Composition Diary Mk II

After months of not posting, I have decided to reevaluate my goals and start composing regularly again. Given my reasons for creating this blog, I can understand how the lack of entries appeared as a sign of me abandoning composing altogether; however, this was not the case. It was more my attitude towards composing that changed during this time. I became too concerned with achieving the end result and lost sight of why I commited to doing 40 mins of composing a day in the first place.

The main problem was trying to sequence the ideas I already had into a bigger piece. I became very frustrated when the individual sections didn't join smoothly and ended up dreading the whole composition process because of this! It is very easy to become uninspired trying to work through a composition from start to finish. Your unconscious mind does not work like that. The whole point of the 40 mins is to give the compositional part of the brain a workout and to train it to generate states of flow and inspiration automatically. It is a time to get as many ideas down as possible without thinking about whether or not they're up to scratch. Chances are they are all up to scratch. You should thank your critical mind for all the fantastic unique work it has helped you create in the past and ask it to find new ways to help you that are less negatively stressful during any creative process.

I am now looking forward to composing often and approaching it with a sense of fun and adventure, integrating all aspects of my life (=learning) and noticing the states of inspiration as they come more frequently with practice.

Finding flow in the songwriting process

I went well over 40 mins writing and rewriting the poem about my grandfather. The rewriting was on the stuff I'd come up with over the last couple of days. I decided to change it so that it featured more third person and the verse structure was simpler. I think I'm just about finished. I didn't expect to get to this stage tonight, but I got on a role and ended up doing about 80 mins worth of work. The key was to start with a vague concept of what each verse was going to be about and how they would colour the refrain: "there's always something to leave behind." Then, once I had established what the rhyming pattern was, it all poured out of me.

I decided to try and complete the last verse tomorrow. It will have a couple of extra lines to give emphasis to the twist on the refrain. In the first four verses, the refrain "...leave behind" refers to the inevitability of moving away from things in life, or being moved away from. In the last verse I want the refrain to refer to what you leave behind in death being the consolation.

I am not going to broadcast this poem over the internet or by any other means because it is written for a specific occasion and there are some things that should be kept as a one off. It is for my family, not for peer review. I just wanted to share my breakthrough regarding the actual writing process and am pleased to say that I will be writing words in addition to music more often. Put Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics on your shopping list. It will show you a lot.

Acoustic metal and songwriting ideas

Songwriter's songwriter Nick Wilson and I had a much needed writing session on the acoustics this afternoon. I felt like we were challenging ourselves with the parts we were coming up with. I am looking forward to testing these out on the electrics at the Tetanus Rig jam tomorrow. The reason we prefer to write the guitar and bass parts acoustically is because it allows us to squeeze more musical arrangement out of a song's lyrics and melodies. Many times we have left a jam on the electrics unsure of the bogan riffs or arpeggiated chords that we have come up with. Anything that compromises the importance of structure or development over repetition will get junked.

Group writing and collaboration can also be a strange mix of the spontaneous and the deliberate. I often say that improvising in a group really exposes a musician's ability and breadth in listening. This is even more true for group composition because there is a higher level of mental engagement required. This is the essence of flow (which I mentioned in the previous post), where an individual's strengths are being used to overcome a challenging task. The sensation of losing track of time is one you often get from being in a state of flow [1]. Our writing session today suprisingly lasted roughly two hours.

Tonight I dedicated my 40 mins composing time to lyrics and it went better than I anticipated. I am trying to write a reflection of my grandfather's life and how much he means to all of his family. For a while I have had a vague idea of the verses describing different stages of life, where they all colour the refrain: "there's always something to leave behind" in different ways. I was happy with the ideas I came up with for two verses tonight, even though I didn't quite nail the word choices or the rhythm. One of the biggest things I've learnt is that it is important to get the ideas down first and then polish them later, rather than getting stuck and labouring over one line before giving up entirely [2].

I mentioned a couple of ideas that I must attribute to the following:

1. Sydney Psychologist Aleks Srbinoski's program Fulfilling Happiness (I composed the music in this program. Visit http://www.fulfillinghappiness.com/ and scroll down to the "Sample 1" link to hear some of it)
2. Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics - http://www.patpattison.com/home/

Pitch lessons and Bach

I finally got to composing at around 10.30pm this evening, after returning from my first rehearsal with the Illawarra Choral Society for the year. We began hectic preparations for a performance of Bach's Jesu, Priceless Treasure and some of the chorales from his St. Matthew Passion. I also started learning some Bach pieces on classical guitar at my first lesson back this year. Why all this Bach? I see it as an important part of my musical education. What better way to learn about four-part harmony and the twelve-tone system than to analyse a Bach score? I haven't done any analysing yet, but already I am suprised with how my sight reading has improved from singing Bach tonight.

I have decided to dedicate 40 mins a day to composing. This might not seem like much, but if I didn't do this I would compose for 3 hours one day and none the next. Self-discipline has to take precedence over the delights and dangers of creative flow ("flow" is a psychological concept that is worth looking up). I didn't make much progress tonight. I got stuck on trying to work out the dynamics of one bar and when I finally got to composing the notes for the next one, my time was up and I had to force myself to stop.

I had some thoughts while listening to Mahler's 5th today. I wondered if his dramatic genius had something to do with his unique ability to synthesise vastly opposing themes and motives, so that the rivalry between them became the foundation for a movement. This could be an idea to keep in mind for both the overall structure of a piece and the orchestration from bar to bar; however, I don't think it works without having an advanced understanding of texture and detail. I have the feeling this ties in closely with visual arts as well.