All questions and no answers
Work has been hard recently and I cannot deny that despite my bullish attitude in tutorials (I had fiercely defended myself in a recent tutorial), I have disappointed myself in my work. It isn't that I haven't been trying, it's just that the efforts have been in vain.
I'm a man who thinks a lot about his work. I really cannot see the point of spending thousands on a degree course only to leap through hoops and achieve only what I need to pass with a respectable grade. Instead, personal academic development is much more important to me. So I have to place my work here in a relevant context of "how will this progress my ability to compose and understand music better?". In fact, I reckon that over 90% of my work consists of thinking about this kind of stuff, leaving the remaining 10% to a sheer panic about a fortnight before the submission date.
I have been finding recently that my thinking has just produced a whole bunch of questions and almost sod all answers. Don't get me wrong, I still consider thinking about the issues in place to be extremely important if the work isn't to become arbitrary and ultimately, crap, but at the moment the work just isn't materialising!! I have tacked on my wall a whole bunch of questions to which I have no answers...
How is pulse defined?
How is texture defined?
To what extent are texture and pulse integral?
How can established parameters of the above become realised in composition?
Why do fresh ideas to me become quickly stale?
How long is my concentration span?
What's going on?
Of course, the last is a joke, but it's a serious matter! I'm sure my tutors dispair of me, I wouldn't blame them. I don't think anyone could deny my efforts, but maybe my tutors worry should provoke a more productive response from me, like actually completing a composition. I shall certainly try.
Or maybe I should have really studied the philosophy of music instead....
(Now my mother panics. :) Don't worry Mum, it was a joke!!)
I'm a man who thinks a lot about his work. I really cannot see the point of spending thousands on a degree course only to leap through hoops and achieve only what I need to pass with a respectable grade. Instead, personal academic development is much more important to me. So I have to place my work here in a relevant context of "how will this progress my ability to compose and understand music better?". In fact, I reckon that over 90% of my work consists of thinking about this kind of stuff, leaving the remaining 10% to a sheer panic about a fortnight before the submission date.
I have been finding recently that my thinking has just produced a whole bunch of questions and almost sod all answers. Don't get me wrong, I still consider thinking about the issues in place to be extremely important if the work isn't to become arbitrary and ultimately, crap, but at the moment the work just isn't materialising!! I have tacked on my wall a whole bunch of questions to which I have no answers...
How is pulse defined?
How is texture defined?
To what extent are texture and pulse integral?
How can established parameters of the above become realised in composition?
Why do fresh ideas to me become quickly stale?
How long is my concentration span?
What's going on?
Of course, the last is a joke, but it's a serious matter! I'm sure my tutors dispair of me, I wouldn't blame them. I don't think anyone could deny my efforts, but maybe my tutors worry should provoke a more productive response from me, like actually completing a composition. I shall certainly try.
Or maybe I should have really studied the philosophy of music instead....
(Now my mother panics. :) Don't worry Mum, it was a joke!!)
posted by Iain at 12:41 PM
4 Comments:
Iain, anything you want to do to make yourself happy and contented is fine with me......as long as you're footing the bill!!!
Love, Mum
A pulse is a slient, regular beat that the rhythm to a piece of music is based on and only talented musicians and mathematicians hear in their heads.
Ahem... sorry, I meant, s-i-l-e-n-t.
That's nice...special. I think you're suffering from being on a very fine line. It lies between the realms of genius and madness. Or, you are a product of the over capitalist - 'get as many as possible through ' system that exists in education today. Hey, you're being the ultimate rebel by actually thinking. Anyway, Moonbow Jakes? We should go back soon.
Also, I'm going to write it here because debiboo's blog won't let me write more than 200 letters... After exams, etc are over we should all head to the land of Tinsletown and pay a little bit too much money to have perfectly good fruit and perfectly good chocolate bars squeezed, crushed, blended, mashed and generally abused and tortured in obscene ways, and added to milk and called milkshakes. hey, you think the milk shakes, them bananas are petrified!
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