Just thinking that my infrequent posts here can hardly be considered blogging. Right? Before, I was thinking that there was no time to blog while working on a project. Now that I am between projects, I feel that I have nothing to blog about. Then the idea struck me (in a non-injury sustaining way): Blogging while working on a project makes perfect sense. Certainly, I could take a few minutes each day to write (or type, to be more precise) a bit about the day’s expeience — such as the day’s triumphs and tragedies during composition, recording, mixing, communicating with the director, or whatever the activiy d’jour may be.

Well, now I just have to wait for another project to come my way…

There is a wonderful little book (199 pages in paperback) of that title by author/composer Elizabeth Swados. The book was originally published in hardcover by Haper & Row in 1988, and later (1989) in paperback. I picked up the paperback for 10 cents (yes, $0.10 USD) at a library sale a few years back (composers don’t earn enough money to buy new books, y’know).

I return to this little book now and then (mostly then) for reminding encouragements and insights into the craft of music composition. Swados provides many tips and ideas for learning about music and the instruments that make them, but I most like the anecdotes that deal with the emotion and character of music. One such example has stuck with me:

She tells of a marimba solo that she composed for a class assignment. After playing the piece, the instructor analyzed the piece thusly:

“Miss Swados has written this entire solo without rests. Music has to breathe, just as we do. Let’s pretend [that] I’m this poor piece.”

He proceeded to play the piece again, holding his breath throughout. By the end of the solo, he “gasped for breath as though he’d narrowly escaped death.”

Sometimes I fall into the trap of adding a phrase or an instrument to one of my compositions merely because it sounds cool or clever. Cool or clever things may have some entertainment value, but may not support and/or bond with the character and emotional content of the piece as a whole. My superego tells me that each composition must be a deliberately crafted confidant with which I have grown intimate through a shared experience (no wonder my wife sometimes feels like a music widow). However, in practice, its usually a matter of trying to materialize the things that I hear in my head as quickly as possible.

Perhaps just as words should be chosen carefully, notes, rests, timbres, and dynamics should be slowly crafted. To borrow (and alter; may God have mercy) a Biblical passage (James 1:19):

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to listen, slow to write, slow to record