Poseur to Composer

A quote from How to Listen to Music by Henry Edward Krehbiel:

Great musicians...have developed, farther than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as to fill the place now occupied by articulate speech. Herbert Spencer, though speaking purely as a scientific investigator, not at all as an artist, defined music as "a language of feelings which may ultimately enable men vividly and completely to impress on each other the emotions they experience from moment to moment."

Put in another way, skillful musicians use tones (or a "particular combination of material and spiritual elements" as Krehbiel puts it elsewhere) to convey feelings and make you feel them too. Likewise, I'm trying to combine feelings of power and surrender, material and the spiritual into a kind of song called a dhymn.

Inversely, some musicians don't want you to feel anything at all, as in the music you'll hear in product video marketing, commercials and corporate propaganda campaigns. The following video shows how you might arrange a song so that it is vague and emotionally ambiguous.

It's another must-see masterpiece by Tantacrul.

Meditation Time meditating today: 0 Quality of meditation (out of 10): 0

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 2

I'm at a bit of a standstill here. I'm working on my first dhymn – making the hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God "djenty" – but have not gotten far. Basically, I'm playing the barebones melody with the right hand and adding fifths/power chords with the left to simulate "chugs".

I'm playing around with other ideas in my head like a solo, but maybe I'll use music composition software to test them out. I have no experience using musical composition software though, even dumbed-down smartphone apps that create beats or sound loops. It's new territory for me, so I'm excited to get started.

My options for cheap/free music notation software:

MuseScore open source software is an obvious choice, although not without its problems (a must-watch video). There are also online options such as Flat.io, Noteflight and ScoreCloud which supposedly listens to your song and translates it into musical notation. Despite my disappointment with similar software Chordify, I remain cautiously optimistic.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 20 Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 1 ... Too much on my mind, including a second job interview that went rather well.

As part of my daily devotional to God, I sing a hymn before jetting off to work. Today the hymn was All Creatures of Our God and King:

Halfway through I became emotional and could not finish without difficulty. It's not unusual for me. As I sing words of praise my heart softens and swells with love and gratitude. There is a sense of surrender.

Then I marched off to work and listened to Intervals' Siren Sound on repeat and some Animals as Leaders. The sensations I experienced were markedly different. It was like my nervous system was being jacked up with electricity. Adrenaline surged through my body and my brain got a big dollop of dopamine. I felt an undeniable rush of power.

Here are two powerful but completely different responses to music. I wonder how it's possible to combine the two genres into one (Dhymn) and still maintain the authenticity and potency of each. Time, and lots of experimentation, will tell.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 20 Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 18 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 5 ... Lot's of left-hand comping made my arm ache.