The Project
At this point in the journey, we come to a crossroad. As you many have noticed, the first few installments of this project came rather regularly. As with most things I do, I have fallen behind somewhere along the way and now I get to play “catch-up”.
Before that, let’s do a quick project recap for those that are new. This is a journaling process for the creation of my first pieces of music as a true solo artist. Each week (mostly), I will post a new blog post with some updates to the process, new excerpts of music in the writing process, exclusive excerpts from the vault (otherwise known as a giant folder of scrapped ideas that I never planned on sharing), and other fun experiences. This is in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Careers in Music course that I am enrolled in, but, more importantly, it is a major step that I have been meaning to take for quite some time. I have been writing music for years and, I believe, my first original piece of music came about in 2017. Most of the time, I work as a commissioned collaborator or a freelancing performer. This means that I have written, sound designed, and recorded quite a bit of material over the past several years, but a majority of it is not material that I can post as a portion of my solo portfolio.
The Resistance
So that sounds great, right? Yes! Until you miss a day and then the deadline sets in. Luckily, I have a plan for when things like this happen. When I was younger, I would have stayed up late and pumped out the worst sounding and most-uninspired piece of music ever just for the sake of the deadline. Somewhere along the way in my Master’s degree, I figured out that is not the right way to approach missed deadlines for me. I believe this to be a combination of learning through failure and the COVID-19 pandemic, which fit squarely into my Master’s degree studies. I learned that I am completely unmotivated to make music or do academic work that seems to have seemingly arbitrary deadlines. I am also completely uninterested in producing work for the sake of making the deadline. While this assignment does not have arbitrary deadlines, it does require creative work to make that deadline. Now, I don’t want to sound as if I completely ignore deadlines for creative work. Most of my commissioned projects have important deadlines and I regularly tout to my students that the deadlines are one of the most important parts of being a music freelancer. I do my best to meet all of my deadlines, creative or otherwise, and I exercise this state of mind very sparingly. In this instance, I have been very caught up with some other projects and have been having some writer’s block. It’s not an excuse, but it is a reality. The only thing left to do, is to make sure that I take care of myself and try to find the time to sit down and write whenever I can. And I have been! Let’s listen to some iterations of some of the new works!
The Art
Before we kick into the new pieces, I have some fun old bits to share. In the time that I have been working on this project, I have grappled with its identity quite a bit. I like a lot of different kinds of music and I enjoy making in several different genre types. I am partial to lo-fi inspired music, ambient, and heavier synth-rock genres of a few different varieties. Here is a quick take on some of those ideas. This one is a personal favorite from the vault.
I also really love the idea of singing more. I’m also absolute shit at it. Here is a quick snippet of a song I hope to give justice with a cover one day. I love Nirvana. Fun fact: The first paper I wrote in my Master’s degree was a dive into the history of Dave Grohl and why he is the most influential rock musician alive.
So that leads us to the past few weeks. In my original project proposal, the last two weeks were set aside for second drafts and this week was set aside for deciding on final forms for the tracks. Because of some of the pivoting that I have been doing, I am still quite behind that schedule, but there have been some very significant strides made. Oftentimes, when I am writing, my first instinct is to shove all my ideas into a single piece of art. Most of the time, this translates into an overcomplicated and busy mess. My newest material is actually a great example of that. In the first iteration, there are pieces of what I believe will eventually become three completely separate pieces of music. Let’s give this hell-raiser a listen.
Hectic, right? Well the second version only got more hectic. These two iterations actually were drafts from just a few days apart, though I didn’t date the first one. There was a lot of improvisation and idea sketching in between. I tried to avoid removing elements in favor of adding ideas until I felt that there was overcrowding and I could pick out my favorites. Here is that gem.
Last, but not least, we have the “final” draft. Of course, we can all agree that there is never really a final draft, but this is what will be considered the current final draft for the time-being. The most glaring difference is the lack of drums and the removal of some of the cluttered counter-melodies. This piece of music is a perfect example of a reason to remove elements. This track was always meant to be a slow-burn ambient work. The drums can get used somewhere else.
Additionally, this piece of music has some special meaning assigned to it. My parents currently live in a house that was owned and lived in by my great grand-mother and/or grand-father for a majority of my childhood. Outside of that house there was always a large set of wind chimes that sound so pleasing to the ear. Every year, I would go home for Christmas and think of sampling those wind chimes for a song. Every year, I inevitably forgot. This past Christmas, I finally remembered to record the chimes. I also recorded a new set of chimes that my Dad bought my Mom around the time that they moved in. They are a match in style, but sound distinctly different. The chimes heard at the beginning are the old set and the chimes heard at the end are the new set. This track is mean to be a representation of the relaxation that I feel at home those first few days in Eastman every year.
What’s next? More music of course. The next update should include some final drafts for both tunes. I will also be diving into some of the compositional process for these songs, including the newest tool, Ableton 12. See you there.
“With the lights out, it’s less dangerous. Here we are now. Entertain us.”
-Nirvana
Griffin Law Music 