Monthly Archives: Dezember 2021

20/33 Music-Drawers

I was wondering the other day what inspiration and listening to music does for my composing. And I’ve found that I can divide the music I listen to into 3 different groups on an inspirational level:

There is the music that I can still listen to in the evening, even if the whole day has been about music. This is also the music that has a lot of atmospheric value for me and puts me in a nostalgic or meditative mood. But this music is specifically for listening! The kind of music I don’t want to analyse a chord progression and finally can stop thinking about my own demands or those of others.

Then there is the music that I admire. A melody that catches me, a form progression that surprises me, lyrics that tell the absolute truth or most beautiful story, harmonies that give me goosebumps on my arms and legs. Music that makes me a little angry about the fact that I didn’t come up with the idea myself. This is the music that I listen to so actively and intensively, as if I could transfer all these elements into my own writing. But often I have the famous fear of the blank page, when I intend to write music that has a similar effect on me. 

This is the „I wanna sound like“ category.

And then there is the music that makes me want to compose and immediately sit down at the piano. Often it has to do with the artists themselves, who just glow with such a loving and grounded handling with their music. It seems that mental alignment is a very crucial element when it comes to making inner sounds audible and tangible. 

When I improvise to my paintings I always notice that I simply have to decide to leave something as it is. To let ideas be as they want to left my head. Inspiration from sound rolemodels is important, but happens in advance. As soon as I follow it too much, I get a feeling of being restricted and wanting to force something. 

So I try to let that go.

My task for one of the next paintings: choosing music that is instrumental and that has more atmospheric value for me.

19/33 About Identity

I’m having quite a hard time at the moment. There is hardly any time for my research work, as I am otherwise engaged in composing. I am taking two subjects this semester that are challenging, even overwhelming at times. Film composition with Leon Lhoëst and big band arrangement with Wolfgang Braun. Even though I have to be very disciplined and follow a tight schedule in order to get everything done, I already feel like I’ve really outgrown myself and learned even more than last year.

On the side, I’m writing the soundtrack for a friend’s short film and here I’m already reaching some personal as well as professional limits. I’m very proud of the results so far, but I also realize that I still have to and want to close some educational gaps in the field of music production. 

And with all this occupation with visuals, I realize again how much the motion picture animates me to write music and to give the depicted situation more depth and atmosphere.

The new experiences enrich me, and contribute to reflecting on my artistic identity and question my artistic self-image. Do I see myself as a jazz singer? From a cultural as well as a professional point of view, it is difficult for me to put this stamp on myself. 

More than that, though, I’m really starting to see myself as a composer. Sure it may be partly pandemic related, but my main occupation at the moment is to continue to develop my skills as a producer, writing lyrics and new music. When someone asks me what I do for a living, I feel authentic when I say that I am a vocal coach, singer and composer. And this realization gives me a lot of self-confidence and new drive right now.

18/33 Doing Changes Again…

I had to think of my former teacher Reinette van Zijtveld-Lustig more often these days. When it came to finding an entrance into jazz improvisation, she asked me to imagine an empty room with a beautiful view. Now I should slowly fill it with my furniture and move one thing after another inside the room until I liked it. In the end, it was about the basic principle of creating, dealing, varying and adapting motifs… This technique of connecting improvisation with an everyday

example, easy to visualize in front of the inner eye, taught me a more unencumbered approach to improvisation than the theoretical, function-harmonic one did later. 

The last two painting processes have triggered a more realistic view of my previous approach, which I would now like to document in writing.

I would now like to consciously bring this decisive characteristic of improvisation, the further development of motifs, into my methodological approach. 

As soon as I no longer try to mirror a complete song in a visually perfect way, more intuitive creative processes emerge and I enter improvisation with a different attitude of expectation. I also find it easier to listen to myself while I’m busy processing the visual stimuli.

I select a part of the picture that illustrates the musical aspect that particularly catches my attention in the original composition.

During the further processing of the improvisation it becomes clear that no coherent song emerges from the improvisation. One idea follows the next and it resembles a collection of inspirational possibilities, which make it much easier to get started with the composition. 

When listening to the improvisation several times, ideas crystallize more and more clearly that were not identified as such in the affect. When I listen to the recordings with a little time distance, it almost feels as if a person from the outside is giving me new musical impulses that I can use for my current composition. 

17/33 Meadowlarks

Take a listen to the song:

The Portuguese artist MARO, has started a pretty cool project with the beginning of the corona pandemic: „ITSA ME, MARO“. For this, she „called“ artist friends to make music with them. The result is a lot of nice collaborations and all videos can be watched on her YouTube channel:

I was especially touched by her „conversation“ with Jacob Collier – the two covered the song Meadowlarks by Fleet Foxes. Their version creates an extremely peaceful atmosphere and inspired me to set myself the task of writing a song that has an absolutely non-melancholic mood. At this point, it occurred to me that I haven’t written many peaceful songs that don’t have a tendency towards melancholy, and I wondered which songs I know have this characteristic. Daydreamer by ADELE? Time to Rest You Weary Head by Jacob Collier? Both are very positive, calm songs that nevertheless carry a melancholic quality to my sensibilities. Possibly, however, this may be due to the fact that I associate certain situations of the past with them and the melancholic feeling arises only in me and then I do not want to infer other listeners. 

A genre whose greatest quality is to evoke as little goosebumps and emotions as possible, but to gently put its listener into a calm, neutral relaxation, is that of lullabies. So below is an acoustic impression of my improvisation and the idea of the resulting lullaby. 

Likewise under this aspect, I also approached the visualization of the song. To me it seemed too clumsy to make the melody voice clear by a disconnected line. So I illustrated it as the course of a mountain range. The positive, gentle atmosphere is mixed with polyphony marked by tensions, which give the whole thing a slightly surreal character. This is how the futuristic-looking lark in the form of a spaceship with a breathing organ came into being. 

The following associations have arisen to this image:

• Bird
• Lark 
• Birds flock
• Breath
• Voice
• Singing
• Lungs
• Movement
• What it means to have a voice. What can it do? Sing, speak, communicate, heal, help, hurt, move things and inspire action, shout, whisper, breathe…
• Breeze
• Echo 
• Vastness 
• Calm 
• Blood
• Circulation 
• Distance 
• Taking off from earth
• Spaceship
• Heaven and earth touching 
• Progress
• Soar
• Float
• City moves into the background
• Nature 
• Diversity 
• Surreal 
• Dream
• Sleepy