On writing an original composition: Part 1/n
I usually never have New Year’s resolutions but, one of my goal for 2021 is to make an original composition. Since Guitar is my primary instrument now, it’s supposed to be an instrumental, a Guitar centric piece.
There are some obvious challenges and I know the solutions for them. Other challenges are because of reasons like incompetance, pessimism etc.
The ones I can control
I have not really been in a band so I don’t know people who can help me with the accompaniments. I will have to create the entire piece myself, which means syntesized drums, bass and other parts. This is one of those problems which I have a clear solution for.
I have a MIDI keyboard, learn and grind a bit to learn music production with some DAW and I can atleast start recording some crappy drum beats or bass lines.
Time, it’s always in my control. Didn’t take out time for writing my OC.
The ones I am struggling with
Firstly, I am not a great guitarist by any means[1]. The title might seem like that I’ll be explaining the process and more how to’s kind of details but this is just a 1/n of the struggles and experience I gain during the writing process.
When I say “writing”, it’s not like I will write a piece with staff notations etc. I don’t know how to read/write music, I don’t know music theory, just the very basics. I just play by ear and have no clue what notes I am hitting, if it feels right, it works. To be honest, people would say that it’s a good thing but sometimes I think that a formal learning would have been more helpful to me. I didn’t say how much time I take to figure out a song if I play by ear. What if I knew all the scales, I would be getting down all these songs faster.
Looking at the legends of the music scene, comes the feeling of incompetance. I can also agree to the fact that I do not practice much so I can’t and don’t complain that I can’t nail the songs at will. There’s a feeling of awe and a little pessimism that I can’t be like these people in this lifetime.
I will be struggling with the technicalities most of the times if I try to improvise. Expression of thoughts are then restricted by the thoughts of getting the techniques right. This is involuntary and comes naturally to some people. Of course, they grind a lot to get to this stage. I want to achieve this freedom of expression.
Passion and Patience
Whenever someone asks me how to learn guitar, I tell them have the passion and patience to learn. I am in no place to give any technical guidance but I can surely say that these two things are something which helped me. And I can see that people not exhibiting these just drop the instrument.
I think this still stands as the answer to the struggles I am facing right now.