Thursday, April 26, 2012

New Song Diary: Let's see where this goes...

A couple of nights ago I had an idea for a song.  Hooray!  One more to add to the pile of 850 other song ideas...

But this one was different.  Nearly all my song ideas come from musical ideas - and when I did my "12 Songs, 12 Weeks" project, I found that when I try to create a song based on movement, it results in painful failures.  So when this song idea started with visuals and then kept growing in my head, I was pleasantly surprised.

In the time between then and now (2 whole days), I've come up with some patterns, which then led me to a pattern I've wanted to put in a song for well over a decade.  It just seems to fit so nicely.

I'm excited to have something that seems to be coming together so fast, so easily.  I still have to actually WRITE something, but this is the kind of inspiration I've been waiting for.

Should this last over the next few weeks, I'll have worked on it a little more and can write more about it.  If not, well...851 song ideas in the closet!

3 comments:

  1. What do you write with, when comes the time to put your compositions down in writing? I've been trying to find the best system and I still haven't found something that really works well.

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  2. Hi Audrey,

    I was writing a response, but it got long and I think I'll make it into my next blog post! There are a lot of ways one can notate and it can't hurt to list what I've used before and currently. Hope you can wait until Monday? :)

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  3. Thank you! I'll wait, but... it better be good :-D

    Seriously, I've tried:
    - Composing in my head - which works, but at some point, you have to put it down in a definite form, otherwise you just keep going around in circles.
    - video/audio files: that's really hard to manage for anything other than keeping track of ideas on the spur of the moment
    - MuseScore, which works but seems ill-fitted to percussion instruments, and is a challenge to manipulate when you want to move whole sections around to try things
    - LMMS, which seems a little more suited to the task, but is harder to work with (I keep getting lost in the menus, and it crashes often, then I have to close/reopen). Plus it's not that well suited to percussions either. But it works better than other options I've tried.

    So... maybe you have other ideas, maybe not. But if you've managed to at least get one piece into some kind of final form, I'm thinking you'll at least have your usual interesting insight into the matter!

    So... Have a great weekend, and I'll read you on Monday!

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