Music
It makes me want to create again. I really want to get a piano, but with the pandemic, I’m not sure how I would move one into our home.
While I ponder that, I thought of an old hobby. I really excelled in band class, and even wrote musical scores. I was getting quite good, and the music teacher had us play one of my original pieces.
I showed it to my dad, who was impressed, but made a comment. Just one comment.
I had been “riffing,” on a familiar church song. I had written the melody out, then added harmony, then on the third time through the chorus, began adding riffs and trills to it. I was just playing around, but the computer program I was using would play back the music afterwards. It sounded cool!
Dad liked it, and excitedly said something like, “I bet not many other kids your age could do that!” Comparing me to others was always his way of complimenting me. Then he said, (still bright eyed and laughing, an expression I find hard to describe) “but of course you realize that if you do this, you’ll be doing exactly the thing you hate so much!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, taking a song and twisting it from its original.”
I searched my mind but could not remember saying that. Perhaps I had objected once to the way an artist sang a familiar hymn, and dad had taken that as my word on the subject. He had trained us to be critical of others, especially those on any sort of pedestal, and so likely I did say something like that. We were critical of everything and everyone back then.
I wasn’t really sure what to make of his comment. But as I recall, I stopped doodling on that program. When the music teacher tried to get the band to play my composition (he was quite excited about it) there was a minor problem (I had written the flute part one octave too low) and I just gave up. The program didn’t work with our new computer, and I didn’t try to get a new one. It all seemed suddenly very heavy to me.
I did play around with recording from time to time. But would always be very sporadic. Part of that was that once I married, my energy went elsewhere: into work, kids, and study. But also, there was a certain self-destruction about it.
It’s like I would try to create something “amazing.” Something better than others. Something to show off. I guess that’s how I was raised. Then I would realize how impossible it was to compete with mainstream studios and works-class musicians, give up, and hate my music before it was even done.
I would rarely get a track finished. Which is now really frustrating and sad. I would like to hear my sister year old self expressing himself musically. But I destroyed my tracks before they were finished.
I would like music to be part if this journey. Not music as competition, or trying to sell it or be famous, but music as expressing myself.
It will be hard, as I am out of touch with the software, and musically out if practice.
The best thing I can do now is not jumping to writing songs, but rather practicing music, playing the songs of others (something I used to be too proud to do), and learning the software.
It would be neat to write out my main songs in sheet music. I could even create a short songbook of my songs. They really are quite good, lyrically and musically, even if I’ve never gotten a good recording of them.
Who knows? Maybe I can put them online and someone else can talk them further? Or, even aside from that, they can be written, and a written expression of the art that o created, at a point in time.
That could be really nice.
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