Been working on the record, and coming up with some stuff I really like. It’s amazing how long I need to steep in a song, play back and play back until it’s in the marrow, then realize what to do next. Or, more often, what to trash. Hours fly by very swiftly.
But afterwards it’s not quite possible to step away from the process entirely. I forget I’m making dinner, and instead hear how the spatula relates to what I recorded earlier. I start to blend every sound together, and lose sense of the present moment altogether. It’s a little bit scary sometimes. The zone of musicmaking can become an all-encompassing psychic realm.
Sometimes when I’m meditating, my mind will drift to musical ideas, and I become spirited away to the point where there is nothing at all other than imaginary sound. The mind often drifts in meditation, of course, but not even strong emotions are capable of overtaking me as much as a melody can. I’ll realize I’ve been composing in my head, and have to pull myself back to the present with a great deal of effort.
I think it’s important to ride the line, and follow the inspiration while also maintaining wider awareness. These ideas and sounds are always out/in there to tap into, so it’s good to be skillful about how I jump in. I aim to live a balanced life, so I don’t have the luxury to always drop everything and “follow the muse.” Many great artists simply follow the inspiration, no matter what the costs, and it works for some of them, I’m sure. However, I want to be as good at listening to a friend who needs my help as I am to my own imagination.
So, in some ways it goes back to the issue of timing. Live a life where you can set up some good quality time to let yourself create, and go for it. There will be some seriously blurry lines between different areas of life, but in many ways that’s just the point of living. This is fucking Earth, after all. Samsara in a jar.
There are a lot of different ideas floating in this post. Issues of living an interior life. Issues of creativity.
I am so new to music that I haven’t, until very recently, every composed music. But just in the last week I have been thinking about creating a solo on the drum that somehow reflects the idea of wind. (I have been asked to play at the Pentecost service at Grace.) Suddenly I am hearing my drum in my head all day long. Or playing on my chest when I have an odd, unclaimed, moment.
For me, creating the sound involves the visual, too. I imagine a leaf fluttering in the wind, carried here, carried there… and then play to that image. That’s how I am creating (discovering?) the sound of it.
Comment by Rachel Nguyen — April 1, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
There are many ways in and out of this process. I’ve done all manner of improvisation exercises–i.e. “play yellow” or accompany the life a wave, from horizon to shore (empty beaches are great places to work out musical ideas)–and some scoring for film and dance, but I’ve been more and more interested in just creating sound for its own sake. It’s difficult for us to hear the sound of sound, without adding other things on top of it in our minds. And now I’m including lyrics, which naturally suggests representation. Interestingly, when I listen to a song, I usually pay more attention to the sound of vocals than I do to the lyrics. They are important, but I don’t view (hear) them as narration for the whole.
Some people simply don’t have control of what they see when they hear, as in synesthesia, which has always fascinated me.
Comment by Jason McGill — April 3, 2009 @ 2:39 pm