"Operation: Homecoming" update

[kyrasantae]

I handed in the set of completed paperwork today - my two references returned their parts independently. I know that the office has received the references because both of my referrers emailed me after they brought them directly to the office.


Figure 1: Paperwork (before completion)
I've been having a lot of trouble getting restful sleep lately; I wonder if it's the huge push I've been getting from my environment towards music stuff, the other dream that can never be:

• The 'can iz tawkin' NW' incident last week
  
• Before that, looking at some plugins for iTunes and inevitably a NW song is being used on the screenshots
  
• Playing my flute for Burdon at the show last Friday (here's the best pic I could find) and coming off as a bit prideful for turning down a free ticket to watch the rest of the show
  
• Wanted to visit the big HMV to buy a DVD, but there was a band playing in front of the store, down by the main floor entrance (thankfully I decided to enter the store directly to the movie section upstairs - but you can see down anyway)
  
• Call for performers for Residence Community Awards night in March
  
• A guy who didn't get back to me after I called him last year about his ad put up his ads again... got a response this time but he want a grungy sound for his music so he turned me down (whatev.)
  
• "if you want to frickin' get a band then seriously, WRITE SOME OF YOUR OWN SONGS and play them at open mics or something, stop whining to people about it - it's easy, if you can come up with tunes to other people's chord progressions then pick a chord progression and play it over and over and come up with a tune to it" (what parts of "I can write words for tunes [did it for some folk tunes in high school] but not tunes for words" and the imagining of a dramatic scope, not "boring rock song", and "I write either chants or rigid classical tunes" do they not understand?)
  
• My chemistry TA somehow taking an interest in my art - I can't recall how the discussion got to that part; I was just watching my solution crystallize on the Rotovap...
  
• And of course my consuming preoccupation with the writing of my art manifesto for sociology class - I'm trying to make it as definitive a document as possible, but without being too limiting or else it would be book-length. Naturally, trying to impose a semi-rigid boundary on something that was designed to be form-less is challenging.

And I wake with my eyes in pain, and without rest...falling asleep again and waking to strange dreams...

Comments

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the "guitarist's lament"... those types of people don't understand what the difference is between music and lyrics, and that a "lyricist" that writes the melody as well, is writing the entire song. A chord progression does not a song make; otherwise, all blues and 98% of rock would all be one song with many arrangements.

However, I feel strongly that *you* can, through practice, write melody as well as lyrics. My mother started with 'filk' type songs (rewriting the words to show tunes), and to some extent, so did I. Writing Filk is good practice getting the words to fit the meter. I was also able to write melodies from very young. My weakness is in arranging.

I also have my own endless list of frustrations about music - right now I'm editing a promotional video for a friend, and their female lead singer is so... mediocre... that it's a physically painful thing to do to listen to her mumble through songs (I can't say that she's bad, because her pitch is good. But her timing and enunciation are not.).

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

How is writing song parodies different from "writing words for tunes", which I can already do? I believe the contention causing the frustration should probably have been phrased in my OP as "if you want to be noticed then you have to be able to fly solo for a bit". Which also poses the question of how am I supposed to play at an open mic when I can't play guitar and there's no way I'm buying myself a keyboard *and* lugging it around?

I think one of the difficulties is the languages I'm mostly influenced by - both Chinese and Finnish music have a very different meter that does not correspond to English very well (as proven by my attempts to make English versions of Finnish songs in order to better appeal to people interested in playing Finnish covers with me, which number near zero).

P.S. I think my timing and enunciation is great, but my pitch isn't always so good because I don't have the training ;)

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

What I was trying to say is that I think that you have it in you to write melodies as well - and that you already have the lyricist tools.

Maybe as an experiment, try writing an instrumental (i.e. piano) piece - something that you don't plan to put words to, and see what kind of melodies come out.

I'm also not sure that you have to be able to "fly solo" in order to be noticed - but the music scene is different here. I have also put together a repetoire of acapella songs in the past for the same reasons (I have since learned to play 4 chords on guitar passably well, which now provides me with the ability to play enough songs to fill an open mic set if I need to). I also have created Karaoke versions of my original stuff, so I can do a solo performance without a backing band.

I have no idea how well something like that would go over at an open mic in your area (bringing a CD to accompany yourself with), but if you think it would help you, it's worth trying. At least that way, you won't have to buy a keyboard and lug it around ;)

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

There's a piano improvisation-type piece over here (http://www.ualberta.ca/~mmlau/audio/piano/improv.mp3) that I did using a sheet of chord symbols and the basic outline from a different song. It's rather elegiac. I can come up with elegiac, soundtracky melodies in my head. Not singable ones. Not epic. I want epic. I can't write epic.