Diffusion

I want to talk about my struggles and break-throughs from tonight, even though it may mean very little to you at this point.  I am working on some strings for a song that is tentatively called "Persuasion".  I am convinced that this is the start of the greatest string arrangement I've written to date.  But it hasn't come without a struggle.  

A friend directed me to  Mike Verta's website, and there was a podcast that has become very important to me.  He was talking about the struggle to "realize" or bring to life the ideas in your head.  When you are a young composer, many times you hear the music in your head first.  You hear a symphonic sound that is full, and brilliant, but you have a blank slate in front of you on your computer.  How does the idea get from your head to the computer?  Unfortunately, I don't have the software to simply record string sections through a keyboard as a way to try out ideas.  I have to record 12 tracks of cello, 12 tracks of viola, 12 tracks of 2nd violin, and 12 tracks of first violin to try out that idea.  And more often than not, what comes out is not what was in my head.  This is a weakness I have, and identifying that weakness is of monumental importance to me overcoming it.

I would suggest that this may be of great importance to many of you as well.  If you are a painter, graphic designer, or a writer, the struggle is the same.  We are taking something magical and intangible from our imagination, and trying to pull it out into this world with little or no diffusion.  This is not easy, and I wish that I had concrete solutions to offer.  I will say, however, that the biggest obstacle to bringing these ideas to life for me, is lack of patience.  When I've spent three hours recording an idea for a chorus, and the end result is not what I hoped for, it's easy to tell myself "the idea just wasn't that great", and I move on to something different.  But you have to fight for the idea if you truly love it!  And that's what I did tonight.  Someday soon, you will hear the result of this persistence, and I hope you love it as much as I do.  Perhaps I will talk more about this later, when I'm not so tired.  I'm feeling a little delirious at the moment, and I hope some of this made sense.  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Comments

[Bri Lee]

It makes perfect sense and you're totally right. I can't wait to hear it.

[Andrew Ross]

Oh my gosh, I know what you mean. This happens to me all the time. Thanks for the post. I really enjoyed this post and seeing that other people deal with that, as well.

One thing I always do is, like you said, I lose patience and will do a rough draft and never get around to redoing the vocals or whatnot because I know it'll be an endless process all over again.