Good morning.

Well...

I just woke up. 3 AM, yeah, it was a late night, but it was Friday, and I wanted to actually enjoy some time without pressing responsibilities. Saturday, even Sunday afternoon, are both sacrificed to the homework god, who does demand rather a large portion of time these days. I figured the metaphor wasn't overkill, when one actually considers the time students spend on homework. It's more than a job... it's some sick way of life. For a while.

I'm in the mood to write, which isn't often. Mostly I write what is necessary when I have to, but now I'm fishing around for something to write about. Apart from this musing on my own mood, I suppose I could put the mood to work on school. Perhaps one of these... I penned a list.

Item 1). study for span./finish hw
Item 2). study for Mid. East Map Quiz
Item 3). read lit crit passages
Item 4). write intellectual history abstract

All in all a rather easy list, now that I see it. Not something I could hope to finish today, but perhaps if I can do half of those, and some of the reading I have to do for one of these fuzzy reading classes, then it will be a good and productive weekend.

Wow, that's, just, that list makes me feel nicer inside. This last week must've been killer -- raised my standards, or at least my tolerance, for academic diligence. Last week was newspaper which made everything take longer. Silly stories. Does anyone actually read them? I suppose, like this blog, that's not the point.

Peaches. Raspeberry-flavored, specifically. In a small can -- they're a good snack.

The intellectual history abstract shouldn't be hard. But it's just so darned significant. Well, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't, but, nonetheless... less than a page, for me to concretely explain the course of my research and writing for the next few months, to culminate in a paper of no less than 20 pages. Due Wednesday. It's not that the mechanics of this abstract are hard... it's that I am committing myself, to a small extent, to what I write. Sounds like fun.

My topic for American intellectual history? Music of the '60s and '70s, particularly music as the voice of various social and intellectual movements, as well as its effect on these movements. I think I'm the one person in the class writing on a time period and even subject with which the professor has direct personal experience. Fun times trying to get it right.

My phone is beeping at me. I neglected to turn it on last night.

I've had this desire to sit down and write music for some time. Last night, I realized for the first time all week that I had the opportunity to do it, so I did.

I scurried around my dorm for a few minutes, procuring the necessaries: laptop, ear buds, microphone, guitar, pick, chair. I installed Audacity, a very nice open source sound editor, on the laptop and went in for some experimentation. A few hours later, I gave up, satisfied, with the beginnings of six songs. And by beginning, I mean most of the songs have all the parts there, including the bridge, and are only in need of lyrics and some little bits of fleshing out here or there.

I can't yet vouch for the quality of any of these songs, but I was rather pleased that distinct musical ideas came out, rather than the same old song just reinventing itself in my head six times.

Lyrics. Lyrics are hard, even if it's writing. It's an entirely different sort of writing, but one that exemplifies what we strive for in prose. Song lyrics have to be extremely compact, good ones always put a picture in the listener's head, always use lots of verbs to stay vigorous. Good lyrics take the attention off the music and drop the listener in the land of my own creating, where the music is no longer the end, but merely the soundtrack that moves them through the story.

Would that not be a lovely description to tell someone about their newspaper writing? But it just can't it be that way.

Yesterday was my first time to try multi-track recording. I put my headphones around my thigh, just below the guitar, microphone up near my hand. I had an idea of strumming an E minor chord over and over while doing something higher up the fret, so I recorded the low strumming part, trying to imagine what the higher part would be.

Then, I put on my ear buds, replayed the strumming part through them while I recorded another more melodic part. I did this again, and then again, until I had 4 separate guitar parts going at once. It actually sounded half nice.

Now that I have rough recordings of these songs, I won't lose them, and can revise them, write lyrics for them. And once they're the way I like them, I'll go find a good microphone, record them at the best quality I can, and mix them in Audacity to sound as good as I can get them.

I won't hesitate to use as many guitar parts, loops, vocal tracks as I need in the composition process. How would I ever play these live? That's not the concern right now. Build the song into some overblown studio production if that's what sounds good, and figure out how to strip it back down to a live version later on.

First priority is lyrics for the songs I have now, but next time I go in to write more songs, I want to have a piano nearby. Doubtless I'll put piano in most of the songs I already have, but I expect I can get something kinda nice by starting off trying to compose with piano rather than just guitar as I did yesterday.

Hmm, I'll need staff paper.

I'm excited! Can you tell I like music? Yesterday, I finally made some -- something beyond, more concrete than improvisation. I'm humming them. If no one but me ever enjoys these, it's worth it.

But before I go off getting too excited, I want to write more. Anybody can put out a few songs here or there -- I want to write more and I need lots of practice.

People rarely remember a musician's very first writings, whether they're Mozart or Mary Timony. So that's a nice thought -- I haven't even conceived my best song yet. I'm in quest for that song... I wonder if I'll realize it when I find it.