This has been a great thread that I was sad to see trail off after mid-June, so here’s a bump.
At 54 years old and with zero prior musical training I embarked a little more than a year ago into the world of modular synthesis.
I have relatively no method of how this composition I hope to one day create will ultimately become a cohesive something. While I was an infant exploring my first stabs into vocalization and as a toddler started forming words, it would be years before I could convey complex ideas and decades before I published my first book. The process of expression happens on its own terms and while the window of life is closing in ever faster on me, I’ll let the creative evolution of my musical voice mature as it does without much in the way of me making demands for expertise or genius prior to it possibly coming about in some happy accident. This doesn’t mean that I don’t try hard to learn, it only implies that I have the patience to see it become what it can.
While there are some arching trajectories of sound landscapes coursing through my inner ear, how I wrestle this modular beast into delivering what I think I might want, appears elusive. Occasionally I am tickled by what ends up being bounced and saved as a sentence or paragraph that encapsulated something from the day that felt magic as it joined my long term memory organized within a hard drive.
I feel no burden to find technique or demands to produce any quantifiable amount of sound or aesthetic that would allow me to feel productive, just the ebb and flow of learning and being inspired by so many of the artists who make solid contributions to forums such as this gives me inspiration to simply explore this infinity of the complex and sublime.
The larger lesson I glean from these conversations is that too many people struggle with ideas such as midi or no midi, stereo or multi-track, track or sketch, DAW or recording device…this is air and water and we are taking in the rarefied luxury of opportunity to explore our creative selves with tools that extend into realms of potential that defy our ability to fully comprehend their magnitude. So I choose to swim in all bodies of water, to breath deep from the seashore to the mountain top. I have always found beauty from the ocean to the desert, the forest, cave, river, and trail…why limit myself? Would you want to experience love the same way only allowing yourself to touch a hand or gaze into the left eye? We are multidimensional beings with a multitude of sensory organs and a wide range of emotions to interpret our surroundings. How can we deploy the breadth of musical tools in ways that best exemplify our natures?
Maybe this is only the silly musings of an old guy because if I reflect on my years as a teenager in Los Angeles during the 70’s…it was mostly anger that allowed me to flail about in the cacophonous screams of punk rock and rebellion.
