i have not shared much of my own creative works on this page yet. unfortunately i haven’t really actively pursued my artistic interests like music composition for many years now, but my passion for it has never left me ever since i discovered it was something i was capable of. i have passively created a variety of songs which live rent‐free in my head, and i hope to put them out into the world someday yet. this unfinished piece, though, still invades my consciousness at its leisure to this day, despite its origin, tangible nature, and age — if the modified timestamp on my copy of this file is accurate, this mp3 is exactly 14 years old today. i did not plan this.
this was the first and only music i made using PxTone, a freeware music program by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya. (apparently he’s continued working on it for quite some time; the last version was published 23 months ago.) it was the result of me puttering around with the program’s features, poking at its reverb functionality and trying out different kinds of instruments — as is probably evident by its structure. there’s no other circumstance in which i would have made this exact piece of music.
of all the bits and pieces of music i’ve made that i can show to people, this is the one that will consistently be picked out as a favourite. truthfully, this torments me somewhat. it is very clearly unfinished, feeling like it’s leading somewhere grand but then abruptly halting, and i have never been able to figure out where it was or should be going at all. this isn’t for lack of trying; as i said, i’ve been batting this idea around in my brain for 14 years now. but the creative process which formed it is just not one i can summon at will.
while i have come up with some interesting music improvisationally (including this), most of the time my composition process takes place entirely in my head, after which i (struggle to) realize it externally. being in the right state of mind (like curiously toying with unfamiliar software) and having the right tools to create good sequences purely by feel instead of through cerebral deliberation is very rare for me, and more so now than it was over a decade ago, when i was more carefree.
even if i could tap into the mental processes that created this more readily, they have always been more difficult for me to harness in meaningful ways. the mental flow of a melody is easily interrupted and severed in this state, be that by another errant cascade of inspiration distracting me, or just by the specific creative well running dry — though almost always after rounding out an idea into a little self‐contained concept. trying to redirect this sort of musical current for a particular purpose, like adding to an existing nugget of music, has been akin to trying to divert an actual stream of water by pushing against it with a held piece of plywood. the structure of the improv music i create also differs from my “conscious” methods such that it’s difficult to use both methods in collaboration, and so i’ve never satisfactorily succeeded at building on this audio from inside my brain. (further, the original project file was lost in a catastrophic hard drive failure, dramatically complicating matters on recreating and extending it.)
or perhaps there’s just something about this specific fragment of music that i have developed an isolated mental block with, nothing more. who’s to say?
the above artwork was what an old friend of mine was inspired to draw immediately after they heard this. maybe i technically ought to ask their permission before reposting it, but we haven’t been in contact for probably a decade now, and i don’t expect they would care about me sharing this quick drawing or want to be credited for it. presumably: all rights reserved by them, not to be used by anyone else for any purpose.
