Not There

I've been listening to http://projectmooncircle.bandcamp.com/album/retrospect-suite and it feels like a black hole happened after listening to this album.  All the things I liked about the retrospect suite combined with the things I didn't like about the music I've heard recently sucked into this hole and where I didn't see the point in making more music, I feel happy now.

The first song from the album is a peculiar one, in that it is centered around words I don't understand.  The french poem is rhythmically pleasant and the entire beat and music around it is set to not take away from the lyric.

The album will be called Not There after what I've read from Christopher Alexander's books.  He speaks of people making things in a way that they were born to make.  That tools and patterns enable this way of making, but aren't necessary.  Often it is the simplest growth from the surrounding resources that don't interrupt the system, but are at one with it, alive, comfortable, and whole.

Trying to apply this way of thinking is not the goal.  Getting to the place where it comes out naturally is the focus.

My musical history started with me sitting on the piano at 4 and my teacher at the time, Mrs. Armstrong, was a gifted pianist.  I ended up learning how to listen and copy versus sight read and this affected all future experiences in piano lessons.  In college I was given a guitar and learned a lot of Nirvana songs.  While in college I took a digital composition class and the world of making music on a computer opened up like stumbling on the Garden of Eden after a routine hike through a familiar path.  

After college, in the times I was laid off, I made a few albums (under the name Tobali) wrestling with my own ideas of composition learned in school, and the sounds I loved from other electronic musicians.

The last album was very dark and contained 1 song of low hums and swells reminiscent of a cicada, but sounding more like a mammoth robotic cicada stuck in a dark warehouse.  That was made and it seemed to bury

the darkness I felt during the layoff or worthlessness and tired ways of working without passion.

I expect this album will be a bit more cheery since that's what my daughter likes to dance to.  I'm also facing a situation where I want all songs to be dancable, but the songs I'm feeling I should compose deviate a bit.  This deviation is something I need to learn to embrace and step away from to figure out where I draw the boundaries for the final album.