Shallow Roots

Hi!

I graduated recently, and now I'm back home. This means that I get to use my piano again (I missed it so much).

I've been just jamming on the piano, but I recently had an idea - what if I actually documented and developed my thoughts into something more coherent? So intelligent - I know.

The Idea of an Album

I want to make an album of (somewhat) developed "skeletons". I define a "skeleton" as something that I make up on the spot. This album will revolve around a central theme, and I want each piece to reflect a different aspect of that theme.

So far, the process has been as follows:

I have a name for the album already, but I don't want to share it until the album is done. What I will say is that the theme is related to the idea of spiritual transformation through my adolescent years. For each developed skeleton that I post, I'll post a little blog containing the raw ideas that influenced it and the general vibe that I was going for.

Song 1: "Shallow Roots"

The first song is called "Shallow Roots". The raw journal entry is written as follows:

"What we call 'I' or 'being' is only a combination of physical and mental aggregates which are working interdependently in a flux of momentary change... there is nothing permanent, everlasting, unchanging, or eternal in the whole of existence." (Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 20)

The main idea of this improvisation is something along the lines of "My life is shallow because I do not have the courage to go deeper".

• Culturally, I never felt "Chinese" (although I am ethnically Chinese). I missed out on learning any languages when I was little, and it always feels like there are little facets of my family's life that I never got to see. Even now, as I uncover new things, I get hit with regret. I wish I was more intertwined with my culture.

• Socially, I am not very good at keeping extended friendships while maintaining a proud persona. Often times, I find that I start to look at myself more as an entertainer than a friend when talking to people that I've known for a while. It's not that I blame my friends - more so, I blame myself. As much as I hate to admit it, I am scared to talk about deeper things. I'm pretty sure there's a quote for this - "In order to feel loved, we have to conquer the fear of being known." (or something like that).

The tone of the improvisation is meant to convey insecurity and tragedy. The buildup is one of self-loathing and the struggle of toiling with who you are. The climax tries to capture the idea of chaotically and repetitively trying to plant roots - hobbies, friends and habits - mostly to no avail.

Yo. Actual sigma over here. As a general notice, these are exaggerated thoughts from my teens and do not reflect how I think right now. It ain't that deep.

Anyways, using these words, I tried to create a sad motif. Eventually, I got a very simple one down.

After that, I just kept building. I added a second piano for the sake of expressing a bass line. I have a standard idea of music theory and how chords generally work, so I didn't have to experiment too much. That being said, it would definitely be worth looking into in the future.

All in all, around 87 measures of music. It's about 2 minutes long, but it was a fun experiment. The harder part was learning how to process the MIDI clips after they were made. Unfortunately, I'm not the best piano player...so I tend to hit a lot of wrong notes.

[Ctrl + A] + [Ctrl + 2] + [Ctrl + U] was my best friend.

Along with note correction, there were also some note velocities that I wanted to change (how hard the note was hit). Those are all the orange dots on the bottom of the image above. Lastly, I had to automate the tempo of the improvisation in order for it to sound reasonably "human". Don't get me wrong, I recorded the clips myself...but I had to correct my own note timings.

And...yeah, that's it! 2 piano tracks, 2 minutes of music. I exported the audio and made a simple MIDI visulization program using Javascript to produce a cool visual.

Conclusion

Once I finish developing all the skeletons I want, I will probably come back to these blogs to explain the idea further (other than my raw journal). That's really all I got for you now. I'll link the video below!

Bye :)