Angel: How're you feeling? Faith: Like I did mushrooms and got eaten by a bear.

'A Hole in the World'


The Great Write Way, Chapter Two: Twice upon a time...  

A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.


deborah grabien - Apr 24, 2005 8:55:48 pm PDT #1336 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

Bev, you're asking the wrong person. I can't deconstruct how I make music any better than I can deconstruct how I write words - less, in fact.

There's a story, and in this instance, there's a melody. Looking at those lyrics, had they been written by anyone else, I would probably have assumed a haunting melody line, an Arabian scale or tritones or at least a lot of minor chords. But no - it's rather uptempo (Liese, think Uncle John's Band in rhythm and speed, and the only minor, from the G basic to the E minor, is almost triumphant, definitely not mournful).

I don't know how to not do this stuff. I can't read a note of music - my father refused to have me taught - but I can play and write it.

Need is very freaky stuff.


Beverly - Apr 25, 2005 7:14:34 am PDT #1337 of 10001
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.

I don't know how to not do this stuff.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I wasn't actually asking how *you* compose. I was expressing awe that anyone can, and does do this thing that seems like magic to me. Moreso than other art forms.

I think visually, and I can comprehend how to draw, and paint, and sculpt, even if I can't do those things myself. I have written, and I understand what that process feels like. I studied piano for eight years with a bad, incompetent teacher, so that works out to more like, maybe, two years, total, and I've always sung, solo, in duets, trios, sextets, or chorus. I've sung soprano, alto, tenor parts, and I read enough music to know whether to go up or down on the line (see above, bad teacher). I can follow a melody line having heard it once, and I'm fairly good at finding or inventing a harmony or descant line.

But I can't make original music. I can't hear it in my head, I can't make it up, no matter how I try. And I'm in awe of people who can and do.


deborah grabien - Apr 25, 2005 7:17:49 am PDT #1338 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

And I suck at interpretation, so it evens out. If I love a song, I can play it and do it my way and filter it. But I can't sit down and "play it the way Chopin wrote it", or whatever. The technical part of me turns itself off and locks itself up into a box.

In the days when I had full use of my fingers, I played quite a few instruments (most of them patchily), but I was a damned good banjo player. I used to warm up with "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" because it's complex and tricksy and moves around. But it would never have been something I tried to interpret. Listening to it, it soars and dances in my spirit - playing it, it just became notes.

Creativity is weird stuff.


erikaj - Apr 25, 2005 7:20:34 am PDT #1339 of 10001
I'm a fucking amazing catch!--Fiona Gallagher, Shameless(US)

I've got a decent singing voice, but that is my only musical contribution...and even that, I waste trying to imitate Aretha and Janis(wisely in front of the dog)


deborah grabien - Apr 25, 2005 7:21:38 am PDT #1340 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

Heh. But erika, do you knock back Southern Comfort?


erikaj - Apr 25, 2005 7:24:07 am PDT #1341 of 10001
I'm a fucking amazing catch!--Fiona Gallagher, Shameless(US)

No...good thing too.Although to get those sounds, I might take it up.


deborah grabien - Apr 25, 2005 7:28:09 am PDT #1342 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

I wouldn't (take it up, that is), if I were you. My old friend Pigpen (Rod McKernan) taught Janis how to drink that crap, and in the end, it killed him by destroying his liver and helped kill her.


Ginger - Apr 25, 2005 7:37:44 am PDT #1343 of 10001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Yeah, it's the sweet liquor that will kill you.


deborah grabien - Apr 25, 2005 7:39:11 am PDT #1344 of 10001
It really doesn't matter. It's just an opinion. Don't worry about it. Not worth the hassle.

You know how you know when you've written the right music to a set of lyrics?

When you're earwormed with it.

Happy Deb now.


Steph L. - Apr 25, 2005 7:40:40 am PDT #1345 of 10001
the hardest to learn / was the least complicated

"Learn your cliches. Study them. Know them. They're your friends." -- Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Monday means welcome to my capricious whims in picking the new drabble topic!

Challenge #54 (discovery) is now closed.

Challenge #55 is, as the quote above suggests, cliches. Go to this Web site, pick a cliche (if you go to the bottom of the page, they're even broken down into handy-dandy categories), and....drabble it. In whatever way you choose. If you don't actually use the cliche -- the actual words themselves, like "that's the way the ball bounces" -- in the drabble, maybe add it at the end in parens or something, so we know what cliche you picked.

As always, take on the topic however you like. Feel free to be a smart-ass and drabble a cliche in literal terms -- a basketball falling off the shelf and bouncing through the aisles at Wal-Mart. (That IS the way the ball bounces, dontcha know....) Whatever you like.

[Note: you don't *have* to use the cliche Web site; feel free to use whatever cliche you like. I just thought I'd give a link to a site that lists cliches for people who are like me and suddenly get brain-lock when they *must* recall something. I could rattle off dozens of cliches if I wasn't in a situation where I was required to do so, but as soon as someone asks me for one, I stare at them blankly, like they just asked me for a Swahili translation of Umberto Eco.]

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions or tell me if you think I'm a total crackhead.

And along those lines, don't forget that if you have a topic you'd like to see us do, please suggest it! Because I *am* a crackhead and come up with some weird-ass topics sometimes.