..... and WHAT A JOURNEY!

As this April 2014 with major and most humbling surprises for me is about to make way for May, I know I have learned a lot about something I know very well. Does it sound weird? Maybe. My initial amazement when I found out about the various studies in music may as well be regarded as a very selfish way of thinking. I don’t know exactly how to phrase it, but in a simple way I really feel bad about the way I was thinking!!

A recent remark about "intervals" in my music caused me to have a quick research on the internet to understand what it means in musical terms - I didn't want to sound too stupid - and oh my, what a humiliation it was! I thought music studies were just to learn the names of the various notes on the little lines, octaves up or down, tempo, music terms and gizmos.

(I am using the description from a vocabulary I had until fairly recent, not that which I learned in the meanwhile)

I was confused with the word “interval” since I do not have silent parts in my compositions and thought it might have something to do with in between various compositions – such as my first Symphony, how one chapter goes over to another.

When I saw the list of diminished, augmented or whatever thingies – I won’t peep there now to sound clever – my mouth went dry. I replied back in all honesty that I was happy not never had such music studies, I surely would have flunked.

It made me appreciate more what I have, had and didn’t have. Yes, I am happy that I never had to study music and I don’t care anymore about not knowing all the correct terms to speak with the learned people about music.

I don’t wish anymore to know everything at once in order to compose faster and get all the heaped up music out.  I am just happy that I can already compose faster with what I am learning – a batch of ca 150 measures in a ‘Fugue’ style took me around a week to complete during my spare time before – now during a surge I could already manage three in one week.

Composing music takes me twice as long still than to write a verbal chapter, so I am looking forward to the day I can ‘write’ the music as comfortable but it won’t be as quick since it is a tremendous lot of clicking to get one ‘word’ into music.

‘Writing’ music is as when I’d tell the story in words and now I understand the “intervals” – this is the term I’d use for all the comma’s, hyphens, full stops, commands, demands, questions, etc. etc. to make my musical story to sound ‘normal’.

I can only respect all those who study music and music composition.  A great part of putting music together in a composition does involve a lot of mathematics (which, along with a third language, was my favourite subject at school).

Many people never have art and mathematics together as a field of learning. A good deal of understanding physics also supports tremendously in that it allows one to ‘see’ clashes in the sound waves (which the fine hearing can hear) and added then to this is learning to write the music in order to put the big picture together, knowing which sounds to match.

Knowing that there are people that indeed enjoy my music creations, leaves me humbled in understanding that I do have something good, and humiliated for the way I was thinking. What then seems to be a natural gift to me, is another man’s hard work and years and years of study.

I shall not edit my previous writings for I am not ashamed to acknowledge my faults. I apologize with all sincerity to all those who have been working very hard, studying very hard for music. I know what it is to love music.

(But I won’t apologize to the snobs who think they know music – music is born from creativity, not from the books. The books only help to make such creativity audible)