I'm trying to be good, really
Jul. 5th, 2024 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnNot a lot of writing done this past couple of weeks, but I have managed to get a piece of music I composed last summer actually written down.
I process grief with music, so when my best friend and colleague Michelle was killed last June in a motorcycle accident, I spent the rest of the summer trying to come up with something to honor her memory.
I have been playing piano by ear all my life, but I can't really read music per se. Like, I can read a single vocal line as a singer since I've only been doing it for the last 5 decades, and even I, slow as I am, can eventually see when the notes go up or down. But anything more complex than that -- the marks on the page make no sense. Remember "Every Good Boy Does Fine"? That's how I still have to figure out what pitch a note represents. It's really that bad.
But my Wee Hob, who is now all grown up but still lives in my basement, was going through some boxes the other day and found a CD I recorded for my mom before she passed. And he said, "You know, if you don't write these songs down, they won't be here when you're gone."
Yes, we have cheerful conversations in this household.
And he's actually more right than he knows. I'll lose the ability to play all this stuff long before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Arthritis runs in the family, for one thing.
So I found a free program called Dorico - works on the iPad and the Mac. I suck at counting, but the program can play back what's written on the page, and I can tweak it until it's right. And it has a piano keyboard so I can play the pitch and see if it's what is in my head.
I've got a month before I go back to school, but I'm shooting for 15 minutes a day or music and of writing.
I'm writing in this journal again because when I had a community of writers around me, I was better about converting my idle daydreams into stories. And I loved watching others create, loved offering support and encouragement, loved how we sparked each other's ideas.
I have been rereading stories written by or recommended by my long ago friends, and I just manually looked up some folks who used to be in my LiveJournal feed. I'm not stalking anyone, I promise. Looks like many of the folks I looked up haven't posted in a while, but maybe they'll come back, like I have.
Hob
I process grief with music, so when my best friend and colleague Michelle was killed last June in a motorcycle accident, I spent the rest of the summer trying to come up with something to honor her memory.
I have been playing piano by ear all my life, but I can't really read music per se. Like, I can read a single vocal line as a singer since I've only been doing it for the last 5 decades, and even I, slow as I am, can eventually see when the notes go up or down. But anything more complex than that -- the marks on the page make no sense. Remember "Every Good Boy Does Fine"? That's how I still have to figure out what pitch a note represents. It's really that bad.
But my Wee Hob, who is now all grown up but still lives in my basement, was going through some boxes the other day and found a CD I recorded for my mom before she passed. And he said, "You know, if you don't write these songs down, they won't be here when you're gone."
Yes, we have cheerful conversations in this household.
And he's actually more right than he knows. I'll lose the ability to play all this stuff long before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Arthritis runs in the family, for one thing.
So I found a free program called Dorico - works on the iPad and the Mac. I suck at counting, but the program can play back what's written on the page, and I can tweak it until it's right. And it has a piano keyboard so I can play the pitch and see if it's what is in my head.
I've got a month before I go back to school, but I'm shooting for 15 minutes a day or music and of writing.
I'm writing in this journal again because when I had a community of writers around me, I was better about converting my idle daydreams into stories. And I loved watching others create, loved offering support and encouragement, loved how we sparked each other's ideas.
I have been rereading stories written by or recommended by my long ago friends, and I just manually looked up some folks who used to be in my LiveJournal feed. I'm not stalking anyone, I promise. Looks like many of the folks I looked up haven't posted in a while, but maybe they'll come back, like I have.
Hob
