Week 15a - Great Minds Think Alike
The week of the recording... exciting times.
Well it would be if we didn't have a big Composition Portfolio deadline at 4pm on Tuesday!
As mentioned earlier, we have always tried to stick to Research Training day to be a Monday when we would meet up between 12-4pm to work on the project together. We all knew that we had other modules to contend with. And this week, the mountain of deadlines was piling up too much. And the group seemed to all have the same view - perhaps they were a bit embarrassed to convey their thoughts earlier on last week perhaps? In the western culture, especially within teaching, it's sometimes seen as a 'badge of honour' to work overtime to burnout which is why perhaps they were initially reluctant to talk about this when they first saw the signs. I had a light word with them when we met up next about being open to each other about this stressful of our lives and they seemed to appreciate my concern (maybe it was my MBTI teacher personality shining through!).
As mentioned in my Easter break post - burnout is real and I wouldn't want us to burn-out at the start of the week and potentially jeopardising our recording session at the end of the week - even if we didn't have a fully solid scheme for the second movement. We postponed the meeting to Wednesday, the day after our submission deadline. Reflecting on this decision at the start of the session, it was absolutely the right call. Everyone seemed rejuvenated after a long sleep and we were ready to go.
26th May Face to Face Meeting 2:30pm-6:30pm
We all shared the same vision in the 2nd movement - emphasising rhythm over arhythmic ideas from the 1st movement. A promising start that eventually lead into my worst nightmare as a composer, 1 million ideas and nothing really sticks. In my own recent compositions, such as a little boat on a calm sea, I still find it difficult to expand ideas into works that are cohesive. This is also true in my electronic works, such as City Night Rain. Listening back to the meeting, I could start to piece together interesting rhythmic ideas together but I wouldn't be able to tell you how I would have created them on the Push. This is a good learning curve to not only record all my ideas - but also write it down with notation so I can look back on my improvised ideas in the future.
The only notable changing point in this meeting was at 34:10 where I discover a probability parameter that can adjust a set of constant semi-quaver beats into off-beat rhythms that are generated by the Push. The lower the percentage, the more notes get filtered through. A useful parameter, discovered by 'play' that will hopefully be useful in the future.
Everyone in the first two hours was in 'play' mode rather than 'focus' mode. If this session was to happen a few weeks earlier, then sure I would have been fine with it, but a few days before recording ... I was worried.
After a short break the second half of the session commenced and if I'm honest - I wasn't entirely happy with what we did. We knew that we had to record both movements on Sunday - no excuses. We couldn't let down the videographers with our poor professionalism, especially when they were offering their services to record us for free.
Whilst I do agree that some people enjoy the thrill of uncertainty in life, people typically find uncertainty to be aversive (Carleton,2016b) and usually find ways to remove the feeling. Within the context of our group collaboration at this point - the shift of focus from the uncertain 2nd movement to the certain 1st movement I feel was exactly this theory shown in practice. We were all unsure on the structure of the 2nd movement two hours in and shifted our interest to the safety of the 1st movement. This wasn't an individual's fault - more a natural group shift in focus.
Of course, the chance to work on balance levels and the interaction between players was useful (a good example of an active break that perhaps was too long!) - but it didn't solve the alarming problem of not having anything down on the page for the 2nd movement. Perhaps we were still tired from the deadlines to take the risky plunge into the second movement...
One thing was for sure, at the end of the session, all three of us agreed to write this inspiring quote at the end of this blog post.
Diamonds are made under pressure.
We were hedging our bets on this quote to get through the 2nd movement later on in the week. Our only example of risk taking today... will it pay off... only one way to find out!
References
Carleton, R. N. (2016b). Into the unknown: a review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty. J. Anxiety Disord. 39, 30-43. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.02.007