I just need to write... to get it all out. It keeps penting up inside of me, no matter what I do. I'm trying to stay on top of things, to time manage to work on all my classes & projects, but it's just so ridiculously overwhelming... well maybe not overwhelming, but it's so unsatisfying. I'm really getting sick and tired of classical music. It's uninspiring and anachronistic... there's so many different ways to make music & I want to create & experiment. Classical music just doesn't have any outlet to do that with (sure there's classical composition, but that's so limiting, because like I said, it's anachronistic, and more importantly, it's not what excites me)
Stuff that has been going well and fun are the following: Working with Reason. Just finished an audio recording project... now there's making music the way I like to... create different textures, layering things. writing & improving over... etc.. basically, recording & editing... The next thing that's been going well has been writing, though I haven't made as much progress as I'd like... I have this piano part & really want to write out a vocal melody for it, since I've got some lyrics... then I've got more to write... that stuff's really flowing thankfully, and all my work with improv. is really helping. I'm returning to Jordan Rudess' stuff finally (from his online conservatory - http://www.jroc.us) & now that I'm musically and technically more mature, it makes a lot more sense/means a lot more than it did the first time I explored it (damn am I glad it's a lifetime membership!)...
I guess that's part of the good thing about being in school for music & constantly doing all this classical stuff, it's given me a foundation & a method... but I just find myself constantly wondering how much more I can actually benefit from this ... even though it's inherently helpful, it's just so far from what I want to do...
One of my teachers passed on a mailing she got for an Artist in Residency Program w/ a community symphony orchestra... requirements were I think 3 concertos a yr. & sitting principal cello with a stipend of $30,000 ... now, even if I was at that level, my immediate reaction was "I'd never want to do this, I'd be unhappy and miserable" & I passed it on to the other cellist, who also wasn't interested. To clarify, $30,000 seems like a tremendous amount of money to me right now, but I think I'd be so unhappy in an orchestral setting, I'd rather not go for something like that at all (It's also in Alabama, but that's in the details...).
I was thinking more about this as the day went on, and particularly in the last few hours, and I realized, the symphony orchestra is extremely boring. It is one of the only ensembles where you will have 10 instruments playing the exact same thing!! Not 10 different instruments w/ different timbres, but 10 instruments that are pretty much exactly the same playing the exact same thing... what about tonal variety anyone??? I've pointed this out before, that an orchestra's size could be reduced through the use of amplifiers (and then we'd be able to do much more complex music, not to mention be able to hear the damn group), but the classical people always have reservations about the sound, and the fact that it "just wouldn't be the same" ... it's so fucking frustrating... there's no experimentation... everything has to be exact and fit in to a little stupid preconceived notion of how things should go... performing shouldn't be about exact replication. It should be about expanding, about arranging. That's why I like the jazz classes I take, there's that element of doing something more... even still though, it always seems to be following a formula (a lot of the time anyway) ... seems to be fitting itself into a box... guess that's where MIDI Band comes in... it's an entity to its own... it doesn't have much of a tradition (electronic music is in my opinion one of the most non-traditional styles out there)
So I sit here frustrated.. I've just played guitar for an hour messing around with my Multi-FX pedal (which, now that I have the instruction manual, actually makes sense to me) & I got a lot of this out & experimented & found some cool tonalities & patterns, and I'm just thinking to myself that making music that way, or improvising over loops in reason, or fooling around with layering & panning & audio engineering is what I really want to do. It's always been the stuff I've connected with & been excited by and all that... it always will be...
Someone asked me what I wanted to do with music... well people ask me that all the time ... my answer is that I want to be in a rock band. I mean that seriously, that's what I want to do professionally. Writing rock music, and collaborating is where I get the most fulfillment from. I realize that it's not pretty & glamorous all the time, and I certainly wouldn't be in it for the fame or any of that bull shit. I also realize that it's extremely hard to make it as a band, and that finances will almost always be tough. But the other thing that I really want to do, that I can see myself being happy in is I want to freelance, and that's got basically the same set of problems... I think realistically I'll do both. I need to be doing a lot of things at once. I have so many different musical impulses & by not exploring all these different areas, I feel stifled...
So in that context, with a year left of school, and a (year in between) ... I raise the question (almost daily ... particularly every time I think of giving Julia Lichten a call)... Is Grad. School worth it?? Does it make any sense?? If so, do I really want to do a performance program, what about a composition or audio engineering program...
If anyone has any thoughts, they're greatly appreciated... if not, thanks for taking the time to read... I'm gonna have a few more posts following this, focusing on Amahl, recent purchases & inspirations, the concerto competition, Emily Wright, Greg Sandow, my brother & anything else that might cross my thoughts...
P.S. Just to clarify, there are plenty of things in classical music that inspire me, plenty of people, both alive and dead, as well as works. I don't mean to diminish those. I want to give special thanks to Emily Wright, Greg Sandow & Eric Edberg, Steven Isserlis, Hillary (my student), Mike Meade (my teacher) & all the musicians and teachers I've worked with and really had a great time with. There's something fulfilling about this classical music stuff, definitely... just not when I'm confined to it...
2 comments:
I have to think any thinking college student would have to end up thinking like you are. In high school, while my thinking was not as advanced and as detailed as yours, I felt if I majored in music in college (my trombone days) eventually I would feel as you do now.
On the other hand, there's aspects to the music-making thing that give great pleasure and meaning to a great many people. Everyone must find there own place in the music universe, be it as performer or facilitator, teacher or student, innovator or historian. But whether any or none-of-the-above, always as listener.
Two things to remember:
1: you always go where you're pointed. Look at what you're doing and make sure it's on the trajectory that leads to your goals.
(1a: I was not so good about this and discovered my deep love for teaching when injuries curbed my performance career for a while) (which leads me to #2)
2: when the long term ideals and life questions make you feel like you're suffocating in the combination of infinite possibility mixed with ennui, think nano. A happy life is a series of happy moments chained together, and you have to choose to live in a purposely upbeat way. It is definitely a choice, and not always an easy one! You can't give in to the pessimism that so seductively calls out to us at every impasse, my friend. Chin up, and be happy with your life as it is: it will change, because everything changes.
And about classical sickness: I find that it's the people who suck the love out of it, not the music. It is another unique voice to the human experience, and I dare you to listen to Jackie and her Elgar, or Boulez's Shostakovich 5, or my man Torleif Thedeen play the Bach Suites and not be compelled, if you allow yourself to be truly vulnerable to the experience. Classical music is not either/or to rock and experimental styles. It is necessary to the genesis of those idioms, and an addition to it. But sometimes you just need to let it rest for a while so you can enjoy it again. And it will be there, just as you remember, when you pick it back up.
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