Okay, so I’m new at the whole ‘writing-cohesive-pieces’ sort of thing.
I’m a jazz trained pianist, and I’ve been doing quite a lot of classical work in the last two years. This means my primary music education involves strictly technical work sitting at the piano. The most involved I got with the technology side of things was recording a couple times in my friend’s basement, using his recording equipment. This was back in 2002, and we used a Fostex tape deck. Joy.
I own four keyboards, including a Wurlitzer electric piano from the 1960’s and a Roland synth from the mid 1980’s. That’s about it though. I own no software, nor do I currently even own a computer that may run that kind of software.
I’m the nerd among the other nerds that just played lots of scales and actually did what the teacher asked. In high school, rather than occupying my time trying to imagine what “blowjob parties” would be like, I spent that time trying to figure out why a major 6th chord voiced a certain way sounded so powerful. Not to say I didn’t love blowjobs, but I’d rather miss out now and end up getting more of them while on tour doing something awesome – like playing the major 6th chords.
In a jazz setting, people get together and literally improvise over the chord structures of a tune. There is a culture, a mentality, and a set of particular methods of practicing that accompany this. I was exposed to this in high school and much more during college. As happens a lot in college, your tastes and assumptions about the world and yourself change pretty frequently. For whatever reason, they weren’t headed in the same direction as the jazz-heads, so rather than try to assimilate, I made the decision to try something different. I had no real impetus for making the decision, except that I noticed myself becoming far more frustrated than I usually did every time I left a jam session.
“We get in the room, and play a few tunes, jerk off over them, and occasionally they go somewhere. We stop, congratulate ourselves. and leave the room with nothing for posterity.”
I just got kind of tired of it. There had to be more options available musically that I could fall into and love.
After trying a bunch of other failed ideas, I came to the conclusion that maybe there wasn’t any “scene” or whatever that could make me happy enough to feel good about myself. Maybe I had to invent one.
Great. That sounds naively romantic and legendary, and like a completely fucking endless amount of work. Inventing a scene. Or genre. Or whatever.
It could SUCK for all I know, and from what I’ve produced already, it is just barely escaping the void of suck. But I don’t care. I love doing it. And I love thinking about it and thinking about getting better about it. And I love the feeling that one day I’ll be good and free enough to do precisely the things I want to do. Its just some work I have to take care of in the meantime.
