Finding Balance

Music can't be anxious, or worried, or rushed. Songs can emote those things but the performer has to control all variables when composing a piece. Some incredibly talented people can obviously make things up perfectly on the fly, but that's different from controlling the sound. If you can't separate feelings of anxiety and anger from the way you approach your writing, the equilibrium of good music will tilt to the desperate and the clarity of thought will be lost.  I'm young. I'm young and anxious and nervous and excited and desperate and loud and quiet and hopeless.  I'm all of these things and it affects my music. I want to put all that into my songs but what's more important than taking four minutes and whining into a microphone is finding balance in the only way I know how to compose myself. If I can't channel all that into simple threads of story or imagery or thought, then I'm not writing the best music I can. Some might disagree, maybe they think you have to bare all of yourself as raw and as broken as that is, and that the music has to be that too. But I think there's a threshold, where raw emotion meets clarity.  Step too far through the door on either side and the music can suffer. That's why good writers are so impressive. They tiptoe the balance and make it look easy.  The video below is an example of all this, where he found the threshold between broken and deliberate and balanced there in the writing. He's one of my favorites and he should be one of yours as well.  'Stranded' by Chris Ayer.

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