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Looper's Delight
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Back when I was doing music with all my available time and energy, I listened regularly and in preference to "artists I liked", because my approach was to simply play as often as possible and to hit record whenever the constant stream of pure improv seemed to have taken off to somewhere interesting or surprising.
So I listened later (usually when commuting) as a natural part of the editing/evaluating process, and then listened to the edited bits quite a lot depending on just how much I'd actually surprised or pleased myself, always with an ear to whether I could somehow improve it, and as a presumed check on how I was developing. This whole play/grab/ listen/edit cycle was far more interesting and engaging than listening to even the most wonderful "real" recorded music; my hands were all over it, and much more could be done with any of it. So even though my stuff was typically quite obviously not as accomplished or even as objectively moving or delightful as other people's music, the whole thing was a richer experience. Plain old "grooving" couldn't compete with critical "creating".
But then I had an experience which changed my relationship with my playing and process, and still defines how I relate to it now when I sometimes drag out old tracks for a listen.
This was at least 15 years ago. I'd been to a reunion weekend with childhood friends as we gathered to memorialize the mother of one of our gang. It had not gone well; I'd hoped it would be the occasion for some healing of old wounds, but instead it seemed to aggravate them. On the long drive home I took out the disk I'd brought along to show my old buds what I was up to, but had not had an opportunity to play, and found myself playing it over and over as I recognized just how perfectly it was acting to cauterize the painful recent encounters I was obsessively picking over.
I could suddenly get what my music-making had been driven by and what it was for: my own emotional health. My development as a musician wasn't at all the real motivation, nor was my output really intended for anybody else. The whole craft/skill issue that I'd imagined was behind my obsessive and extensive home-studio time was nothing compared to the raw "self-expression" that I was engaged in. I saw and heard how other people's music could never be quite as precisely designed for my personal emotional universe as my own creations, no matter how exquisite.
Also I could see that playing my tracks for others was the musical equivalent of discribing my dreams; in other words, they were almost always going to be really interesting only to me. Simply being perfectly expressive of myself was no ticket to universal interest, nor was this the royal road to "Art". THAT was bracing--good to know! The dimly recalled quote, from Freud I think, to the effect that if someone could truly succeed in bringing his dreams to life, he would be the perfect artist, seemed to be thoroughly disproved. Or maybe it was simply that journalling isn't art-making; hadn't realized that was all I was really doing. Still sorting that one out, all these years later. And mostly listening to other folks' "real" if necessarily "generalized" or "approximate" music; it bears much more repetition:) Still, there's still no real equivalent to the custom-made audible "medicine" I used to make.
I wonder if anybody reading here can relate...? dpc On 28 Jul 2012, at 4:16 PM, kay'lon rushing wrote:
I guess this is a rather odd question but I'm curious. Do you only listen to it for improvement? Or do you enjoy listening to yourself just as you would listen to an artist you like?