Oh hi blogosphere, long time no see.
Probably you're reading this via a link on my Facebook page, in which case it's redundant to tell you I've composed and a score to a production of Titus Andronicus, and I've played it as a live accompaniment to the production four times now (with two more performances to go in this iteration of the production). But I'm taking a moment to frame that anyway, because that's what I'm writing about.
After tonight's show, I had multiple people come up to me and say something to the effect of "the music was great, I couldn't have conceived of the production without it" which means a lot to me, because the majority of the work that happened in constructing the show (which if you don't know, used a lot of devised theater techniques in the tradition of Lecoq, which is this French movement theater practice) took place before I was involved, and most of my compositions are a direct response to the work I encountered when I entered rehearsals.
Not all of it, if I remember correctly some percussion motifs were in place, and one of the central themes I wrote after I knew the production was looking for a music director. In fact, although I was familiar with the major details (the hands getting cut off, the people being baked into pies, etc) I'd never fully encountered Titus as a text until I saw a production last summer. When I saw the director post on Facebook that he was looking for someone to do music, my mind began whirring with all the potential dissonant and angular themes that would go along with a play about madness, dissonance and angularity being two themes I take a lot of inspiration from in my composing, I put my courage to it's sticking place, and responded "yes, me, I want to do it".
And now about a month later, here I am!
It's arguably the best work I've done as a musician (or at least the work I'm proudest of) but then when I think that, I think back on my whole history as a musician, and I want to write a blog post about it, so here we go.
I come from a pretty musical family, my father is a very accomplished classical pianist from when he was younger, my older brother was a flautist and a very gifted singer, my maternal uncle played guitar and sang in country bands all across the South, and for much of my life I felt like I had the potential for that same gift, I just never knew where or how to express it. The piano never spoke to me directly (it still doesn't, although someday I'd like to become proficient at it), and when the opportunity arose to learn a band or orchestral instrument in elementary school, I kind of shrugged. My parents bought a damaged classical guitar for me from a garage sale when I was in middle school, I took some lessons, but it never stayed in tune and it was hard for me to play at the time, so I didn't stick with it.
But at the same time, I knew music lived inside me. At one point, I thought I'd learn the sitar (which I'd still really like to do someday, it's such a beautiful instrument). I remember my mom describing the role my father's piano playing played in their courtship and thinking "ok so yeah to get a girl I should really learn an instrument". I vividly remember this one dream I had about an other worldly spherical lute, like a combination of a stringed instrument and a globe that didn't exist in real life, but in that dream I could play it proficiently. I've never told anyone about that before.
When I was in high school, my Mom bought me a Fender Stratocaster. Again, it didn't stick like it could have, and it gathered dust in my room. Around this time though, I was becoming closer to the burn out/musician crowd at my high school, to be fair not all of them were burn outs, and for a while I was the singer in my friend's goofy metal band, which we called The Devil's Agents.
I was deeply depressed about being stuck in high school (and being too awkward to get a girlfriend, and various other things), and I think that combined with the other members getting into other stuff, along with my penchant to turn everything into satire (even then I was a natural comedian/clown) which I don't think they were crazy about, lead to the band breaking up without ever officially breaking up.
That following summer between junior and senior year, several things happened. I started playing Guitar Hero, a lot. Like, I got really good at Guitar Hero. I could play all the songs on expert. I loaned my Stratocaster to my dear burnout friend Jason, and he was going to get it set up and give it back to me. He may have pawned it. He may have taken it to get set up, but then never picked it up. I'll never know. He died of a heroin overdose several months later.
Needless to say, what was already a state of depression deepened. I wrote a lot of poetry. Most of that was bad, some of it was passable. I asked for another electric guitar, my family, god bless 'em, bought me one, that I still own and play when I go home to Boston.
I'd realized at some point, "well shit, if I spent this much time learning the guitar as I have getting good at this guitar based video game, I'd probably be like, good at real guitar", so that's what I did. That year for Christmas I asked for some recording equipment, and I started recording weird ambient songs inspired by all the avant garde/electric Miles Davis and Pink Floyd I was listening to (honestly it was mostly Pink Floyd, now that I've been playing for ten years I can actually cite Miles as an influence but back then it was more an inspiration than anything you'd pick out in my music).
Jason also used to talk about how awesome it would be if we could be in a band together, we talked a lot about starting a technical death metal band (did I mention at the time I was also into technical death metal? I was).
But he died before we could do any of that.
There's more to this story, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'm going to publish this and call it Part 1 of my ten year history with the guitar (amongst other things), tune in next time for part 2 of however many parts it takes for me to be satisfied!
