A couple of days ago, I had an idea while biking home. So when I got home I wrote it down and then started fiddling to see where else it would go. And it basically turned into a piece, which is now in need of wrapping up, and some name better than "sketch-13-06-19".
That's a bit of a milestone, because it's the first time I've used the sequencer to actually write something beyond a notation test, or a transcription of an old piece. It's not really what I would have chosen, since it came about by happenstance. It's the sort of intricate bit of video-gamey clockwork that I was doing back in high-school, and is mostly in piano because that was a convenient sound when I was writing the sketch and now it's a bit stuck there, and it doesn't really take advantage of any interesting new capabilities. I wasn't trying to create something controlled, and so I got a bit of a tangled undergrowth. As ever I'm not entirely in control of what catches and what slips away.
But I'm still pretty happy. In a way I've been waiting thirteen years for this, and working four years on a program to get there (that would be eight years, if you count on-and-off work). This is the first hint of the fruition of those four years, the hint that those four years may not have been in vain. Worth it? For whatever reasons, I don't think it would have happened any other way, perhaps because of my determination to write a program to write music, and then determination that the time I spent on the program not be a waste. In creative endeavours we so rarely reach our goals from straight lines.
Despite all that, it's funny how little has changed. I'm infinitely richer in resources, influences, sounds... but I've basically picked up right where I left off. But that's fine, the fancy things can wait. The real job is learning to write music, and that will take many more than eight years. I'm not in a hurry.
