Today I renamed all my works in progress because I think I have an idea of where I want them to go, style-wise. I still haven't completed a whole song, but I'm getting better at adding variation to the song structure, and finding places to have instruments dip out for some more tension and variety.
Yes, this is all I wrote.
I wrote two 8 bar sections of a ballad yesterday. It sounded plain to me. Hmmm... Today I mostly practiced my scales, and I tried to play along with a solo. I felt so incredibly panicked at how fast these notes were being put down. Am I looking too closely at the details? Should I listen to it more broadly? More big-picture? I was so overwhelmed with the amount of information being thrown back at me all at once. I hope anyone that's new to soloing has also experienced this.
The conclusion I came to from this was that I just don't know enough about jazz theory to write a jazz album on my own. I mean yeah, these are just demos, but I really want to bring my musician friends a demo that will make them absolutely yearn to play on it. Right now my demos are underwhelming. They're boring. How do I make it not BORING. UGH.
I'm gonna revisit my jazz theory notes from 4th year, possibly tomorrow. I wanna make a checklist of different theory elements I have to incorporate into a composition. Maybe I can put it in musescore, make a game out of it! I should also probably make a jazz fusion playlist, since I'm leaning closer to jazz fusion than traditional jazz.
First off, it's my friend Paolo's birthday today!! Happy birthday Paolo.
Now then, since I came to the conclusion that I'm kind of going to have to teach myself jazz theory while I try to write this album, if I want to this album to reach its full potential. Something I did not anticipate is that I'm kind of also teaching myself how to solo at the same time. Good theory makes good composition makes good solos. I don't have very much of any of those three right now.
So today, I started a new Musescore file and made THIS!
I didn't finish because I wanted to write about it instead. Also, I have been noticing I've been getting really anxious while doing this. I think I'm a bit overwhelmed with the amount I have yet to learn in order to make any noticeable progress.
Also, I'm going to a jam tonight! I haven't gone to one in a long time so I'm really anxious about it. I hope I feel better once I see my friends. It's so scary putting yourself out there and sharing your music with the world.
I went to that jam last night and it was super fun! There were some amazing musicians and some killer solos. My main takeaway from this is that 1) I should leave a bit more space in my solos, and 2) I need to work a bit on my chord tones and arpeggios. Whenever I lost my footing, I would panic and not play any notes with intention, like I was just trying to fill the gaps with noise. They weren't melodic ideas. So I think if I slow things down and reinforce the basics it should help a lot.
Today I ran all my current WIPs past my girlfriend Cora, who is a music composition major. She gave me a lot of awesome advice.
The key ideas I took away from what she said were that a lot of my drafts are just 2 measure ideas, and need a lot more form and harmonic structure. Some of my chords didn't resolve correctly, and some very repetitive parts with no new additions made things quite boring.
I absolutely loved these points and I couldn't agree more. I think right now I should focus on one draft at a time. The one that's currently the most advanced is called "dreamy" (at least, that's what the audacity file is called). My goal for today is to troubleshoot the areas she said needed work.
Another thing I want to do is plan out my chord progressions and form before I even touch the piano. That way I can focus on the overall form rather than the individual notes. My brain loves to tunnel vision on the individual notes. Also, when I'm figuring it out at the piano, I tend to learn how to switch between two chords, and then nothing else, just because it's the easiest. Oops. Hopefully planning out the progressions on staff paper will help!
I have been feeling very unmotivated for about a week or two. I felt like all my compositions were garbage. I also stopped using Audacity and Cora's Focusrite. Now I've started putting my tunes directly into Musescore. Cora was working on a commission yesterday and she said her goal was to write one minute of music. I thought that was a lovely and achievable goal, so I set that goal for myself today, to try to write a brand new draft. I wrote about a minute of 4/4 music that should have been in 6/8, so I had to rewrite everything. I also got Cora's help to figure out some transitional chords. By the time I got all that in, I was at 54 seconds, so I took another draft that's in 6/8 and put it in this draft as a contrasting section. I did have to double the time though because it was actually in 3/4 in a fast two feel in the original, so I had to crunch 2 bars into 1. I showed it to Cora and she said it sounded much better!
I'm glad I didn't give up. Even though Musescore is incredibly frustrating to use, it's much easier to input the notes rather than playing all the instruments perfectly in time. Then I won't just have to give my musicians demos, I'll have actual sheet music for them!
One thing I would like to do is figure out how many musicians I need and how much they should get paid for working on the album. If I want to apply for grants, it would be good to calculate all my costs.