I remember when it popped in – it was the 2nd semester at BU and I was stood outside the studio waiting for it to be unlocked. I remember the wood of the door, the window with the metal mesh in it, the old worn carpet…). So. Now it’s out. I don’t want anyone else to hear it though… So that might be a problem?

WIP.

Carbon Fibre Violin, Melodyne, GRM Tools (various), Reaktor Form, Alchemy, et al


8/3/22

I’m stuck.

I don’t like what I’ve written (or I don’t really feel anything about it).

I think I need a brief. 

Or I’m maybe a bit scared of allowing it to be crap before it goes anywhere. I’m fearful of throwing stuff at the wall in case it says that I don’t have any particular voice of my own and I need someone else’s brief now to write anything of value. 

Hah! How awful. I would like very much to prove this assumption wrong.

I wonder if I have nothing of value really to say. That it’s not the finding of the voice that’s required, it’s more that the content is missing. The world is an uncertain place now, more than I’ve ever known it to be in my life, and the uncertainties keep coming at me and mine.

What is the value of finding one’s voice and of the meagre content I feel I have to give at the moment when the world is in turmoil. Yes there’s the threat of nuclear war, yes a global pandemic shows no sign of going anywhere, and yes most of all we’re looking at climate collapse in a few short years if corporations and governments can’t get their act together on carbon, methane and waste reduction.

Amongst all that, I find myself asking again and again, what’s the point…

What is the point?

This might be a good place to start on said brief…

Reading a chapter of the Artist’s Way – it’s like she’s reading my mind. If I were inclined that way I might call it synchronicity (I’m not inclined that way, so let’s just call it happy coincidence), so maybe an ‘artist’s date’, doing ‘something nice’ for myself, and doing full-length morning pages rather than a quick 15 minutes will help. We’ll see.

Maybe I’m just burned out.

And then OF COURSE I shutdown Logic for the day and go to watch some youtube for a distraction then think fuck it let’s open a new blank file (not from a template, just empty space) and then just play on the keyboard. Popped some effects and some ambient background on it and it’s just fine and I found flow and used some of the techniques I’d learned in previous weeks with modulation.

And, you know what, it was just FUN. I needed that. Judgement withheld. It exists. That’s all that matters right now (or ever).


9/3/22

Something about using a gated sequencer on an ambient track or some of its stems to create a rhythm, and then undermining or shifting that rhythm or confusing it somehow to shift your perspective…

Rhythm not from percussive elements but from gating effects or sidechaining…

Using StepFX in Logic and also seeing if the Loops section in Logic is interesting or sparks some inspiration.

Also getting sidetracked with LPXColorizer because Logic’s colour scheme IS SO BORING I can’t even. Just opening the programme makes me tired. So much grey with the occasional mid blue. Reminds me of school uniform ugh.

Some nice sound effects were made today. Felt like I found flow again. The key is to not care – about what I think or what anyone else might either. None of this will see the light of day beyond my studio and that really takes the pressure off.

There’s something about an evolving yet piano-y starting sound that’s so playable. I could lose myself in it. Flow state achieved several times today. Lovely. Such a relief.