Music is understood through an audience’s empathy by associating important events or experiences in their life with a composer’s intention (Scherer, 2001). I named the concert “The Stories of Yours and Mine” because I was strongly wanting to show my inner-world, and eager to know if this world connected to the inner-world of the audience. In order to have contrast, to make the whole concert experience more like a story (even though each of the pieces are very different), I arranged the pieces like a narrative.
The concert began with a song based on strong emotion, which used large vocal range and lyrics in English. This merged into a throat singing duet, followed by a solo a cappella Chinese opera piece and on to a delicate piano and vocal piece with improvisation partly inspired by Romantic classical elements. I continued with a solo piano piece based on strong and intensive rhythmic elements, and the concert concluded with re-invention of a cover song from a Chinese movie involving 6 other musicians. Each piece provided a certain mood based on the story I wanted to tell. The mixture of imagery, poetry, story, and drama constructed the whole concert, which I consider as a successful expansion and development for myself in terms of understanding and embodying boundarylessness in music.
In the first year of my bachelor studies, I gave two performances as part of my progress demonstration. The first piece was a cover song called Cornflake Girl originally by Tori Amos (Amos, 1993). The other piece is my composition, which was a half improvised song without lyrics (Long, 2018). The cover song was to demonstrate the instrumental skills as well as the skills of working within a band. The second piece was an attempt to explore harmonic texture and a possible approach to vocal expressio
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At that stage, I mainly focused on exploring ideas of composition and discovering my vocal singing range and technique. I did not have many thoughts about what is my sound, or how my sound differs from others. I did not feel that I had yet found an identity as a composer or performer, but only as a student beginning to explore what I wanted to say, instead of repeating what others have said. At that stage, I was still approaching my work with the mind-set of a music school student simply handing in assignments, without much self-awareness of myself a musician.
During the second-year of bachelor studies, I started to put pressure on myself because other peers were growing very fast and I felt I was going at a much slower pace. My self-image was still constructed by comparing myself to other musicians. I judged myself constantly from all aspects using my own standards, which I believed were correct at the time in terms of what makes a good musician. My conclusion was always that I was not qualified as a musician in any aspect. As a result, I felt uncomfortable playing in groups even though all my classmates are my friends who have always been very supportive. However, because I was afraid of mistakes or not performing well enough due to my incompetence as an unqualified musician, I gradually retreated to play as a soloist, with the exception of compulsory group courses. This situation continued throughout the whole second-year of my bachelor studies. When the time came to prepare for the second-year bachelor concert, I naturally decided to play solo instead of forming a band like others did.
When I reflect on the decision I made to play mainly as a soloist, it was not a bad idea at all. I benefited from the decision in many ways, such as: 1) I discovered more about what I can do with my instruments. My main instrument is voice and my secondary instrument is piano. I used to hold the stereotype about the combination of piano and voice as the instrumentation for ballads or light pop. During my time preparing for the second-year bachelor concert, I was able to fully concentrate on what I can offer during the space of a 30 minute performance. Because I was going to be the only performer on stage, it was important to consider the ways in which I could convey my musical vision alone, and how the audience might relate to it.
2) I gained a positive attitude towards playing in groups without pressuring myself into a fixed band performance. At the beginning of planning the concert, I was not going to invite any other musicians to play with me. However, during the process of composing and arranging, I become interested in finding out how the music would develop if I added other instruments and voice. This led to inviting other musicians to join two of my pieces, resulting in enhanced versions of them in the performance. After the concert, I was more eager to play with others and more interested in discovering the possibilities of combining different sounds in the future.
3) Looking back, the whole preparation of my second-year bachelor concert was the beginning of establishing my identity as a composer, which is an important step for me as a musician. Through this experience, my skills in composition have improved. This also resulted in me becoming more confident in composing and arranging for the third-year bachelor concert.
4) Last, but perhaps the most important aspect, is that I discovered what really interests me in making music. Prior to the preparation of my concert, I viewed music as only different genres. If I was to make music, then I should think in terms of genre and nothing else. But as soon as I started composing, I realized that music can be more genuine if it is coming straight from the composer’s inner world instead of trying to be something else. With the freedom and supportive environment in my program, I found out exactly what interests me. Not only did I realize that genre is just a formality, which may be convenient to categorize in a profitable business sense, but also that different forms of art all have common ground that can be combined and merged in numerous ways.
Literature has always been one of my favourite subjects and music in movies has always fascinated me. Stories and imagery really motivate me to create music. Each piece in my second-year bachelor concert has a story. At that time, I was not able to make a short film to combine with music. Instead I chose one painting per piece to show on a projector. Alongside the painting, I put either the lyrics if it was a song, or a poem if it was an instrumental piece. In many ways this worked better than a film in the way that the audience had more freedom for their own imaginations. For example, the first piece I Saved a Word tells the ancient story of a lady waiting for her husband to come back from war. She waited so long that her body became stone. In my mind, the woman is standing on a high mountain near a cliff, the sky is burning with blood in the air, wind is tearing everything apart but not her mind. She looks firmly out to sea and strongly believes that her husband will return and they will spend the rest of their days together (Long, 2019).
