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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