Solitude
In
the fall of 2012, when I was alone I wasn’t really alone, technically, but I
felt alone. I was with many people at an
outside restaurant whom I did not know.
They were speaking with each other unintelligibly to me, the content of
their dialogue was conveniently tuned out by my ear-cancelling headphones. For weeks I would show up there and I would
concentrate on writing poetry and composing music. Some of my favorite compositions were
composed while I was in a state of solitude.
I had minimal interaction with waitresses during this time, as I really
wanted to finish my thirty minute composition and my goal was to make it sound
as Tchaikovskian as possible. I quickly
found that it was too difficult to write a single piece, especially in the
shadow of Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which lasts 18 minutes. He had actually written a shorter version
first then he later revised it after consulting with Balakirev, a contemporary. I used software to be able to compose music
away from the piano: Sibelius is a notation software, and cakewalk is a simpler
notation software that has a more user-friendly interface. Cakewalk also has a
playback function, which is an absolute necessity. For me, one has to hear the melody sort of in
one’s head much like how one remembers a melody from a composition. Even before one improvises on a piano, one
must hear the melody before actually hearing it and expanding on it. On the outside, spectators look at you as if improvisation
is a spontaneous art and just like the method of composition, but actually a
lot of thought has gone into it beforehand.
When I sit down to improvise, I can immediately tell whether it’s a bad
melody or good one, and it usually is luck that lands on a good one. One must learn to separate the visual aspect
of the keyboard from the abstractness of music theory behind the keyboard. It’s not enough to memorize I-V chord
progressions and more complicated ones, although they are helpful. The trick is having an idea, much like a
computer scientist has with a project, before beginning an improvisation or
composition. When I sit down to compose,
I don’t see numbers for chord progressions because I simply don’t have the time
to write them out, although, I can create something that sounds amazing using
advanced music theory, I presume. Knowing which note is going to be a voice and
then, knowing the rhythm of the voice and hearing where I want it to go next is
the skill I’ve sought to develop since middle school. I do this by figuring out the interval, or if
I have a really good ear, I can immediately tell what the interval is, and then
inputting it into the software program.
I wrote six pieces that Fall that I thought were going to be thirty
minutes long each, but they turned out to be five minutes long on average. But later, I discovered that if I combined
all of them, they sounded unified. And
much like Tchaikovsky’s tragic eighteen minute composition, this one has many
pauses and climatic moments, I think. If
I had the time and the courage, I’d learn my own composition and play it. As an improviser and composer without any
real distinguishing license, I am content with just feeling like I have piano
composition as a side hobby; it’s not that important to me to finish the music
degree I had started eight years ago.
Another time I
felt absolute solitude—like nothing bothered me and I wasn’t psychotic—was when
I was alone in my room for days on end, though I did not confine myself
entirely to its location but since I did wonder about the house frequently. I remember being in there the most while I
was unemployed during a summer years ago, mostly while my father was away at
work and I still had some remnant of discipline left in me. I would see my dad return regularly from work
at 3:30pm, but I was alone and I could divide my tasks up how I saw fit
according to my priorities, such as: reading, playing/practicing the piano, and
watching TV/playing video games. While
this was hardly nature driven as in the case of Thoreau’s story, “Walden,” I
thought that surrounding myself with technology would ease the passage of
time. In retrospect, I have found this
to be rather passive and a wasteful way to spend time, except for reading and
composing music. But during this time, I
improvised a few pieces that I recorded (and put on YouTube) of the exact
feelings, emotions, and desires I had for a particular woman who’s now moved
on.
