Breaking the Rules Part II: Know When to Hold ‘Em
Okay, yesterday’s post was kinda crappy, I’ll admit that. The joys of trying to squeeze a bunch of ideas into an hour long break. I can’t promise this one will be worlds better, but I’m gonna try at least – hopefully you’ll understand a little if it’s not.
Anyways…
Generally speaking rules are a good idea. They were most often created by people who spent a lot of time and energy into thinking about them. Strunk and White weren’t idiots, no matter what you may think during English class.
There’s a reason for most every rule in the books, and most often it’s that the rule will lead your work to something others can follow. Its a guideline that’ll help you get your point across to your audience in the most effective manner.
That said, the old adage still applies. Rules really were made to be broken. Eight times out of ten you’ll want to avoid the passive voice. One of those that remains, the passive voice sounds better; the other time it’ll be the more appropriate way to handle your sentence.
One of the best places to break the rules is in dialogue, because really, who talks like a text book? And I’m talking about “standard” English (well, standard American English at least) – that’s saying absolutely nothing about regional dialects. Listen to your friends and family throughout the day. How many of them sound like their speech was based on “The Elements of Style”? (If the answer is greater than zero, you really should sit down and talk to them. They’ve got issues.)
Aside from dialogue, where else is a good place to break the rules? I can’t answer that for you. It all depends on what sounds good to your own ears, and the type of project you’re working on. An academic research paper for a class? Stick to the rules. An informal article about your home town? You could probably get away with it to some degree.
The important thing is that you write what you feel like writing, the way you feel it should sound. Then go back over it and see what works and what doesn’t. If something reads strangely, then go back to the rules. If it works, then why bother?
Of course, the key is knowing the rules. Take them all in, play with them, see why they work and what happens if you break them. When you break them on accident, you’ll be lucky if it works (and most often it won’t). When you break them intentionally, you’re creating your own voice, your own identity.
And, in the end, that’s the whole point of art.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Breaking the Rules for Fun and Profit
One of my favorite quotes of all time is (regarding music theory) “Learn it, and then forget it.” I’m probably misquoting it, but that’s the gist of it at least. I think its from Eddie Van Halen, but I could be wrong on that too.
Regardless of how wrong I am on all of that, it still is an extremely important piece of advice for anyone in the creative arts, not just musicians. And that’s the underlying point to today’s post:
Learn the rules, then forget them.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance, does it? Why go through the trouble of learning something if you’re just gonna scrap it? I mean, the whole point of learning the rules to anything is so you can follow them, so you can apply them. Right?
Right.
The key, though, isn’t so much forgetting the rules as it is forgetting that you know them. You need to learn them to the point where they’re always in the back of your mind, but they’re rarely a conscious thought. Getting caught up in the rules, where they’re more than just background noise, is a great way to really screw yourself over. I know this from my own experience – not just writing, but music as well.
Many moons ago, I fancied myself a bit of a musician. I was a pianist and composer throughout high school and even got a scholarship to Texas Tech university for it. I was stoked to start getting “advanced” music training instead of just private lessons and choir at school.
Didn’t happen too well. I took to music theory really well, but it didn’t like me very much. The rules just swarmed through my head everytime I sat down trying to write something. “No, that chord shouldn’t lead into this chord.” “That melody doesn’t harmonize with that background.” So on and so forth, ad nauseum.
I ended up mostly giving up on music, for other reasons as well I’ll grant, but that was one of the big things that broke it for me. Too many rules, and it killed the creative side of music for me.
But I missed out on a great opportunity with that, one I’ve since discovered with writing. Learning the rules is half the deal, getting to the point where they’re at your control – instead of the other way around – is the other (and most important) part.
You need to know the rules that apply to your art form so that you have them at your disposal. You need to know what kind of sentence structures you should use, or what kind of chords you should use, or else you’re flying on blind luck.
Once you know the rules, then you can move on past them. They’re there if you need them – which is quite often – but you’ll also be able to knowingly break them. That’s the biggie. Breaking the rules – to a lot of artists at least – is the key to originality, to finding your own voice. Using the wrong chord intentionally can be genius, and even if no one else likes it, you were better geared to express yourself.
I need to get back to the day job here, but keep it in mind: learn the rules, and forget you know them. Then you can break them at will.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Late Night Thoughts
It’s quite rare that I make a post so late in the night, but I’m trying to wind down and figured I’d get some stuff out that’s rolling through my mind.
Got another rejection letter today. They don’t bother me in the sense of “oh wow, someone doesn’t like what I wrote.” I’m past that, believe it or not. They bug me in the “damn, I wasted my time waiting a couple of weeks to hear that.” Seriously, the ones that come back the next day — or even later in the day — are perfectly fine. But waiting a week or two to get a form rejection just annoys me.
So, I have one more agent I’m waiting to hear back from; she’s reading Like Glass right now. And I’m not exactly getting my hopes up — call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you’d like, but I’m really expecting another rejection. The only problem is that it’s going to take forever, I’m sure, and that’s time that could be better spent elsewhere.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m not just spinning my wheels waiting to see what happens. I am making plans to release Shattered in the spring, and I’m moving towards that as quickly as possible. Actually, if I know myself as well as I think I do, it won’t be released in the spring; it’ll be out in a couple of weeks (well, as quickly as possible, anyways).
Book stuff aside, I’m also thinking about releasing my music on a CD. Not that I think anyone will really buy it, but just so I can say “I put out a CD.” The only problem is that (and if you thought otherwise, you have my apologies) I’m not actually playing the piano on any of the tracks. I wrote everything, sure, but that’s my computer doing the performance. Trust me, if I could play that well, I sures to hell wouldn’t be pushing books on to anyone who couldn’t run fast enough 
So, in order to make people not feel cheated (even if it is only in my mind) for shelling out $10 (or whatever) to hear a computer play, I’m thinking of re-editing the music, making it more digital sounding (i.e. toss some weird effects on it), and releasing it as electronic music. A shit load of work, but then I can have my CD collecting dust in a box next to Like Glass and Shattered.
Okay, so that’s what writing a post at 2:00 AM is like 
Yeah, I’m not terribly impressed either, but it was good enough to kill time while I smoked a couple of cigarettes.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
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Beginnings
Okay, one last update for today, and I’m a little nervous about this one. See, all the other pieces that are up there are a little old — from back when I was more into music, working on it more regularly. This one I just wrote, within the past couple of days. So, this is a “do I still got it” kinda piece.
It’s called “Beginnings“, and it’s my attempt at “re-beginning” (that’s a word now; I’m a writer too, so I can make words up when I need to) my music. Hopefully you enjoy it, and if not, it’s because I’m just out of practice
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
New Orchestral Music!
Okay, in update #2 for the day, I’ve uploaded a new orchestral piece, Elegy (3:54). Hopefully the mix came out decently; it was a little more complicated than I’d expected (and it’s been a while since I’ve done any real audio mixing anyways).
Hope you enjoy!
–Matt
New Music — Nocturne in F Minor
Just added a new piece to the classical music section, Nocturne in F Minor (1:23). Be sure to check it out, as well as the other pieces if you haven’t already.
New Music and New Site Sections
Okay, did a bit more rearranging of the site and added two new sub-sections to the music page. Now it’s broken up into “Classical” and “Modern“. I know that the “classical” music isn’t technically “classical” — stylistically, it’s probably more romantic/modern, and it isn’t old enough to be classical or romantic — but I don’t really know what the hell to call it.
The “modern” music section is what I’m calling my “rock” side, because (like the classical stuff) I don’t really know what the hell else to call it.
Anyways, there’s three new pieces up. You can find Midnight in the classical section, and Evolution and Hands in the modern section.
There’s actually a bit of a story that goes with Hands as well. My wife has always loved that piece, and she wanted it to be part of the music that played at our wedding. She’d planned on walking down the aisle (well, technically it was a bridge) to something else — Canon in D, I think — but her mother was playing DJ and hit a wrong button. She ended up walking down the aisle to Hands instead, and that’s a memory that I’m going to cherish until my dying day: my soon-to-be wife walking towards me to music I wrote.
Okay, enough sappy crap. Hope you enjoy the music
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
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Quick Post: New Site Section
If you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a new section on the site, “Music“. For those of you who don’t know (and if you’ve kept up with this blog to any extent, you should know), once upon a time I was a bit of a musician. My family was kind enough to give me a keyboard for Christmas, and I’ve gotten stuff set up to do a bit of recording.
Keep in mind that these are hardly professional recordings. I’m not much of a pianist (well, not anymore at least), and I’m even less of a recording engineer. What you’re hearing is actually MIDI music that I’ve piped through my keyboard, then back into the computer, where it’s recorded and then saved as an MP3 file.
In other words, if it doesn’t sound like a real piano, it’s because it isn’t.
That said, I hope you enjoy them. I have quite a bit of other music I plan on “releasing” in the near future, and I’m planning on doing it all for free. I might release a CD just for kicks, for those of you who like to support starving artists In the mean time, feel free to download them, burn them to your own CD, put them on your iPod or whatever you use to cart music around on.
Keep an eye out for more classical style music, as well as the occasional industrial/electronic/rock song if I can get that stuff set back up.
For those of you who may be a little concerned that this will tie up some of my writing time, rest assured that Rob’s adventures will continue, and the Vanishing Point series will continue as well. But you never can have too many hobbies now, can you…
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
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Revisiting A Past Life
Well, I’d hoped this wouldn’t happen, but at the same time, I knew it would…
My sister-in-law and her husband got me an electronic keyboard for Christmas — which is super-cool, trust me. I’m really thankful for it; I’d actually asked for one, and didn’t expect anyone to shell out the cash for it. It hooks up to the computer via USB, and it (literally) is just plug-and-play — no configuration, no drivers, nothing. Plug it in and it’s ready to go.
So, today, I hooked it up and started going through a lot of my old music. I mean, music I’d written, and a few pieces I’d transcribed so I could mess around with them.
Oh yeah: if you didn’t already know, I used to be a bit of a musician. Way back before this whole writing thing came to play, and even before I was a software developer. Some people used to say I was halfway decent; I’ll leave that up to you though, if you ever get to hear anything I wrote.
Anyways…
So I hooked it up, started playing some of the stuff I’d written, and man did it hit me hard. All the energy I’d put in to it, all the time I’d spent, all the hopes and dreams I’d had of getting my stuff performed (or even just heard). Damn near put me In the Fight.
I know, it probably sounds stupid: why would that depress me? Shouldn’t those be good memories? Shouldn’t it be pleasing to hear something that you’d spent so much time and energy on?
Not really. See, some things went awry with all that, and I closed the door on that part of my life. I tried really, really hard — harder than anyone would ever think made any sense at all — to put musical creativity out of my life.
Why? Because I always wanted more from it. I didn’t want to just plink around at home on a keyboard, or write stuff on the computer and listen to it later. I wanted to be a composer, in much the same way I want to be a novelist. Not a hobbyist composer, like I don’t care too much for the idea of writing as a hobby. I wanted the same thing everyone else wants: I wanted to quit my day job, or at least get something set up to get it performed publicly. And, like everything else you do on your own, I had no clue what to do to get that ball rolling.
Seriously, if you think it’s hard work trying to get a novel read by an agent, try getting an orchestral piece performed.
Maybe I just looked in the wrong places, but I had absolutely no luck in getting anything performed. There was other stuff involved too — like trying to get involved with a band a friend of mine had with absolutely no success. It just seemed that every door I tried was locked solidly. Maybe I tried the wrong doors, and I’m sure I gave up too easily, but it’s really disheartening to make no progress, no matter how hard you try.
So I gave up, and I tried like a son of a bitch to put it out of my life. And it worked. Kinda. I’ve been really bitter about it since I gave up, but I’d succeeded in finding other avenues to pursue — like writing.
Why am I posting this? Not just to whine, although I’m sure it probably seems like it Now that I have a means to get the music out, I’m hoping there might be a little bit of an audience here on the inter-tubes. As soon as I figure out some logistical problems (i.e. recording and mixing a MIDI file to MP3), I’m going to start posting my music here, as I do with my writing. For free, of course, and there should be a fair mix of “classical” music and some rock/industrial instrumental tracks. Trust me, you do not want to hear me sing (besides, I’ve got a little experience with home recording, and getting a good vocal track is a bitch and a half).
In the meantime, you can check out one of my pieces, Evolution. There’s no story behind the name; it just seemed to fit. It’s kind of a rock-ish/techno-ish/classical-ish piece that, like my novels, I can’t seem to fit into a genre. Hope you enjoy.
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