020511 -- On Music
Feb. 5th, 2011 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memorialrainbowI need to actually remember to write in here.
Instead of going outside and spending more money, and buying unnecessary caffinated drinks, which I don't want to do anyway, I will stay here and open up my window and write. Not actually open my window, mind you. Just the blinds, to let some extra light in. And I might turn on the news. See what's going on in the world, aside from my little one-bedroom apartment.
Oh, lookit, a Pokemon movie's on. This will make up for me not going to Cleveland this weekend, I suppose? I donno. I wanted to go, but it's going to be hard for me to try and go tomorrow with everything else that's happening, and my sleep schedule being what it is.
So there's this boy. He gets so confused sometimes, and he doesn't exactly know what to do. I wish I could help him, and perhaps I could help him more if we weren't apart all of the time. That brings me back to something that I've been meaning to write on for a while now. Pain. Do most people just go throughout their lives trying to avoid it?
This is more about me than anything, so let me tell you about pain. I do try to avoid it. I'll be the first to admit that when something seems hard, all I want to do is run and hide. I know what I'm capable of as a person. When I say I'm good at music or something, I'm not just saying I'm good for my own benefit. I'm not just trying to build myself up anymore or grab attention. I'm *telling* you that I'm good at music. I'm saying that I know what I'm doing, and I feel like if I'm skilled enough in a field, I should find a job that lets me do what I'm designed to do. I mean, instead, I'm here, and that's painful enough. But when your best friend chides you because your job is not in your field and you're just trying to save up money so that you can get out and quit said job without starving...Do people know at all how hard this is for me? Do people understand that even as I'm here, in the city I grew up in, I'm still learning how to be me in a way I couldn't before? I shouldn't be punished for that, and yet, I feel like sometimes the one way I'm punished is when I do it to myself.
It's so dark now. I feel like running and hiding. But I know I can't do that. So, I post this instead.
When writing music, especially as a kid, I understood that colors went in a certain pattern. If I deviated from that pattern, and something didn't sound right, then I didn't want to keep that chord progression. I found that most everything revolved not around the key, but around the turning chord -- the dominant. When I wrote in C, that chord was G. Where did G go? I would ask myself. Most of the time, especially when it was younger, G went to C, but sometimes if I wanted it to sound cool, it would go to A (A minor), or even sometimes to F.
The pattern I used for, oh, about 95% of the songs I wrote as a kid was a simple one that went from C to Am to F to G (I to vi to IV to V). Sure, you can invert that, or substitute a ii for the IV, but that's the basic thought process behind 7-year old Emily's music. Which I do have some recorded! "Bravery" follows that pattern as well (diverting when the music modulates, but whutever). The left hand carried the beat and the harmony, as well as the chords (broken, not blocked), and the right hand carried the melody.
That's for you, tiger. I'm trying to work on describing how I compose music.
Perhaps it would help if I actually *composed* some.
Instead of going outside and spending more money, and buying unnecessary caffinated drinks, which I don't want to do anyway, I will stay here and open up my window and write. Not actually open my window, mind you. Just the blinds, to let some extra light in. And I might turn on the news. See what's going on in the world, aside from my little one-bedroom apartment.
Oh, lookit, a Pokemon movie's on. This will make up for me not going to Cleveland this weekend, I suppose? I donno. I wanted to go, but it's going to be hard for me to try and go tomorrow with everything else that's happening, and my sleep schedule being what it is.
So there's this boy. He gets so confused sometimes, and he doesn't exactly know what to do. I wish I could help him, and perhaps I could help him more if we weren't apart all of the time. That brings me back to something that I've been meaning to write on for a while now. Pain. Do most people just go throughout their lives trying to avoid it?
This is more about me than anything, so let me tell you about pain. I do try to avoid it. I'll be the first to admit that when something seems hard, all I want to do is run and hide. I know what I'm capable of as a person. When I say I'm good at music or something, I'm not just saying I'm good for my own benefit. I'm not just trying to build myself up anymore or grab attention. I'm *telling* you that I'm good at music. I'm saying that I know what I'm doing, and I feel like if I'm skilled enough in a field, I should find a job that lets me do what I'm designed to do. I mean, instead, I'm here, and that's painful enough. But when your best friend chides you because your job is not in your field and you're just trying to save up money so that you can get out and quit said job without starving...Do people know at all how hard this is for me? Do people understand that even as I'm here, in the city I grew up in, I'm still learning how to be me in a way I couldn't before? I shouldn't be punished for that, and yet, I feel like sometimes the one way I'm punished is when I do it to myself.
It's so dark now. I feel like running and hiding. But I know I can't do that. So, I post this instead.
When writing music, especially as a kid, I understood that colors went in a certain pattern. If I deviated from that pattern, and something didn't sound right, then I didn't want to keep that chord progression. I found that most everything revolved not around the key, but around the turning chord -- the dominant. When I wrote in C, that chord was G. Where did G go? I would ask myself. Most of the time, especially when it was younger, G went to C, but sometimes if I wanted it to sound cool, it would go to A (A minor), or even sometimes to F.
The pattern I used for, oh, about 95% of the songs I wrote as a kid was a simple one that went from C to Am to F to G (I to vi to IV to V). Sure, you can invert that, or substitute a ii for the IV, but that's the basic thought process behind 7-year old Emily's music. Which I do have some recorded! "Bravery" follows that pattern as well (diverting when the music modulates, but whutever). The left hand carried the beat and the harmony, as well as the chords (broken, not blocked), and the right hand carried the melody.
That's for you, tiger. I'm trying to work on describing how I compose music.
Perhaps it would help if I actually *composed* some.
