{"id":190,"date":"2021-11-23T03:33:42","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T03:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laurelantur.com\/?p=190"},"modified":"2021-11-23T03:33:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T03:33:44","slug":"experimenting-with-music-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/23\/experimenting-with-music-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Experimenting with music again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s only been decades. That’s not completely true. A few years ago I made a real effort to learn to play guitar better, and I took a online course for writing lyrics. I felt stupid and frustrated, and also that it was not what I wanted, to play guitar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I am giving it another go. I’ve felt very frustrated with visual art, and the mystical expressive arts project gave me permission to think about how I might experiment with music in a light and easy way. My boyfriend has also been experimenting with sound stuff, building out a modular synthesizer. So he explained some things about electronic music, what midi is, Audacity versus the as-yet-unpurchased Ableton. It was a very steep learning curve and this happened over weeks or months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then something just clicked. I discovered Cakewalk by Bandlab. I also started watching a bunch of videos by EDM Tips<\/a>. I don’t want to make EDM, but the tutorials and free downloads were fantastic and encouraging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also there is Grimes. Love her or hate her, or her music, she just decided one day to make music and FIGURED IT OUT and made a goddam album. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music really was my first love but I have no real talent. I remember making a guitar out of a shoe box and rubber bands and being very intrigued by the tones it made. I sang. No one was interested or encouraging. I had stage fright and thus quite a few traumatic experiences singing in front of others. I couldn’t control my voice or remember the words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My best high school friend was a big support. After high school when I was slumming around San Francisco, she helped me find a place to stay for a couple of months when she travelled in Europe. It was a strange basement room I had all to myself. I slept on a couch and had a TV and used the money I saved on rent to buy a guitar and a bass. I wrote terrible songs and taught myself as much as I could. I was not any good, but I loved it and was able to spend hours on it. I did put an ad in SF Weekly and someone actually answered it. I spent a humbling afternoon with a real musician who generously took my ideas and turned it into an actual song. I was totally out of my league, but it was a delightful afternoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my friend returned from her trip, I lived with her at her mom’s (I feel embarrassed by this btw). Neither of us worked. How old were we…19? 20? By that time I had a little 8 track recorder and she helped me record an actual song in her bathroom. Vocals, bass and guitar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel so grateful for her support and validation. But now we never talk and I don’t know if she would be able to really hear my gratitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zooming forward a few decades to today. I have spent the whole day experimenting with midi and drum tracks and sounds available in Cakewalk. I’ve been learning about keys and chords and progressions. I love it. Here’s one of the experiment. It’s not good! But it is big progress towards what feels like authentic creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.bandlab.com\/embed\/?id=2b37a6eb-f14b-ec11-9820-e42aac7a5303<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s only been decades. That’s not completely true. A few years ago I made a real effort to learn to play guitar better, and I took a online course for writing lyrics. I felt stupid and frustrated, and also that it was not what I wanted, to play guitar. Now I am giving it another go. I’ve felt very frustrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}