Another evening spent working up a mix for Mohammad. We were hoping to get some more time with the oud player but he's leaving the country for we don't know how long so we have to either get him to record us one more take from his apartment and send it via FTP in .wav format, or just go with the cleaned up mp3 files that we have.
Tomorrow will tell what we end up doing. But I think we have just about everything we need to make it good. I finished a mix this evening but I may still have to tweak the timing of things once I see the fully edited version of the scene which we'll be laying it over. That should be tomorrow as well.
It's exciting that it's almost finished and that there's a first deadline in sight. I had a lot of time to work up my part of the score because I started working on concepts before they even shot the scenes. But now that everything is coming together in the editing room over there, I can see an end in sight. Well, in truth, my anticipation is just heightened. I can't really see anything yet. Except for the few concepts I've gotten to glimpse along the way.
Either way, it's been fun getting reacquainted with using Logic Studio along the way, and finding ways to use Native Instruments' Kontakt Player as a sampler. I even got to use Guitar Rig 3 again, as one of the things I added this evening to make the mix a little stronger was guitar.
Anyway, here I sit, exhausted but wide awake and listening to the indie version of Marvelous 3's Hey! Album. A song I haven't heard in ages that wasn't on the later version of the album. It's really bringing me back to junior year of college when I last listened to this album regularly. A time when I lived in West Greensboro in a house with 3 other guys while I was finishing up the last semesters of my music degree and before I ran off to France for a summer and met the woman I would eventually marry and later get divorced from. It was an innocent time. Little did I know that that would be the last year I took piano lessons. And little did I know that a decision I made that year to study composition instead of piano for my masters would lead me where it eventually did. As I remember, it was a decision that was hatched partially out of my disappointment with my piano professor and my disappointment with myself for failing at lessons and not having improved much over the course of three years of study...but mostly out of a realization that I was not cut out to be a performer and that I should be a composer instead like I had dreamed of as a kid at the age of 13. Of course, I needed the expertise if I was going to become a composer. I remember feeling as though I'd wasted the time I had in college doing the wrong thing for myself, studying piano and doing horribly at it (I was a bad sight reader and couldn't discipline myself to practice 8 hours a day like some over-achievers that I was studying with) when I could have been learning about composing and getting started earlier. I regret that more and more that I didn't realize that from the beginning.
I was told by that same piano professor when I suggested changing my major that I should just do a masters in composition because it didn't really matter what I did my undergrad in. Of course, he made this statement because he was assuming that I wanted to go into academia, a place I still find myself at odds with. After that year, so many things changed and I almost didn't pursue this career. But I did. It just took me a while to feel like I was making any headway.
I'm going to start this next thought with a disclaimer that I'm not comparing myself to other composers and other human beings by this, but I often do look at other people and see how far they've gotten when they've been alive the same amount of time as I have or shorter. By "far" I mean that they've succeeded in doing things I've aspired to do but haven't been able to find a way to do...yet. I consider that maybe they've had more opportunities than me, but then maybe they've had the same amount of opportunities as I have and have just taken more of them, or just taken the right opportunities and not wasted time with ones that weren't right for them or weren't going to lead them anywhere. I wonder what they knew that I didn't know and where they were getting that information. Was I cheated? Or was I just not paying enough attention? Letting things slip by while I got distracted by things like love and alcohol and social situations?
I know. It's pretty dark stuff for a Saturday night, but I assure you I'm not depressed right now. No, I'm feeling relatively good despite how harrowing it can be to pursue something for years and feel like you're moving at a snail's pace. But I guess this is just the way it goes for some of us. I've already said I'm not doing this because I think it's going to be easy. I'm doing it because I have to.
Despite having just done some fairly big stuff recently (performing in two very different concerts back to back for starters), I still feel like I'm in a bit of a funk. So, I should probably just sleep on it and I'll be good tomorrow morning. Good night.
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