Tag Archives: Emotions

Poetry attacks in the night

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Have you ever been just about to go to sleep, but then you get the first two lines of your next song? It’s almost physical, the words just come to you.

You grab your notebook that you keep for such occasions and a pencil and try to keep up as the words just keep flowing to you.

You know the title of the song, and you have a draft of the lyrics, when you start thinking of a melodic line to start out with. But it doesn’t stop there. You get the next four lines, and you don’t have staff paper or a computer with you so you just write down pitches, ideas that is a kind of shorthand that will help you know what you’re thinking when you get to the computer after the weekend.

You write in the chorus, the repeats, and through it all, you weep because you know the song has several depths and you have a hunch it will work well both for an instrumental solo or possibly a song if you choose to make it that way sometime. No, you weep because it’s your grief pouring out of you at the same time as the song is taking shape.

Well, I had one of those experiences Saturday. I haven’t had a lot of time to write down the music in my software yet, but my notes have been extremely helpful, for when I had a few moments to start on it.

The grief kept attacking me Sunday, and I could hear new rhythms that needed to be included. Because I like to take sabbath, I just wrote in a shorthand note to be able to retain the idea until later.

Back to gathering inspiration

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I guess it should be a welcome theme. Finish a project, try to get started on the next. I’m finding myself listening to lots of Felix Mendelssohn, playing some of it, and loving it so much. And today I’m trying to get to know Charles Gounod’s music better. I had known a couple of his pieces before, but today I discover his Funeral march of a Marionette, and it really moves me.

His music that comes at me from the Amazon artist station is deeply emotional, and I suppose that is to a great extent what music is meant to do. It grabs at any sadness or grief that is deep in your heart, and lets you just feel it. I can hardly catch any of the French in his opera lyrics, but the melodies, harmonic progressions, and orchestrations are still moving me, and I think it is true, that if the singer or musicians are pulling from inside them when they play or sing the music, that it transcends the language barrier.

I think this is just as true for instrumental music. You have to make more translations for yourself when you work on interpretation, but it can definitely communicate your feelings, and it can help the people listening to process their own emotions.

I didn’t think much about this aspect of music when I decided to follow the music path at 15 years of age, but I don’t regret taking that road.

(For those who don’t know that story, I’ll share it briefly here. In Sweden, when you are in 9th grade, you get to choose a program for your last three years of school called Gymnasiet. I had gone to a school that had an auditioned music program for grades 4-9. I learned a lot about music then, but aside from that, I was also a pretty good student, and I aspired to reach greatness in science on a separate path, that might take me away from full dedication to music. I knew I had a good chance of success in getting into the school of my choice, so it was important that I tell the admissions which was my first choice and which was my second.

I made it a matter of prayer, and I consulted with my mom about it too. I have never regretted choosing music as my main field of study, and I have cherished the experiences I had at Södra Latins gymnasium as a music student, and everything that it subsequently led to, with regards to further study of music, and a life full of music creation.)

I’m toying with ideas for my next project, and all the listening will hopefully help inspire me to make a piece that will also grab at your heart when you hear it.

Time to gather inspiration, and more work on the song

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Yesterday I delivered the parts and ended up doing very little to write more music. I prioritized playing my viola for a half hour when I had the opportunity because I think it’s easier to get back to the sound I love if I do it more frequently. Then when the kids were climbing, I had my viola part for the Mendelssohn quartets and listened to Opus 13, 80, and just barely started on 44 when it was time to wrap up.

How deeply emotional they are! I’m trying to put my finger on why they are triggering such profound emotions when I listen to them. I think it is because they have a certain melodic turn-shape, and then it’s the repetition of that same shape. It’s coming from one instrument, then from another. It’s in one octave, then in another. It’s at one dynamic level, and then it’s at a different one. It’s the lovely development of ideas, and then the juxtaposition of a very different sound. It’s the dance-like structure to some of the movements that make me want to get up and dance.

Studying the quartets with the viola part helps me hear that part especially well, and I know when to anticipate what I think is a general pause in the musical flow.

Today I’m looking at my song again. Adding in a measure of rest for the vocalist, because I think it’s too much to keep singing for so long, and it’s good for the people listening to have a break in listening to the text as well. I know I need to add in the piano part, and it’s more than I think I can do in one sitting. So I’ll just get started and we’ll see how far I get.

I decide to work on a bass line in the piano part, from right before I stopped on the right hand line. I’m realizing I am writing the part so that a contrabass could play the bass line, and I like it. It would sound great with a contrabass and some other instrument, maybe a clarinet, and soprano. Well, a clarinet could only play one note at a time. A guitar I believe could do it well, with the few chords I have written, and mostly melodic line accompanying with a single note at a time.

So I think I might write another instrumentation for this song once I finish all the lines. Maybe tomorrow.