So I am half-way through writing down three of my four songs. It is arduous--writing a measure of music might take me an hour or so. The music notation software is cumbersome, and I am clumsy with the mouse and not a particularly adept musician for that matter. What the MIDI file plays back to me is not what I intended to write, so I have to do it over again and again.
Yet this is the most fun I've had in a while.
What I can play more or less fluently on the keyboard takes me much longer to get right on th page. Then, of course, I can always improve on it. I can make the piano chords richer and more complex, and change the rhythms up to make them less boring and predictable.
***
What does it mean to write our prose down? The software is less cumbersome. We still must obey conventions, and know how to write in sentences and paragraphs. Writing a sentence should not take an hour.
Yet the precision of the notation must still be there. The attention to detail.
***
My four songs:
1. This is pick-up line song. Let's get together. With a jaunty rhythm.
2. This one is a let's live our life together song. We've already fallen in love, but haven't made the commitment. A beautiful melody.
3. The third one is a reconnecting song. We've loved each other in the past and will continue to do so. Another pleasing melody.
4. The last one is a break-up song: our love has taken its course and is no longer. The melody is catchy despite the negativity.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
4th song
I wrote my fourth song, with the express aim of not having it sound like the others. It doesn't... and yet it does.
It goes from Amin7 to Cmin7 to Fmin7, then to Dmin, Cmin, Amin7, G7
The next line is Amin7 to Cmin7 to Fmin7, then to Dmin, Cmin, Amin7, Cmaj7
The bridge goes Fmin7, Emin7, Fmin7, Dmin7, C#min7, Cmaj7 again
And the final 8 bars repeat the second phrase again.
It has some organic coherence, to be sure, and sounds bluesy without being a blues. Kind of Gershwinny,
I don't have to count measures, since I think naturally in unites of 4 and 8. I'd say the song has to almost dictate itself over the chord structure. For some reason I always start with chords and then put a melody to that, and then the lyrics come last.
For some reason I always want to use the subdominant minor in the bridge.
I realized that if I'm derivative that's a good thing: that means I'm actually able to imitate something. Imagine if I couldn't even be derivative.
Another thing: practicing the song and composing it are the same activity. In other words, I have to learn my own songs, teach them to myself, and in the process make adjustments.
Another realization: this is why I'm taking voice lessons. I didn't know why when I started.
UPDATE: Yet another factor: composing songs gives me persistent ear worm. I have to play them so much that they end up playing all day and night in my head.
It goes from Amin7 to Cmin7 to Fmin7, then to Dmin, Cmin, Amin7, G7
The next line is Amin7 to Cmin7 to Fmin7, then to Dmin, Cmin, Amin7, Cmaj7
The bridge goes Fmin7, Emin7, Fmin7, Dmin7, C#min7, Cmaj7 again
And the final 8 bars repeat the second phrase again.
It has some organic coherence, to be sure, and sounds bluesy without being a blues. Kind of Gershwinny,
I don't have to count measures, since I think naturally in unites of 4 and 8. I'd say the song has to almost dictate itself over the chord structure. For some reason I always start with chords and then put a melody to that, and then the lyrics come last.
For some reason I always want to use the subdominant minor in the bridge.
I realized that if I'm derivative that's a good thing: that means I'm actually able to imitate something. Imagine if I couldn't even be derivative.
Another thing: practicing the song and composing it are the same activity. In other words, I have to learn my own songs, teach them to myself, and in the process make adjustments.
Another realization: this is why I'm taking voice lessons. I didn't know why when I started.
UPDATE: Yet another factor: composing songs gives me persistent ear worm. I have to play them so much that they end up playing all day and night in my head.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Involuntary & Deliberative
Some decisions or impulses seem somewhat out of our control. For example, I began to write songs in September of this year. This arose from simply staying at my girlfriend's house for a few weeks to take care of dog and chickens while she was in Japan, and fooling around on the piano. Soon, I had a song, then another one. Then I began writing the lyrics for them, naturally enough.
This is still voluntary, in the sense that I wasn't forced to do it against my will. Rather, I felt as though I should listen to this impulse, that it was coming from somewhere significant that I would ignore to my detriment. It isn't a scholarly impulse per se, since I am not in the Songwriting Department, though I did develop a proposal for the discipline of song studies" at one point in the recent past.
It is also deliberative, in the sense that I take deliberate, self-conscious steps, to compose what I feel is a good song, and to educate myself enough to do. I have to write the next song without a tritone substitution or using III instead of I, and not beginning the song on II.
Perhaps the relation between the deliberative and the involuntary is similar to that between the routine and the improvisatory. In both cases, we can understand human creativity as mysterious in its workings. It requires both conscious and unconscious effort, and we don't really understand the relations between these two things.
***
Although I don't think much of Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000 hour principle he popularized is useful. I'm thinking, for example, of spending 10,000 hours watching television, a seemingly passive activity, or listening to songs and singers in the tradition of the great American song-book for countless hours, as I have done. Many of us are intuitive experts on many things that we have done over and over. I know (in the sense of recognizing) hundreds of songs by Gershwin, Arlen, etc... My songs are likely to be amateurish, yet I feel that must teach myself to write them.
This is still voluntary, in the sense that I wasn't forced to do it against my will. Rather, I felt as though I should listen to this impulse, that it was coming from somewhere significant that I would ignore to my detriment. It isn't a scholarly impulse per se, since I am not in the Songwriting Department, though I did develop a proposal for the discipline of song studies" at one point in the recent past.
It is also deliberative, in the sense that I take deliberate, self-conscious steps, to compose what I feel is a good song, and to educate myself enough to do. I have to write the next song without a tritone substitution or using III instead of I, and not beginning the song on II.
Perhaps the relation between the deliberative and the involuntary is similar to that between the routine and the improvisatory. In both cases, we can understand human creativity as mysterious in its workings. It requires both conscious and unconscious effort, and we don't really understand the relations between these two things.
***
Although I don't think much of Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000 hour principle he popularized is useful. I'm thinking, for example, of spending 10,000 hours watching television, a seemingly passive activity, or listening to songs and singers in the tradition of the great American song-book for countless hours, as I have done. Many of us are intuitive experts on many things that we have done over and over. I know (in the sense of recognizing) hundreds of songs by Gershwin, Arlen, etc... My songs are likely to be amateurish, yet I feel that must teach myself to write them.
Mulberry Lane
I had written something about Mulberry Lane, a street in Davis near where I grew up. It involved the calculation 11 x 7 = 77. That was correct, but the original data was faulty and I was accused of research misconduct. The New York Times criticized me harshly, though I felt it was not my fault: someone else had publicized my findings before I had released them.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Back Surgery
I was in a hospital awaiting lower back surgery. I was looking for an empty hospital bed in which to have it. I thought that my back barely hurt, and thought to myself: "After this operation I might never be the same again." I was trying to get out of this ill-advised procedure in some way, and this happened when I woke up and realized it had been a dream.
Monday, December 7, 2015
King Nuance
Despite the brilliance of the critique of nuance in Healy's "Fuck Nuance," I still think that for my field, nuance is king. In other words, the vast majority of work could be improved by more attention to nuance and detail.
I accept that in sociology, the call for nuance might be a cheap move. In fact, it not a nuanced approach to call for more nuance in a facile way, when what is really meant is the introduction of missing category of analysis. So if you say, "what about class?" in an analysis focused on gender, that is not necessarily a call for more nuance per se. It more like an unnuanced attempt to outflank someone politically.
What I mean by "king nuance" is that
suppose someone were to talk about the postmodern death of the subject. There are a million ways of formulating that, a thousand applications, so a cliché version of that would not be very helpful, would it?
I accept that in sociology, the call for nuance might be a cheap move. In fact, it not a nuanced approach to call for more nuance in a facile way, when what is really meant is the introduction of missing category of analysis. So if you say, "what about class?" in an analysis focused on gender, that is not necessarily a call for more nuance per se. It more like an unnuanced attempt to outflank someone politically.
What I mean by "king nuance" is that
suppose someone were to talk about the postmodern death of the subject. There are a million ways of formulating that, a thousand applications, so a cliché version of that would not be very helpful, would it?
Lyrics
So I wrote this sappy song lyric. It is completely and utterly different from my poetry (my poetry poetry). It is supposed to be a Johnny Mercer type song:
Sleepless Hours
Though sleepless hours turn into days of regret
I won’t forget you’ll always be with me
Gone are the days of youth but still I remember
Smiles from a woman’s tender heart
When sorrows haunt my dreams and trouble my days
I feel your face smiling upon me
Then we’re together once again and the music
Echoes across the boundless years
I wrote the music too, though I didn't write it down yet, and unfortunately the first seven notes are the same melody as "I'll remember April." If you can get past that then the song is very original. I decided this lyric didn't need consistent rhyme. I also decided it didn't need a bridge. It is just a 16-bar song, kind of in an ABAB form.
It could be an older guy remembering his late wife, or a son or daughter remembering a mother or grandmother, or whatever you want it to be about, really.
This is a disturbing development in my life, that I would want to write a song like this, and be capable of doing it, composing, playing, and singing it.
Sleepless Hours
Though sleepless hours turn into days of regret
I won’t forget you’ll always be with me
Gone are the days of youth but still I remember
Smiles from a woman’s tender heart
When sorrows haunt my dreams and trouble my days
I feel your face smiling upon me
Then we’re together once again and the music
Echoes across the boundless years
I wrote the music too, though I didn't write it down yet, and unfortunately the first seven notes are the same melody as "I'll remember April." If you can get past that then the song is very original. I decided this lyric didn't need consistent rhyme. I also decided it didn't need a bridge. It is just a 16-bar song, kind of in an ABAB form.
It could be an older guy remembering his late wife, or a son or daughter remembering a mother or grandmother, or whatever you want it to be about, really.
This is a disturbing development in my life, that I would want to write a song like this, and be capable of doing it, composing, playing, and singing it.
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