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Another day, another pot ::
Had a long philosophical conversation with V Tuesday. I told her about a story I’d read (can’t find the link!) about a pottery class where half the students were to be graded purely on the quantity of pots produced, and the other by quality—one perfect pot would get an A. At the end of the semester, the highest quality pots were created by the students being graded on quantity. This struck me as a perfect illustration of how it is more important to be creating something every day than to get hung up on creating a masterpiece. Creative momentum.
I listened to an improv from last month. I’d meandered around, building a loop, and then gotten bored and started twisting knobs while it played—reversing, shortening it until it settled down into a phrase that sounded like a record skipping (complete with clicks). Then I’d played a loose, jazzy piano solo over it, occasionally transposing the loop through a few minor keys. It grabbed me.
There’s something special about that moment of putting hands on the instrument and playing a second part—aha, I might actually develop this one. (And in retrospect it’s silly and funny; did I think I was going to develop anything by just listening and not playing along with anything?!)
As usual, I spent quite awhile finding a stable rhythmic reference. After the typical dozen false starts in creating a click track, I gave up and tried a repeating drum loop at a constant tempo. It was spooky—it fit; the loop is in 11/8 (!) but much of the piano solo was floating over the time, with occasional solid downbeats that lined up with the loop. I added a decent bass track and fixed its missed key changes tonight.
Then I started trying other parts, and had some ideas worth persuing, but the repetitive drum loop is bugging me and should be fixed before adding anything rhythmic. Part of me thinks it would be good practice to listen to some real drumming in similar veins and then record a track without copy-and-pasting. And part of me thinks it would be nicely collaborative to ask a friend to contribute.
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