Musical Challenges

I was chatting with my friend, Tendai, the other day and something very interesting came up that I have not thought about for a long time until he mentioned it. I was telling him about my electromusic class and how I was finding it difficult to work through the musical genesis process. He just reminded me that I needed to challenge myself and face my musical fears head-on. I would never get better at the process of composing electromusic if I don't break away from my desire to always have a melodic line. It makes sense but it's so hard to muster the confidence to go outside of my comfort range. It's something important for me to remember. Instead of just avoiding something I am not able to do well...I just need to suck it up and do it since I'm not going to get better without any effort on my part. However, I am not embarking on the world of nodal sound music for my final project but I am trying to push what I can do with the software and the recordings I have extracted. As well, I am convinced there are a few checkpoints with every musical process:

1. You are excited to start working on the project because you have some really cool ideas
2. You start putting pieces together and maybe are surprised and excited by some cool new sounds you were able to create but soon notice it is not as easy as you thought to realize your goal when you see how much work lies ahead
3. You're extremely insecure as you start formulating the piece but you continue anyway because you can't seem to detach yourself from the piece
4. You feel like what you have done up to this point sounds like complete rubbish and it is extremely frustrating and you consider scrapping the project entirely
5. You take a break from the piece
6. Hopefully, after some time, you come back to the piece and it sounds better than you thought it did
7. As much pain you had to go through, there are some truly rewarding moments where things sounds exactly right and it's enough to put you through this whole painful process once again

It's interesting how much time away from a project can influence your feelings towards it. I was tinkering with my piece today and instead of being frustrated at the ghetto Protools program in the studio and everything it can't do...I just left. It was better than doing something I would regret. I'm not sure what that would have been...since Protools is an inanimate entity...but it wouldn't have been good...trust me. Or worse, it would have been my piece that would have suffered. I am hoping after a two day break Protools will be more cooperative with me. I still have a lot of finishing touches and edits that I need to do on my piece but I am also at the point where I just want to get it finished. Thank goodness I have a deadline or else I could spend forever just playing around with it!

I am writing finals for the next week so I won't have a massive amount of updates but I will be competing with Belle Canto at the St. Albert Rotary festival on Friday. I am sure I will have some thoughts about our performance!

Until then, take care everybody!