I was really enjoying brainstorming some ideas tonight for a talk on Mahler that I am going to give to some Year 12 Music 2 students (Music advanced or Music extension, something equivalent to that). Here I was writing about ways I could motivate others to immerse themselves in music and how important it is to just create something or anything without trying to be good, when I realised that I had been slacking off on my own composing. I have been stuck at home all week with a fairly severe head cold, so I haven’t really felt up to it for a while.
I recorded myself singing and playing guitar for 40 mins tonight through the inbuilt mic on my laptop. I started off just trying to improvise for the duration with little hope of striking gold. A few minutes into my announcement of whatever sub-lyric idea I had over the same old chord patterns, I felt the self-loathing coming on; however, I quickly reminded myself that I was just warming up and that improvisation is a continual process of practicing and reviewing (hence, the recording).
I don’t think that I came out with anything particularly substantial, but this cannot be decided until I’ve listened back to the recording. It was a really excellent experience though, and I actually had a lot of affirmations about things that were not entirely related to music while I was sitting there singing and playing. I’m pretty sure I managed to capture some of these thoughts because I sang them. Thinking about this process now makes me really look forward to entering this state again. I will become better at describing it, as I practice it more often.
I recorded myself singing and playing guitar for 40 mins tonight through the inbuilt mic on my laptop. I started off just trying to improvise for the duration with little hope of striking gold. A few minutes into my announcement of whatever sub-lyric idea I had over the same old chord patterns, I felt the self-loathing coming on; however, I quickly reminded myself that I was just warming up and that improvisation is a continual process of practicing and reviewing (hence, the recording).
I don’t think that I came out with anything particularly substantial, but this cannot be decided until I’ve listened back to the recording. It was a really excellent experience though, and I actually had a lot of affirmations about things that were not entirely related to music while I was sitting there singing and playing. I’m pretty sure I managed to capture some of these thoughts because I sang them. Thinking about this process now makes me really look forward to entering this state again. I will become better at describing it, as I practice it more often.
