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Re: How often do you listen to your own music?
I occasionally listen, even now years after I've stopped playing
regularly, and still find some of it very satisfying, even
incomparable. My explanation here goes to the implied "why do you
listen" part of the question:
Back when I was doing music with all my available time and energy, I
listened regularly and in preference to "artists I liked", because my
approach was to simply play as often as possible and to hit record
whenever the constant stream of pure improv seemed to have taken off
to somewhere interesting or surprising.
So I listened later (usually when commuting) as a natural part of the
editing/evaluating process, and then listened to the edited bits quite
a lot depending on just how much I'd actually surprised or pleased
myself, always with an ear to whether I could somehow improve it, and
as a presumed check on how I was developing. This whole play/grab/
listen/edit cycle was far more interesting and engaging than listening
to even the most wonderful "real" recorded music; my hands were all
over it, and much more could be done with any of it. So even though my
stuff was typically quite obviously not as accomplished or even as
objectively moving or delightful as other people's music, the whole
thing was a richer experience. Plain old "grooving" couldn't compete
with critical "creating".
But then I had an experience which changed my relationship with my
playing and process, and still defines how I relate to it now when I
sometimes drag out old tracks for a listen.
This was at least 15 years ago. I'd been to a reunion weekend with
childhood friends as we gathered to memorialize the mother of one of
our gang. It had not gone well; I'd hoped it would be the occasion for
some healing of old wounds, but instead it seemed to aggravate them.
On the long drive home I took out the disk I'd brought along to show
my old buds what I was up to, but had not had an opportunity to play,
and found myself playing it over and over as I recognized just how
perfectly it was acting to cauterize the painful recent encounters I
was obsessively picking over.
I could suddenly get what my music-making had been driven by and what
it was for: my own emotional health. My development as a musician
wasn't at all the real motivation, nor was my output really intended
for anybody else. The whole craft/skill issue that I'd imagined was
behind my obsessive and extensive home-studio time was nothing
compared to the raw "self-expression" that I was engaged in. I saw and
heard how other people's music could never be quite as precisely
designed for my personal emotional universe as my own creations, no
matter how exquisite.
Also I could see that playing my tracks for others was the musical
equivalent of discribing my dreams; in other words, they were almost
always going to be really interesting only to me. Simply being
perfectly expressive of myself was no ticket to universal interest,
nor was this the royal road to "Art". THAT was bracing--good to know!
The dimly recalled quote, from Freud I think, to the effect that if
someone could truly succeed in bringing his dreams to life, he would
be the perfect artist, seemed to be thoroughly disproved. Or maybe it
was simply that journalling isn't art-making; hadn't realized that was
all I was really doing. Still sorting that one out, all these years
later. And mostly listening to other folks' "real" if necessarily
"generalized" or "approximate" music; it bears much more repetition:)
Still, there's still no real equivalent to the custom-made audible
"medicine" I used to make.
I wonder if anybody reading here can relate...?
dpc
On 28 Jul 2012, at 4:16 PM, kay'lon rushing wrote:
I guess this is a rather odd question but I'm curious. Do you only
listen to it for improvement? Or do you enjoy listening to yourself
just as you would listen to an artist you like?