This postI used to compose music a lot back in 2000 and 2001. (Well, by “a lot” I mean more than I’m composing now. :)) But since then I’ve written hardly anything.
It’s not that I haven’t tried. I’ve got dozens of false starts — four or five measures of piano music here, the beginnings of a song there — but only a single finished piece since 2002.
I’m still not sure why I’ve got this musician’s block (figuring that out is one of my smaller resolutions for this year), but the excuse I’m using :) is that I don’t have a piano in my apartment. And yet I do have GarageBand on my Mac, and it’s totally possible to compose using the keyboard feature (at least according to Patrick Stump), so I don’t know what’s stopping me. Real artists don’t let tool limitations keep them from creating.
As for what I want to write, my compositional tastes seem to gravitate towards musicals, religious music, and orchestral/soundtrack/classical. I think I need to start analyzing songs and pieces of music I admire, picking them apart and seeing what makes them tick. And I want to brush up on my music theory. I love music theory. :)
Anyway, whatever hangup I’ve got, this year it’s going to go bye-bye, the same way I bid adieu last year to my inhibitions about writing a novel. All it takes is one chink to open the way to victory.
