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January 2nd, 2018


Writing music has become an issue. As a composer, I love to write music, especially the middle bits, but beginnings and ends are incredibly difficult. I sit at the computer and struggle to begin. It is one of those things about breaks when I don't have a piano to play on it becomes difficult to write. This isn't news to many composers, I'm sure.

"Okay Brain, what are we going to write today?"
"Okay, get this! Piano, in common time, in C!"
"...And?"
"That's all I got!"

I talk to myself while I write. It's entertaining I'm told.

I go and listen to various bits of music, to soundtracks from games and movies, study scores, study Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, nothing really helps once you're in front of the computer ready to write and nothing comes up. I suppose I could shift to writing in front of some good old fashion paper, but I have found that, without the piano, it's a mute point as well.

"Geez, sounds like you need a piano!"

Well, yeah, I could use one or possibly some better discipline to just power through my writing blocks. But it just goes to show, sometimes you must have your tools to succeed. A carpenter may be able to get by without a hammer for a time, but when you don't have a hammer, everything becomes a nail.

So I'm going to go back to staring at an Edgar Allen Poe poem and hope that the words speak to me.

Song of the day: Sarah Kirkland Snider, Unremembered- The River

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