Living With a Nerd

Aside from a constructive creative outlet, one of the biggest advantages to creating music is that I now listen to music differently.

I have always loved listening to music, and I have spent countless hours with headphones on and eyes closed. When I listen to music now, however, I picture the creator playing the instruments. I try to imagine what was going through their mind when they were inspired to make these sounds in the specific order that they chose. What emotions were they experiencing that caused them to play that particular note? Why did they record their music in that particular time signature? What emotional response are they trying to create when I listen to their music? What emotional response do I actually have while listening to their music?

Music acts as something of a signature. Take an artist such as Squarepusher; his collection of works can be quite eclectic, yet you always know that you are listening to something created by Squarepusher. I always find it strange when the signature created by music is not matched by the person or group that created it. This presents an interesting question: why did this person create this music? If the sound doesn’t match the soul, where was the motivation? What was the driving force behind creating something that doesn’t match the creator?

Work on The Transient Unknown continues. It is almost a certainty that I won’t have the album finished by the end of July, but it will definitely be completed at some point in August. While I love the ambient music I have thus far created, I’m glad that my next album is not planned to be an ambient one. Ambient music has been unexpectedly tough to create tracks that don’t sound alike yet aren’t just soundscapes.

I will feel very accomplished and happy once The Transient Unknown has been completed, but I can’t wait to start work on “Lost on the Way to the Laundry”.