When An Ending No Longer Works.

Last night I took an evening off from practicing. The tendon in my left wrist that developed tendonitis a few years back was getting tight. This is never a good sign and with a gig coming up with The Field next week I need to pace myself carefully. If pain develops I stop! Injury is not worth the recovery process.

I was also told to slow down by my vein doctor today. Geesh what do they think I'm getting old? My left calf is still recovering from the procedure and my job has me on my feet enough to distress the recovery. So I came home and rested tonight per the doc's suggestion. I let go of my AT class.

I opened my playing with Journeyman, Gathered Hearts, & Kinnara. Then a good look at Broken Wing which is one of the three pieces I will perform at The Field next week. Worked on two trouble spots and then played through the piece twice. The energy of the music is felling good. I was ready to move on to Stepping Stones but decided to play through a new work called Becoming. This is recorded in a few versions but not notated. Becoming could easily get lost in the coming days with the performance and added pressures on the day job.

While playing through Becoming there is a rocking part for a while. Tonight it rocked a bit more with a new part being exposed to me. Of course this new part does not fit with the current ending. So what I told myself, this piece is less than a week old. Get out of the way and let it flow. There may be a new ending or a new path to the old ending. Play, generate, and let go of preconceived notions.

Write a Bad Piece of Music

After posting on Sunday night I recalled an exercise in writing music that has been useful for me came from a  book by W.A Mathieu. The particular exercise was either in The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music or The Musical Life. Both are worth reading so I am not going to take the time to dig through them to find which book contains the exercise. If I find it later I'll post it in a comment. The exercise is - write a bad piece of music. At first this blew my mind. Yet at times I have worked with it and the outcome was that I was active in creating music. This activity allowed some very good music to come into being. Just as a result of giving myself the permission to write a bad piece of music.

Last night I ended my practice reviewing the melody that came out at the beach last week. I had not looked at this since Friday. I wanted to allow this to be in my brain as I slept and perhaps find another connection or magic within the framework of what I had. Sitting at my desk after lunch today I sang through the beginning of the piece in my mind and suddenly saw an option for variation in the beginning. I addressed this first in my practice tonight.

The idea did not work, yet I allowed myself to explore other possibilities. None of them were working and I found myself thinking that perhaps this was a 'bad piece of music.' And perhaps it is. What is important is that I am making contact with music, seeing other possibilities, and trusting what I hear. I may not be playing the piece well and then again maybe it is a 'bad piece ...' What I know for certain is that if I do not work with the material there will be no piece of music. So with the blessings of Mathieu's exercise which has worked for me before - I give myself permission to write a bad piece of music now. YES!

I laugh as I remember sharing this idea with a musician friend who was going to return in one week with a new piece. When we met again he had nothing, but was going to have a piece the following week. When next we met he still had nothing. He was unable to allow himself to create a bad piece of music concerned that this might become something to settle for. However he also had not created a good piece of music. He was just stuck. For me this option of writing a bad piece allows me to remain in motion with the process of creating music. Moving musically forward in some fashion. Enough words; back to the melody.

What music are you creating today?