My Music

I still remember the first time I penned my first crooked treble clef on manuscript paper. And it’s dawned upon me that I’ve been on a bit of a journey since. Let me explain :)

I am a grassroots composer. I taught myself. I compose what I think is ‘nice music’. It’s ‘nice music’ because it sounds nice to my ear. When it comes to classical scores, chamber music, choral works, this type of refined music is foreign to me. I don’t know much about the proper way to listen to an orchestral work or the proper way to appreciate it. If it sounds nice to my ear, I like it!

Up until 18 months ago, I’d never shared my music with anyone. I didn’t really feel the need to. I don’t earn a living from it and I don’t write for an intended audience. I love composing because of the process of composing. The outcome, well, it really only serves me.

Last year, however, saw me use my skill of composing in many different lights. I started to write music for other people as a form of expression when words were hard or words weren’t appropriate, or simply there were no words.

I’ve also written many tunes with and for children. When writing tunes with children, I really want these tunes to be inspired by the child – so whether they are fairy-tale inspired or situation-driven, the child becomes a composer in his/her own right. This is something they can always be proud of.

I also wrote a couple of tunes for children and found this very hard to do. Children are unpredictable and live in the moment. They play and get dirty. There is little else in this world that is more endearing than a kid with dirt smeared across his/her face. And I wanted my music, my music for children, to be reflective of this. Instead, my music is always characterised by sweetness and dream-like. My tutor at the con told me that I have a particular style, a bittersweet style, the type of music that makes your head tilt to the side and let out a sweet and sad smile, the type of music that makes you feel nostalgic. This concerned me a great deal – that I couldn’t compose outside this style and, in particular, I couldn’t compose ‘children music’.

November 2006 was the saddest month of my life. One of the things contributing to this was my friend’s baby daughter passing away. I still remember taking that call. I still remember the funeral. And I still remember how it felt being there. In a situation as tragic as this, there are no words. About half a year after the tragedy I wrote a small tune for my friend. I call it Olivia’s Lullaby. I discarded any perceptions I had about what the tune should sound like and abandoned all the rules I knew about composing. I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother who loses a child. But I do know what it’s like to suffer loss because I myself, like everyone else, have lost. And this is the place from where I composed Olivia’s Lullaby.

I listened to this lullaby this weekend that just passed…. And now Olivia’s Lullaby is going to take me on another journey. [Details to come.]

Lesson learned? I’m not going to worry anymore about refined music or not refined music, or worry about what it should sound like for children or any audience. I will just keep composing ‘nice music’.