when i took composition in conservatory, my teacher told me that the most difficult part of teaching was finding the germ that made up the inspiration for the work at hand. he felt that it was important to treat each piece as though it were his own and work from the position of helping his student. he was very good at finding that one, tiny grain of idea that got things rolling and steering clear of it regardless of his feelings about it.
i do not have this skill. or it’s so very undeveloped as to be detrimental to my process.
for the last two weeks i have been reworking what was released here as “sketch 6” every night. i tried it the way i did it originally and decided to get fancy. that rolled into adding a mandolin. and then a 12 string. and then a lead line on the 6 string. and then a bass line. when i started pondering digging out the psaltry and moving the entire thing to a new key, i realized that i had gone too far.
it has been hot down here in bayou city and as such i’m not really thinking clearly. last night i left the studio very unfulfilled and with a great deal of anger and disappointment. i sat on the couch and listened to the original sketch. i found that little nugget of inspiration and noted with certainty that i had removed it entirely over the course of the last two weeks.
if there’s a lesson here it’s quite simply this: when things start to feel wrong or get too complicated, return to the source. that almost feels like one of those universal truisms, but i won’t push my luck.
back to the beginning.
