A DEEP-DIVE INTO MY CREATIVE JOURNEY

The Beginning

It is an interesting thing to stop and reflect back on a journey as long and personal as mine with music and creating. When I was 8, or perhaps even 7, I began writing a story on my dad’s old work laptop. I added to it in dribs and drabs over a few years. But it was in 2007, when I was 9, that I recall writing my first ever song. It was called The Truth. I recall that at the time, I believed I was in love. The header image of this post is the second written copy of it, from around 2008. I’m still looking for the original - in a Harry Potter diary I had since I was 8. It’s a little embarrassing to display it, but if I can’t be a little vulnerable in my own blog, I have very little chance of success as an artist whose whole idea is vulnerability. But I digress. Evidently, a desire to express through and explore creativity has long been with me.

My ‘love song’ was soon joined by others. Most of these I still have, though a few are lost to time (and my mum not realising what they were, deleting them from her laptop). It’s interesting to see how changes in my musical taste influences the styles I wrote in through these earlier years of my life. By 12 years of age, I was writing Christian rap tracks, being very into the likes of Lecrae, Tedashii, and Trip Lee. I was quite open about it, and got at least one of my friends to join in with me, for a while. Despite growing up with hardcore music, it wasn’t for a long time that I ever wrote lyrics for a song of that style, and even then only a few times did I even try. I think the difference was that I could sing my ballads, I could rap my raps, but I couldn’t do anything close to properly screaming. Some ability to perform, even just for myself, was a motivator to pursue more (or not, in the absence of said ability).

Inspiration, and High School

So it started out as love songs (of/about a childhood crush), and later came Christian rap, which, in honesty, I still write to this day, sort of. It was the middle of high school when I wrote my first piece for piano. I talk about this a bit in my other post, but to provide more specific detail here: it was a simple 8 bar melody written in a major pentatonic scale. It repeats once after the first iteration, an octave down. I have a photo of, again, technically the second edition. I believe the very original is truly gone. The copy I have now (still written by hand from the same time, just re-written to look neater) includes an extra beat of rest per bar than there should be in the left hand. My teacher, Tom Collett, assisted with coming up with the arpeggios instead of my initial block chords.

I called the piece Inspiration, in dedication to The Track Team, who were my musical inspiration for their music and sound effects for Avatar: The Last Airbender, my favourite show (then and now). It was mostly Jeremy Zuckerman who did the music, I think, and it was him who responded to me when I sent it to them, not expecting a reply. See aforementioned ‘other post’ for the rest of that story.

What’s funny to me is that about a year after Inspiration, I wrote one of my favourite pieces of mine. It was this ridiculous, over the top monstrosity in D harmonic minor, called Graveyard Theme. For the remainder of my time at high school, I exploded into writing all sorts of little things on Musescore, as well as modifying existing sountrack pieces like the Sadness and Sorrow from Naruto. The instruments sounds aren’t great at all compared to what I have now, but there is something advantageous about using a program that really only gives you room to write, in contrast to what I have now wherein I can get so lost simply ‘picking the right sound.’ I kind of miss it!

Late high school is when my dope music teacher, mentor and friend, Matt Charlesworth, exposed myself and fellow classmates to some absolutely unreal music that expanded my appreciation a lot. The few that I remember most are Snarky Puppy’s song Lingus, Lior’s April Bloom, and above all else Radiohead’s Pyramid Song. There is no other piece of music like the latter. It’s an enigma for musical nerds, but to even just listen to it is incredible and otherworldly. I love that song. I love it a lot. So that, alongside my drum teacher Daniel showing my the likes of Steven Wilson, I got inspired by new kinds of chords, sounds, approaches to emotion in music. Due to my limitations of knowledge, it would take some years for much of this inspiration to come to anything. I think what I write now is still influenced by these formative musical awakenings.

My major piece for the end of high school was an orchestral composition called The Plot Thickens. It worked off a simple ostinato, and escalates into an absurd and hysterical climax. It’s funny looking back and seeing how I was so comfortable fleshing out my one theme into various sections but struggled so much to add a single new theme into the mix, exactly as I do to this very day. I spent months on that piece, and I’m still very proud of what I accomplished in that time for what I knew and had available. I wonder what it would be like to pour months into a single piece now. I’d really like to think it would show progress as a composer. For some reason, I fear it wouldn’t, much.

After High School - AIM

I got into the Australian Institute of Music (AIM) as a drummer, immediately realised that I care more about writing music, and so within two weeks had transferred to a major of Composition and Production. It was here that I got a good laptop (2016 Macbook Pro) and my first Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Logic Pro X. That opened up a whole new world for me, initiating a new obsession into the production side of making music in the modern world. I think this was sometimes actually to the detriment of the composing side. I made a lot of very random things with a new prominence of electronic influence. Oddly, I didn’t listen to much of the style I was writing in. I just got swept up in what you can do in a DAW with even just stock plugins. To get an idea of the result of this era of my creative journey, you’ll have to start by finding THE LAB - my secret music site ;)

As a brief aside, this is also the time that I got more invested in raps that sounded a lot like NF (which actually started in high school), and poetry heavily inspired by Propaganda. I am unlikely to share them publicly, but maybe one day. Between these two styles, I have 50-80 songs, some of which may only be a verse or two.

Nowadays

I didn’t finish the music degree, but I haven’t stopped writing music - obviously! So now I’m working on little things here and there, occasionally getting a bit of money. Every now and again something bigger comes along, which is really whenever Michael Henderson is willing to collab again, lol. In seriousness, big shoutout to him for giving me opportunities way beyond what I was the best candidate for. He believed in me when he honestly didn’t have a lot of reason to - he had barely heard any music I’d written, so I mean it when I say he believed in me. Thanks to him, I have realised what even my music can help do.

I’m still early in the journey, of course. That’s why it’s written on my bio page that I am a “still emerging creative”; I’m only just emerging! Creatively and directionally with what I want to do with my music, things are in infantile stages. I will keep working on my art – both composition and production (which is important to what I do, and deeply contributes to overall sound and effect of my work) – and learning about the craft of music. And I will keep working on myself. I want what I do to sound good, and achieve some kind of good, and also be done with a sincerity and integrity. Hear me well, there are sharks in every industry, and the creative one is no exception, at all. But I digress.

I want to make synths go beep boop, and orchestras go braaow reoorrwaaaaa.

That’s really it.

Hear this piece, and the other secret ones over at THE LAB.