Soon, I will start writing down my thoughts on here!
New Chapter -
Okay. So I just finished my studies and now have got some months, where I can chill and don't really
have to worry about financials. I guess it will be at least two months but probably more. I guess, I
can do this for half a year maybe. It won't be a good life, but I can keep on living my student's
life for that time.
But I don't want to waste that time. I want to learn things that I felt, I couldn't really learn in
university, because of the structure of the courses. I studied classical music history and theory.
The theory had some composition in it but I want to learn that better. Here's one goal.
Learn how to compose in the style of Beethoven's contemporaries.
Maybe I'll expand on that more later and write down some steps and tasks that could get me there.
Maybe I'll just call them 'practices'. Because it is not about finishing exact tasks to get there
but more about exploration of new areas of knowledge.
Another thing that is important to me is my songwriting. I have actually written some songs that I
like now, but they're a few years old already - some of them two years - and I'm starting to get
distant from them as time moves on. For my guitar style and my views on life have been changing.
Nonetheless, I still like those songs. I do want to put them out - especially that one song that I
play people, when they want to hear, what I have written. I am not on the same level of confidence
with my singing as with my guitar playing. Also sometimes I still struggle to record the sound
exactly as I envision. But I will have to do it by myself and I guess I will get there. Hiring a
producer wouldn't work for me because I can't rely on my performances yet and I want to use my money
a little more carefully at the moment.
Record that one song (and give it a better name) and release it.
I will promote it also, because I want people to hear it. First I will post it in forums like Reddit
to get some feedback.
Write some new material.
Now that my last exams are done, I will have time to read again! I've got this list of books that I
want to read, but they're mostly more exhausting reads. But that's something to keep in mind.
And then there's this neocities.org page. I would really want to be more of an active part of the
internet. I want to engage in good conversations, show myself and my ideas and be seen.
Learn html,
learn CSS,
learn JavaScript.
And also:
write, write, write (learn how to write, write about writing).
I don't know yet, what I want to write, but I know that I want to
write. It's weird, but I never really had that aspiration, but now I just feel like it. Let's see. I
don't know why anyone would want to read this - there's no context about me, there's not much music
on here yet. But if you did, leave a message on my site! I'll keep you updated - you
faceless, hopefully benevolent crowd.
If I wrote a blog -
If I wrote a blog. What would I want to write about? - I would want to write about
me. I would want to feel represented by my writing.
I might write about music. What music I like and what my opinions on music are.
Let's start. I haven't been listening to a lot of Jose Gonzalez in a long time. But I actually am
very inspired by his music. He is a nice continuation of Nick Drake's music in my opinion; and I
think he might not even disagree with me - only he might say, that he is more versatile and has more
influences than that one artist. I once saw an interview where he said that he avoided thirds; and
that was and is something I tend to do as well. With Nick Drake and him, I feel that they tried to
overcome traditional functional harmony. Functional harmony to me is this complex system that has
been developed in euroclassical music and that I feel more and more distant from. It is based on
diatonic scales: major and minor. And its biggest flaw in my opinion is that it treats the minor
chord the same as the major chord. (Of course this was not new. It's been there before music became
functional. But it's a big part of functional harmony.) With Nick Drake, you can hear that
his first two albums are very influenced by the classical functional harmony that reigns over pop
music. But in his last album there are so many nice 'dissonances' and I feel that here counterpoint
plays a way more elaborated role than in his first two albums. And it is because of the way he
treats consonance and dissonance. Everything seems to be based on modes, major chords (as part of
the overtone series). Nick Drakes use of modes seems very natural to me. But I
might say more about that another time.
I shortly want to write about Jose Gonzalez and why I think he is a continuation of Nick Drake's way
of overcoming the traditional functional harmony. It will be a very short analysis of the song that
got me into his music. I first heard the song 'Far Away' mindlessly watching some game play videos.
It's funny, because the song's lyrics are drenched in imagery about embodiment. "Step in front of a
runaway train/ just to feel alive again./ Pushing forward through the night, /Aching chest and
blurry sight." But the lyrics where the second thing I noticed. (As far as I remember) I actually
felt the idea of embodiment and connectedness through its very repetitive ostinato. The guitar is
tuned to B-A-D-a-b-e; with that very low and rich (in overtones) B-string. And the ostinato plays a
B7 chord without the third! So the 7th overtone is there but the third (5th overtone)
that is so euroclassical and traditional is missing. When I transcribed the song it was very hard
for me because there was one concept that I wasn't really aware of: breaking down a 4/4 beat into
groups of 3 and 2 - so not only groups of 2, 4, 16, ... . Now I am using that concept so much. This
is of course also part of the tradition. The tresillo rhythm (332), that I had already found through
analysis of alt-j is used very often in the pop/rock tradition (coming once from
South America and/or Africa probably?). But this was way more complex. It is 2+2+3+2+2+3+2, which is
7+7+2, making a 4/4 bar of 16 again. He uses this in 'How Low' also, but I won't go into that.
So that would be the kind of stuff I would write about, if I wrote a blog. But I would also write
about topics like: "How do I want my blog to look like? One topic or more representative of
myself?", recording, my singing journey, and so on. I would write about what I've been thinking
about and what media I have been consuming. Today I watched two documentaries on social media
algorithms and some of their problems. One was The Click Trap (by Peter Porta), the other one was...
I don't remember, if I actually watched another one. But I watched The Click Trap on the arte
mediathek and not on YouTube.