
Succinct transbien musician behind Lorelei and the Ghost.
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Profile Pic by @nomnomnami
So here's the thing... I'm really really bad at composing. Or at least it's always felt that way to me. Why? Well, it's pretty simple actually, I sit down at my guitar/synth/workstation/kazoo and I say to myself, "okay, time for the magic to happen" and...
Nothing happens.
Usually what's going on in my brain is, "okay, this is a LatG song, so...like, make it sound like that. So...electric piano? Bass? Guitar....with a wah pedal?" Then I mentally fumble around asking myself intelligent sounding questions like "what key should this be in? What mode? Low-kree-in? Should I use 4/4 time? ...5/4....... 6/4??"
Then I ask myself, "and what is this song about, like, what's the point? (Sudden existential crisis...shaking that off:) What am I trying to say to the world with this? How am I helping the average citizen to cope with and overcome the repression of a class based corpo-centric capitalistic hell scape? ...am I doing that? I can't remember what of societies ills I was going to fix with music this week..."
At this point I'm usually thinking of other songs and wondering why my music doesn't sound like NILFRUITs or Senri Kawaguchi or @NomnomNami or whatever. So I start humming their songs to myself like it's going to help until I start to realize that I can't force the theme from Starry Flower to fit in 5/4 time while overthrowing gender normatives in post Napoleonic France... wait, something went wrong there :|. And at this point I am invariably confused and lost in the vast expanses of my own mind scape. ...so I do what comes naturally...
I just start pushing buttons and plucking strings until something cool happens on accident and then I build the song around that.
This is very frustrating (or has been, patience) Why? Because it feels like I have no goddamn control over the process.
Right now I'm trying to write songs for Lorelei and the Ghost. In my brains there's a plot that connects these songs together so now I'm trying to write a song about one of the characters being angry and, more than anything, I want to just sit down and write the f*cking song with minimal hassle.
But then I get all caught up in my own nonsense, fumble around in my own mental confusion and then, invariable, I start plunking keys and dropping beats until something sticks.
...
Okay, this post isn't just whining, I did overcome this 😜.
You know what happened recently? I decided it's fine. I decided that fighting it was stupid. Yes, there are folks who can compose to a theme, folks who are able to string musical concepts together in order to express particular ideas using our communally held understanding of non-verbal sonic language. Part of me envies them.
But frankly...I just can't be constrained like that. I don't mean that in a "f*ck society and it's rules" sort of way, oh no, I mean it literally. Constraints don't work, even if I want them to. The process will be random happenstance. End of story. I can either embrace it or stop doing music. But I know I won't stop doing music (apologies), so...
What do?
So, if you've read this far you're either a morbidly curious person who likes watching me suffer (hi @DespairBlitz!) or you have the same issue and you're wondering how we deal with this issue.
It's easy, it's just a two step process:
That second one requires a lot of nuance to really understand. You and I know this because both of us, at the same time, had the same thought: But Jae, all of my music is shit, how would I get anything done?
No no no no. By "shit" I actually mean "doesn't fit the vision of what I'm trying to do." Ie., isn't sufficiently expressing the thing I want to express. Ie., "hasn't hit minmum requirement". It's never going to be perfect, forget about it. But it can hit a minimum speck. We can totally slum this, ya know? Only kick it to the curb when you fail to slum.
So, back to LatG. I'm trying to write something:
With practice you'll start to figure out how far along a song needs to be before you can make this call. But as an example, for me:
This should all be done within an hour, btw. If the concept isn't congealing by then, it's an automatic fail and it goes in the dust bin. Generally you should get through the process in that time frame though (whatever yours might be) and then you ask "did I hit my theme?" If the answer is no: dustbin. If the answer is yes: commit commit commit.
Why so harsh? Well, frankly, it goes back to the way I make music. I mean, I'm usually starting in the right ballpark these days, but I really don't know where I'm going to land until the rough sketch is done. If it's wrong (and it often is) then you have to move on because you have a theme you're trying to hit and this ain't it which means it's time to start plunking mallets on the kazoo again.
And yeah, it's rough. Trust me, I've failed three times at the song I'm working on right now and that's super frustrating. But we have to work with the brains we have, so I just keep doggedly at it. Over the long run it tends to work out (feel free to find me on YT to see if you agree.)1
If it makes you feel any better, this approach has a significant advantage over the direct approach. You're music is pretty much always going to be unique. Why? Because you literally are incapable of conforming :P.
So do your best to be happy that you are trading off efficiency and speed for interesting and personality.
In the end, that's what made me okay with the whole thing 😄
The next book of “Even Though We’re Adults” gets to me tomorrow 0_0.
Hey, my first post on YT for Lorelei and the Ghost has 100 listens and 10 likes :D. It's not the worlds biggest milestone, but it feels kinda special for me. Mainly the 'likes' side of things, normally on SoundCloud I'm lucky to get to 5 :P
Thanks for the support folks! And if you haven't seen it yet (along with the frigging amazing art from @sugawara803) here it is again: