Archive
Since 2007 I have been sporadically composing, with no specific routine other than the one described above. I have recorded most of the sketches I’ve made in the 12 years since then. Around the same time, I started keeping a diary, which means I have a rather large archive of music and writing.
I want to draw a line for my music with this project, so as a part of getting a sense of “Tabula Rasa”, while establishing a sense of overview and understanding of all my work, I spent an entire month, during the dark period I had this winter, making a complete archive of all of the sketches and demos I could find.
There were many old ideas, of varying relevance, so I made these three categories in sorting them:
I like it (still resonates rather strongly) - 24 ideas
Something (good or bad, it has some kind of quality) - 173 ideas
Not something (doesn’t resonate/boring/shallow) around - 200 ideas
Having finished this big archiving task, I have a better understanding of the path leading to where I am now, as a composer and musician. I also see a deeper continuity in the things I write, as well as a lot of dead ends.
In choosing what songs to complete within the EoD frame, I have chosen around 50/50 old and new ideas, simply going with the ones that resonated and seemed ripe for further composition in the spirit of Q2.
MIRRORING
I have written about mirrored drums and inverted guitar elsewhere, but I would like to show a few examples of mirrored writing.
I made the simple observation that one reason we write the way we do, writing from left to right, from the top of the page, is that in this way we don’t smudge the writing with our palm. Therefore, I decided to learn mirrored writing, instead of plainly shifting the pencil to the left hand and pushing, rather than pulling the tip across the page.
I have upheld a daily practise of writing my immediate thoughts down in this mirrored manner. It was very awkward at first, and it takes a strong motivation to keep up the effort, but gradually, the writing is becoming more fluent, and also the ability to read the mirrored letters is expanding. I can’t say too much about it yet, but I sometimes get a peculiar sense of unknowing when writing with the left hand. The hand can’t keep up with the thoughts, so I tend to write in a slightly more uncertain, poetic style than with the more confident right hand.
NOTING
The act of noting to the improvised sessions has been interesting. Quite often, ideas for compositions, concepts and other useful thoughts arrive in the notes. Also, I have been been surprised with how - if I have enough distance - I’m unable to read my own mind. Often I do hear where an idea will go, and know when I will become insecure, bored, or unfocused. But there is an element of surprise more often than I had thought. Sometimes a pleasant surprise, sometimes a dissapointment, e.g. when an interesting idea is abandoned.
While aiming for an observing, non-judgmental state of mind, I have not actively avoided adjectives like wonderful or disastrous. The process of noting works best for me if it’s as spontaneous as the improvisations, and if my immediate reaction is “awful”, then that’s a valid thing to write. Sometimes, listening to (what I hear as) a low point, is physically painful, and I just write the critique unfiltered from the inner censor. Getting these unkind words out of my brain helps to puncture the painful effect they can have when suppressed. It actually weakens the censor to have the critique in the open.
If the music is not particularly engaging, nor appalling, I usually just describe what I hear, with a subtler evaluation going on at another level of the mind.
A few more notes,
I have found that it works better in the sense of getting into Q2 when I listen and note after I’ve completely forgotten the session. If I remember what I did, I will be influenced by what I think I was doing and how it felt, thereby noting less accurately. It seems that the more detached I am towards the recorded Mathias, the more powerful the tool of noting becomes.
I've been thinking about "The Disney Model" of the three separated work spaces of
DREAMER / REALIST / CRITIC, and find that this is close to what I’m trying to do here.
The dreamer is drumming and singing, and the critic is not allowed in that room. Nor is he invited to the noting session, where only the realist and dreamer participate. In fact, in the improvising, composing and noting parts of Eisenhower on Drums, there is no place for the critic. But he is welcome to negotiate with the realist in the process of completing works.
While we're on the subject of judgment: Quite often when I hear music that I would consider "bad", I am actually enjoying it. Often, I can see interesting or beautiful aspects of a terrible performance.
Here's an exaggerated example:
Working in the EoD frame
This chapter picks up from after my project turned into EoD, describing my work with the different rituals until now, may 2019.
Why is this important? A good way to reflect on the second half of my studies.
Why is this urgent? Will be part my examination.
“Examine all you have been told in school, or church, or in any book.
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.”
The quote is part of a wonderfully uncompromising life instruction from Walt Whitman, entitled “This is what you shall do”. This particular line above always resonated strongly with me, and I find that with EoD, I have something practical that I can use in this examination.
In general, Eisenhower on Drums turned out to be something I could fit into my days with relative ease. From the start, it was working well for me on both the practical and creative level, and most often, working on it has brought me into the open Q2 mode. When I started the work, I felt an immediate benefit in a sense of lighter flow in my daily work.
IMPROVISATIONS
“Play is distinct from ordinary life both as to locality and duration. This is the main characteristic of play: its secludedness, its limitedness.”
- Johan Huizinga
Working with the voice and inverted drums is something I enjoy. The limited timeframe and the specifics of the tools I am playing with, appears to be freeing up creative energy.
On some days, of course, it is hard to get into the practise, feeling awkward to put the power on my left side. But almost every time I force myself into it, I quickly become fascinated with the experience, often feeling a childlike urge for experimenting, and although I find that I still am reverting to well known patterns quite often, it seems that the weird physical situation makes it easier for me to cut loose again.
An example of a subtle effect of the practise is when, in my everyday unconscious mode, I snap my fingers in certain rhythms, always the same rhythms, and always with a dominant right hand:
Working with EoD makes me stop, sometimes, asking: Why this particular rhythm? How am I actually doing it? Can I do it, starting with the left hand instead?
When I take the time to answer these questions, it means I’ve made the shift to Q2.
I find that I am loosing control now and again in the improvisations, finding myself in weird, interesting energies. While I’m extremely active physically, I’m also just watching curiously what is going on. This happens especially when I’m playing fast on the drums, and it seems to be due to my lack of control. Like the moment when you throw the juggling balls in the air; you are completely out of control, very attentively watching the balls as they come back down. This is a place I like to be, whether I catch the balls or not.
This is a space I have rarely got into on the piano, but this seems to be changing also, happening at times with voice and guitar too.
SKETCHES
Inter modular sketch reeling
My habitual way of coming up with a new sketch is a kind of conversion from Q2 to Q4 and back to Q2 for a short glimpse, and then on to Q1 or even Q3. I suppose this happens for most composers. Typically, it is a variation on this sequence:
I decide to practise something on the guitar or the piano, and I do this for a while, then losing focus and starting to mess around, letting the hands do some kind of show without paying too much attention, starting to think about unrelated things, and then at one point drifting into Q2 because I’ve unconsciously stumbled on something interesting.
And this is when it gets tricky. Now that I realise I may have hooked a good idea, I try to reel it in without spoiling whatever I thought was fascinating about it. But reeling is Q1, since I urgently want to get the idea on deck. And what fascinated me, of course, was the Q2 quality of the idea.
What I’m reeling in, then, after getting my phone ready to record, may be a somewhat pale version of the idea. This is not always the case. Sometimes the Open Mode qualities are strong enough to record the music without spoiling anything. But in the worst cases, the urgency spoils everything, and what you get on deck is an undersized Q3 idea.
Q2 reeling technique
The above mentioned method have been the most common for me, and of course I have tried many other practises.
However, the way I’m producing sketches in EoD, immediately after the improvisation, is entirely new, and until now, I find it beneficial. I’ve made a simple rule of spontaneously composing something for 5 minutes, then making a 5 minute recording of this, and this has been a good practise. The situation is different, in that I have already established a Q2 space, which is often rather strong after the improvisation, making the urgency of reeling less predominant.
WORKS
These are the songs I am working on completing within the EoD frame.
This aspect, of finishing works, is the least thought through, and also perhaps the aspect where I am most likely to get into trouble. My problems with over-controlling have been related to the sketching phase also, but they mainly have become unhealthy in the process of completing, arranging and producing the works.
Therefore, my attitude of ‘working with fundamentals, to create a change going up the structure’, may be underestimating my tendency towards perfectionism in the later parts of the process.
But despite the disclaimer; we have recently recorded the basic tapes for seven new songs, and I have had a fairly light attitude in working with the forms and lyrics, with no sense of compromising.
Here are some examples of some of these new works, along with a few words about the process
Wisdom of the No
Here is the first sketch I made of this composition
It came as a spontaneous idea while improvising on the piano switching back and forth between Q2 and Q4.
I tried to figure out a drum beat that would take it to a different place,
and found that I liked to emphasize a lift before the 1, like this
I tried to expand the form of the song while sticking to the idea of starting each new section with the melody starting on a #5, and I found that this use of + chords made it very easy to make drastic modulations without breaking the continuity. The B part is an ascending chain of major chords, moving in major thirds = a major #5 chord.
Making the melody was the most difficult part. The keyboard melody is essentially a blues scale, and it was hard to steer my ears away from that. I needed it to go somewhere else, a little less obvious, and I needed it to be rather slow moving, to contrast the carrousel movement of the piano part.
It was the use of the whole tone scale that made the puzzle come together. It fitted the use of #5, and added a sense of calm. After that, the lyrics were written very fast. I'm not sure what they mean, and they're not finished, but I find that it's a song about a certain kind of "wisdom" that you're in contact with when you're very young, disregarding the authority of those older.
Here is a premix of the version we recorded in the studio
Bliss
This one came from the archive. I liked the simplicity of it.
In rehearsing it for the studio, I suggested Anders Vestergaard would try a kind calypso kind of beat.
I found a line in an old diary that seemed to fit, and stole the idea of an abrupt melody from the Tirzah song ‘Gladly’.
In the Feast
Making the first version of this song around 2007, was the first time I thought “this might actually be a real song”. In 2008 we played a 20 minute open version of the song with a 11 piece band called The Mathias Holm Portal.
Later I got unhappy with the lyrics and haven’t touched the song before dusting it off and including it in EoD.
The still unfinished lyric is a sarcastic comment to the ways refugees are being treated in Denmark.
I want to create a B part as a counterpoint to the descending harmonic, and to break the pleasant atmosphere. Here is the rough version from the studio.
Night by Day
Sketch mel and lyr together.
Work in progress
Stick to idea!
Premix
A bit too square?
Mangrove Round
Sketch
nice place, dry,
Work in progress
lyrics make no sense, ok
Premix
not as magic as sketch?
Glacier
Sketch Came in one bite.
Work in progress
Experiment. Space. Blues.
Tony Allen idea, many layers, Kendrick. Strings moving slow.
Premix, something else
Laura Void
Sketch Heavy but lifted SPACE
Work in progress Lyrics popping up A riddle?
Premix SOUNDVOID Wheres 1? Jazz #5, 20’es
Darkness to bright complexity
Linda Midsommer
Maybe you knew it already. It is a choir of deaf, having rehearsed and singing classical pieces. Of course, the strangeness of the setting makes this interesting, if not considered beautiful. But even in settings with e.g. amateur orchestras, I can find it a joy to listen to the great unpredictability of twisted, accidental harmony, pitch imbalance, explosiveness of dynamics etc. This, I also find beautiful.
But when it comes to my own shortcomings, I have the old habit of judging myself mercilessly, with no curiosity or humour.
The practise of noting is a means of balancing out this inconsistency of outer curiosity and inner critique.
