I have a vision of the composer that I want to be: the one who walks through his day hearing pieces dictated to him by the breeze.  The hours spent pouring over paper scores, adjusting phrasing, and reworking small passages for maximum effect.  I think that there would be nothing cooler than a bag full of notebooks and pens filled with my ideas.  I want that vision of Beethoven that the lesser history books share of a man walking through the woods trapping inspiration with a giant butterfly net.

But that’s not me.

I don’t plan.  There might be an idea that simmers for a few months, but I never write it down.  My notebooks read like the chicken scratches of someone in a desperate hurry to get nowhere.  Random bits of poetry, names of software packages, links, phone numbers, book titles.  Nothing that adds value to the time I spend actually composing.  Nothing that even leaves my bag when I’m in the studio.

What really happens probably looks a lot more like what I would fantasize about than it actually is.  I find myself sitting in front of my laptop at the keyboard or some MIDI controllers or with a guitar wondering where I will begin.  I hit record and go.  Most of the time, something cool comes out (eventually).  Some nights are frustrating and nothing works.  But each night the process is the same: enter the studio, sit down, start.

On paper this sounds pretty good.  It would appear that it’s like mowing the lawn.  Do it and it gets done.  I acknowledge that the fact that I create anything I value is pretty impressive, but I don’t do it with flair.  No accessories or wild systems.  You know, the cool stuff that you get to talk about with other people who do creative work.  There’s nothing here to write a book about.  And that’s the catch, maybe.

When I was in school I often dreamed of creating a system for composition.  Some algorithm or process that I could follow to the hidden pot of golden compositions.  As I delved deeper in to serial music and, at the other end of the spectrum, the music of John Cage, I felt that a composer needed a process.  There had to be something to wrap up the product.  A protective blanket that explained or justified the outcome.  To some extent, that’s still there.  I would like to hear a passage in my work that is awkward and be able to point at it and say, “well, that’s just how the numbers turned out.”  And perhaps that’s what I’m reacting to now.

I’ve mentioned that if you don’t know the rules you can’t really break them with authority.  The huge disappointment that hit me with the music of Cage when I was in graduate school was that anything goes.  4’33” and pieces like it justified putting a start and end point to any sound and calling it music.  But that feels like something that is far too conceptual for the person I am today.  Almost foreign.  What I really want as a composer is to point to a piece of music and say “I did that.”  For better or worse, every sound that is made and when it is made and how it is made falls on me.  I want the responsibility for what I make.

Being responsible for something implies a level of care and that takes me back to the beginning.  There is an overwhelming desire to prepare for my studio time.  When I sit down, I want to know what I’m going to do.  Instead, I simply start and hope for the best.  Something always follows, for good or ill, but it isn’t necessarily intended. Someday I’ll know why that’s so important or how it relates to my thesis that art is all about intent.

Also of note, I’m tired of not posting new tunes. I have three tracks that are pretty darned good but I promised myself they’d be released as a unit with the nine that are left to follow. This means I’ll have to work double time to get something put up on the site. Why? Because I like to share and it feels dumb to post my updates to 1,000 social networking sites with no music attached. So something will show up next week. Stay tuned.

I started writing something about a new composition. My focus when things got rolling was on whether or not one would compose differently for a live orchestra as opposed to a virtual one. What got me going was a particularly delicate harp passage that sounded lovely in the virtual world of Logic but that would never work in a live setting without amplification and other technilogical assistance. The path got a little blurry after a while because it became apparent that I didn’t really care if I was writing for the computer or for people, what I was really doing was trying to talk myself out of composing for the orchestra altogether.

That feeling goes back a long way. About 15 years or so. For me, that’s quite a while. There was nothing I loved more than composing for the orchestra. There is somethiing about taking on an ensemble of such magnitude. The are so many possibilities. It’s a playground and if one is particularly inventive there are so few real limitations. There is also a side to it that is like a puzzle. Some ideas are better suited to certain implementations. What solutions can be divined that bring out a given sonority or melody is engaging and addictive. It’s fun.

When I think back on it, I clearly see myself in a practice room well after midnight on a Saturday. The conservatory building was officially closed but those few of us who worked on the custodial staff during the summer knew some things. I sat there in front of a freshly tuned baby grand piano with my notebooks and pens (never pencils! Erasers are for the weak and kill ideas!) with only the vile yellow sodium lights pouring in from the streets to light the room. The sound of the room. The stench of the steam heat. And the absolute focus I was able to summon. There was nothing else in the world. Only those tones coming from the piano and the scratching of pen on paper. My responsibilities were limited to that page and passage. The importance assigned to each stroke of the pen was incredible. It’s horribly naive and pretentious in hindsight, yet the attraction is so obvious to me even today.

Why did I stop? Why did I move on? Was it the fact that after my time as a big fish in a small pond I couldn’t face the reality that I would likely never have a work performed again? Did it have to do with the misguided notion that the orchestra is a creature of the past, a museum for the culture that was? Or was it simple creative wanderlust? That desire to try something new and forge ahead in search of uncharted ground.

In truth, it’s probably a little of each. As I sit and listen to the pristine but mechanical performance of my latest piece as rendered by sampled instruments, I’m struck that I can still imagine how it would sound live. Alive. It moves me to find that after so many years I still feel an affiliation with that art form. The ideas trickle out and they aren’t bad. They stink of unedited inspiration because that’s what they are. And that is how they shall stay.

Maybe I will copy out the score in long hand. An homage to a discipline I have not practiced in some time. An act of love for something that I never really left behind. A gift from that stubborn and pretentious young man in the halflight of a winter evening.