"I’m going to change who I am and become a winner." ~ Charlie Brown
A day in the life of a composer: In looking at three projects I should be working on, plus my teaching and other responsibilities, I realized that the calendar in my head is simply not enough. Yes, I have schedules for this and that, but they are jumbled together in my mind. I get frequent spurts of 'omg did I remember whats-it'. How I currently orchestrate my time is simply not good enough.
The calendar in my head doesn't plan for time off. Now, given the determination to be prolificly creative as well as be doggedly producing good quality cues, it might seem funny that my first thought was about 'time off'. Acknowledged.
One of the problems is, I love music. It's my art, my heart, my soul, my breath. The thing that lights me up inside. So when I have 'time off' what am I doing? Probably music. Or writing, as I like to pen stories, poems, lyrics... ah, blogs.
So I created a calendar using googlesheets. Oh, I know there's a google calendar but it doesn't work for me. I want something that looks like an old-fashioned appointment book where I can put 'music' at 1000 am and draw a line to 200 pm. I worked very hard on the calendar, setting it up for the rest of this month and one of the purposes of doing this was to be sure I had at least one day a week without commitments of any kind.
Because without that 'waking up with nothing to do' on a regular basis, I can't find the serenity to let things go and just be for awhile. I know I can find a couple of hours on a work day. But a whole day off is a completely different flavour.
I updated my website, soundcloud, etc, adding new tracks and removing some that felt too old and not as representative of who I am today. As we write, we evolve. Our knowledge and foundation is stronger. What was good before is still good. It's just not at the standard of today. One hopes.
After I finished that, I watched some videos on music theory - chords and major modes used in film composing. Some of it is still difficult to grasp but when I sit down at the piano and play a scale in Phrygian Mode, I start to hear it. Diatonic, eh?
To me this is a lot like grammar. I feel I have a fairly good grasp of syntax and composition in the English language. I know what a verb is, of course, but if you asked me to name off all the titles given to the words and phrases we use, I would be... well I'm ok with conjunctions and prepositions, but when you start talking past participles and stuff, I'd be lost ;)
Modes and scales of different types are like that. I've heard them, played them, and sometimes composed in certain modes, but without a clear idea of what made them different and what they are best suited for.
I also watched videos on what to practice and this is one thing I need to add in - more practice on the piano. Play the cycle of fifths. Now play it in first inversion. Play the scales in different modes. Now play a major triad in different modes and sing the intervals.
I was once told by a jazz teacher to just play the cycle of fifths every day. You might not see what it's teaching you but you obtain clarity over time. I think that is true of all of this stuff. Seems boring and arbitrary and then one day you're tinkering with a chord progression and inversions and something clicks. Like a language you suddenly understand.
Then I wrote up project notes for the three items I have on the task list right now, and began work on a new track, experimenting with textures. It's a work in progress. I will put it away for a few hours, and will come back to see what the muse and the ear wants to add. And then on to mixing, as it sounds muddy and unfocused to me at the moment.
https://soundcloud.com/hummingbird-26/barbarity-wip-sketch-mar-11-18/s-TpYva
That's what I did in my 'time off'.
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