a begining...

What to say online and why to say it.

I think this blog is mostly here for me, so that I can see what I thought at the time (or at least what I thought I thought). I don't mind if people read it, maybe it'll be interesting and funny or just have a bit of resonance for somebody else, 'sfair enough. It's also to think out loud and try to work out what I'm trying to say: if I 'talk' enough then I can perhaps distill an overall point to or vector to what I'm at. And of course there's the small issue of community ('everyone else's thoughts are online so why not mine') and a pinch of vanity ('look! I'm online!').


What am I at so? At the moment I'm completing my citizenship for the procrasti-nation (hi K), so far I've racked up almost 40 solid man-hours of avoiding correcting these bastarding essays, but they'll get done then I'll be free of them for a month or two. Next week when I'm a free man again I'll get on with my PhD in music composition. If you don't know what that entails then prepare for hearing a lot about Art + form + content + materials (and some technical stuff and maybe some programming stuff), and get used to the terms 'new music', 'contemporary music' and various music jargon.


I'm 31, a late starter to composition but I'm doing ok. I swapped over from guitar/drums-based music in my early 20's so I have the advantage of a slightly different viewpoint on music from the statistical majority (although that's changing) of people who would traditionally
be called 'composers': on the flip side, I had to catch up on all that practical stuff like reading music and the like which is second nature to the classically trained (I still can't sight-read to save my life!). I teach a little at the university and I enjoy that as long as I get to teach stuff I like to people who want to learn, same as any educator I s'pose. The goal this year is to try and angle my way into teahing interesting stuff like composition and theory and get out of the 'study-skills' ghetto. My friend has all the good teaching jobs - I don't begrudge him this for a moment(hi N) I just wish there was more work about so we could both get some - but in theory he may have to give up some of this work to concentrate on his PhD so hopefully that falls to me and I can pass the rule of the ghetto over to someone else (was it Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail where the guardian of the Grail wanted to give the job over to Indy for eternity, passing the buck in a serious way...).

But what about the music (man!..). Indeed.

I'll get back to that an another post.