It is so easy to start judging what you write as you write it, and you really shouldn’t.

Of course you should consider technical aspects during composition, things like form and counterpoint and motivic development, that sort of thing. What you shouldn’t do is ask yourself “is this good”? It’s too early for that.

Judging slows down writing to a snail’s pace. Judging hinders creativity. Judging should come after, not during composition.

I know this, but still, this is what has been happening to me lately, and I know it is partly because of fear.

Fear of my music being bad.

I want my music to be worthy of living in the same universe as Bach, Stravinsky and Ravel, a worth-while goal for sure (I mean, what else should I aim form?) but this can sometimes result in a bit of pressure…

So to break the habit I started doing what I think of as “writing rehab” in order to remove that tendency to judge too early and thus, hopefully, open the floodgates to all those ideas waiting to come out.

The rehab plan is this: write a given amount of music in given amount of time. As I relax I will increase the quantity of music to write and the length of the writing session.

Today, I had set for myself a goal of 2 pages of music in one hour. I ended up with a page and a half so, close enough.

I decided to write whatever came out and not stress out about trying to be new or different or anything like that – this is rehab after all! Must relax and focus on the process.

So I wrote this nice little tonal andante for strings, lying down on the nice futon in my studio, pretty relaxed and singing very, very badly…

Here is a roughly sequenced rendition.

If anyone is interested in my sketches, I could scan those once in a while…

I have never been big on gear. Samplers have never turned my crank because, well, it felt more like programming than music.

But with a new wave of programs that can be played in a musical way to emulate acoustics instruments, things are changing and I am following.

For the past few days I have been playing with my BC3a wind controller. You wear it on your head and blow into it as you play the keys and it allows for a much more musical result when performing wind or brass instruments.

And that is the key word here, “performing”, because now it is becoming a performance of a musical phrase, not a piecemeal construction, like some sort of Frankenstein monster!

Today I was trying the BC3a out with the Synful strings and it worked very nicely. I was playing the second violin part and had to listen to the first violins for dynamic balance and phrasing. It was a very musical experience.