Monthly Archives: Oktober 2021

13/33 Checking Out „Blender“

I am currently more involved in creating music videos, the desire to animate by myself and enhance my abilities  takes more and more shape. Now I face the challenge by acquiring skills on using the open-source software Blender with the help of a tutorials. Within the first minutes of this learning process, I already noticed that the reality is once again more complex than the vague idea of a final outcome. The possibilities of this program are endless. It will probably take me weeks to learn all the shortcuts by heart. I’ve started modeling a donut and probably with a little more time and focus it will become a cool project – „checking out Blender“. For now, however, I’ve abandoned the experiment…

Didn’t I actually want to compose something?

12/33 Creating Lyrics – Based On Colors And Patterns

I had a chat with Helen about trends and anomalies during my composition process. Very often I start a composition with chords that come to me when I play the piano.  Above that, mostly wild improvising and searching results in the melody that has been waiting for the given chords. At the very end I’ve determined what message should be behind the music and have squeezed the words on the already existing melody with a lot of effort. 

With the latest songs I’ve written, I’ve turned it around. The words flowed from somewhere and I started composing with a clear idea of what my song wanted to say. The songs were finished faster and the compositions were more cohesive. 

In the actual case, I have already found melodic motifs to my painting and I’m asking myself: how do lyrics arise from a picture? What does it stimulate in me? Where are the connections between what I see and what I think? Maybe the first step should be to collect associations and then start improvising?

Helen has given me an exercise: collecting associations over 3 minutes that come to my mind when I look at my picture. This is what came out of it:

Fluffy

Interrupted

Unclear

Many things happen in parallel

against each other – with each other

Heaven on earth

Veiled

Warm

Open/wide

Upside down

Soil

Continuous

Where am I going? Why do I put the focus on the background? I am overlooking the main element -> Framed

11/33 What Does Improvisation Mean To Me?

I’ve been thinking more about what improvisation actually means to me. It suddenly took on a new meaning in terms of „finding melodies“. I never really saw improvisation as separate from the jazz context. Always based on the changes of a jazz standard and with an academic approach, through which I got to know improvisation a few years ago.

There’s a pressure behind it to sing the right notes. And that singing right notes is not enough. It should be advanced and unprecedented at best. At least that’s the impression I got from my bachelor studies. I ignored the fact that I also improvise whenever I sing my own melodies over my favorite songs. That humming previously unsung melodies is also improvisation or varying an already existing melody. 

I think this is very much about renewing my approach to improvisation and taking away some of the dusty, unhealthy beliefs that I’ve collected and left untouched over the years…

10/33 Impro Lesson With Susanne Schneider

I now come to the second creative step on the way to my own composition. I have sung several improvisations to my picture. At the beginning there was no particular procedure, I simply let my intuition run free, let colors and patterns work. One improvisation became longer than the other, one more rhythmic, the other searching for words. 

Then I asked myself whether it would be possible to create a repeatability within the improvisation. For example, through an improvisation that is oriented from the left side of the picture to the right. Or one that chooses a certain section of the picture as the main motif.

I noticed that I bypassed or „sang around“ the main pictorial motif – the door – each time. Somehow this part seemed too concrete to me to weave it into the Impro. Perhaps I would get other ideas if I changed the instrument? If the door were my main point of reference, would I play an improvisation on the piano?

I brought my drawing and ideas to the lesson with Susanne Schneider and recorded two nice improvisations there. 

In fact, a pretty musical motif emerged through a combination of „singing from left to right“ and focusing on a particular painted pattern to which I aligned pitch and movement of my singing.

Susanne gave me some important impressions along the way. I should not want too much at once –  better take my first idea and develop it in some directions. To be convinced and formulate the idea with all expressiveness. Represent the idea and have the clear intention to give meaning to my cause.

Saying an unconditional YES to my own ideas. Feeling „grown up enough“ to support my idea, as well as my singing and musical ability.

I think I’ve underestimated how much inner empowerment it takes to improvise….