Rejecting Meaning

[This post comments on ideas originally presented in a previous post.]

I've been thinking about the whole lyrics/music question lately, especially because my 50/90 output seems to have solidified my position as a composer rather than a songwriter (reading Wikipedia articles has taught me that there is a difference).  And I've decided a few things.

Most importantly, I've decided that I'm going to write almost exclusively for instruments only.  I had been concerned that because I wasn't explicitly saying anything in my music (no lyrics) and because I wasn't even implying anything (in the way that classical music apparently tries to mirror emotional turmoil), my music wasn't really worth anything.  I'm not trying to mean anything with it, so how can it mean anything?  But then I remembered something I've learned over the past few years - most things don't have an inherent meaning.  A lot of the things that we think are meaningful are just the result of a mutual agreement in a particular culture.  Grammatical rules are a good example of this - there is no natural law that governs grammar; the only authority it has is people's agreeing to it.  A lot of meaning - though not all - is the result of a mutual agreement of people within a culture.

I just reject the notion that good music has to have lyrics or has to represent something.  (Though I realise that those may not be directly-stated beliefs among people, they certainly seem to be the norm.)  I'm just trying to write things that sound good.  More recently, I've been playing around with forms, but in some ways, that has the same goal - trying to write something that doesn't sound like everything else.

Besides, even if someone intends something in an artistic work, that's not always the same meaning that the receiver understands.  It's unlikely that any two people will have the same ideas about every aspect of a novel.  I don't think that this is any different.

Furthermore, I don't feel that a piece of music is the best way to convey information.  In my opinion, text is a better method for story telling than audio.  (Though explanations for that are a post for a different blog.)  In fact, I believe that text is a better method for communicating almost everything.  So rather than struggle with it and come up with something terrible, I'm just going to not.

At least for now....

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50/90 Aspirations

50/90 starts to-morrow.  (Actually, because of time zones and international date lines or whatever, it's officially started already, but I'm waiting until it's 4 July in my time zone before I start.)  So I thought I would write a short post about what sorts of things I want to do during 50/90 this year.

I think one of my first goals is to actual make it through 50/90, whether or not I've written fifty songs.  I'm currently enrolled in an online history class that doesn't finish until the first week of August, and with any luck, the fall semester should be my last semester of university.  I've also been reading a 1,000-page book in order to write an essay for a scholarship.  So I'll be busy.

But as far as instrumental goals go, I don't have very many.  I've been getting more into the technical aspects of recording, so I have a lot of ideas about audio engineering and mixing, but I don't have very many about composition.  Similarly, I've wanted to use particular instruments or techniques, but I don't have any ideas of what music to play with them.

I had this same sort of problem with the last two songs I wrote.

For "Cataract," I just wanted to try palm muting and doubling guitar parts with electric piano.

For "Kaputt," I wanted to try a lot of things, mostly chords in open D tuning and harpsichord.

But for both of those songs, I didn't try very hard when writing the chord progression.  "Cataract" is B A F#m E, and "Kaputt" is mostly D C Em G.  Since I didn't have any ideas for my own chord progressions yet I had other things I wanted to try, I just wrote really simple chord progressions and layered my own stuff on top of them.  But that only gets me so far, and I don't like relying on that.  It's a bit limited.

In any case, my nebulous goals for this year:

• "Staircase mixing" - this will become apparent when I do it, and I'll probably write a separate post about it when it's finished.
• I've had the idea for a few months to try to write a piece that adheres to the same sort of rules as a sonnet.  I don't know if I'll get to that or not, but I'd like to try it eventually.
• Use more twelve-string guitar.  I've had my twelve-string for just over half a year (I got it on 2 January), and I've used it on only two things - "Anybody Can't," which I want to re-record (that version is too slow, and I want to use a regular six-string for the chords), and a cover of the Zombies' "Leave Me Be."  I've been playing around with a few things, but I don't know if I'll be able to stretch a whole song out of them.
• There are a lot of other instruments and techniques that I'd like to use, but I'm not as concerned about them as I am about twelve-string guitar.
• Harmonica.  I used it on a few songs during FAWM.  I'm at least decent on it.
• Trombone.  I used it for one song during FAWM, but I replaced it with melodica when I re-recorded it.
• Slide guitar.  The only thing I can play with slide guitar is part of Argent's "Hold Your Head Up," which doesn't require hitting any specific notes.  I have the least hope in slide guitar of any of these.
• For the past few months, I've been recording a hymn every week using mandolin.  I'd like to experiment with that same sort of paradigm -  one mandolin for melody and an-other for accompaniment.
• I've sort of ended my period of keyboard composition, but I may go back and write a few if I can't think of any other ideas.
• I've been playing around with guitar chord inversions and finger-picking, and that will probably result in some 50/90 songs.  I just need to add melodies.  Maybe I'll use some more mandolin for that.  I feel kind of bad that I've been using mandolin exclusively for my hymn recording project and no-thing else.

And, of course, one of my goals for 50/90 is just to finish with more songs than I wrote last year.  So as long as I get seventeen, I'll be happy.

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