Re: last rechost
So much of writing music for me is brute forcing a solution. It is building muscle memory through endless repetition, and then complicating that memory or subverting it. But when I do it by myself, it rarely feels like anything.
I do not consider myself a composer, writer, or anything other than a performer, really. I can write music easily, but I am wholly unable to tell if what I’ve written is any good until another person is involved. Part of that is releasing an album as “finished” and having to contend with it being perceived by others (even if in reality they don’t because nobody listens to it), but the things that actually brings me any satisfaction at all is performing it with others.
Chair Floor is a project I’m in where the majority of the songs are ones I’ve written and played for ten years at least. But they were stalled out, incomplete, and unfulfilling to work on by myself. And then I took them to a bandmate and they instantly became alive. Arguing over sections, playing a part and recognizing that it just doesn’t work, being thrilled when a difficult section starts to come together, wait hold on that part that didn’t work before could totally work if we just try this, etc. etc.
I don’t think that it’s impossible for me to ever write fulfilling music by myself and performed wholly by myself (hell, I’ve done it once or twice before), but what excites me most is the idea of writing for others to perform. Maybe it’s because for the developmental part of my life I associated my most meaningful memories in music to playing with bands, ensembles, and orchestras, playing a specific part that was accentuated and made more beautiful by my friends and loved ones playing alongside me, but more often than not, when I write music where I have written and performed everything by myself I feel nothing.
