An Sléibhte na hÉireann

So I went to Ireland over the summer. It was a really great experience and one I'll remember fondly for a long time.

While I was travelling on a bus tour through the mountains, this simple melody came to my mind, so I spent a while working on it. I mulled it over for several months, though, because no matter what I tried to do with it, it just didn't sound right. I simply don't have MIDI soundfonts that are good enough to capture the sound I was going for. It's also compositionally lacking, but I gotta tell you, I got nothin'.

So I'm just gonna release it as-is, and if I figure out a way of updating it later on I'll let you know. It's called "An Sléibhte na hÉireann" which literally means "the mountains of Ireland."

Fun fact, though, those of you that listened to "Searching for Sight" will recognize the main motif. I quoted it in "Searching" as one of the related "themes" I was mashing together. (I wrote this before Searching for Sight.)


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I have some other big news I'd like to talk about with you guys, and a few pieces I worked on for an electronic music class I think you might dig, but now's not the time. Stay tuned for updates.

Searching for Sight updated, plus thoughts on growing up.

First of all, I've updated Searching for Sight with a new version. Since it started out as an experiment with rhythm and such, I hadn't really designed it with cohesiveness in mind. This new version fixes that, Adding an introductory part, fixing rhythm errors that had driven me insane, and performing general touch-ups here and there to make it sound better. This new version is great. This is definitely one of the most gritty, "aggressive" things I've worked on.


Download

This has been a weird year for me, with a lot of rejection and a lot of disappointments. I'm finding more and more that things I thought I had talent in are things that, in reality, I am mediocre at best. Music is a good example of this. I guess this is just a part of growing up, though, but it makes the path ahead look rather grim. I'm beginning to realize just how small I am in a world filled with seven billion people. (Yeah, actually, statistics say we may have finally hit the big seven sometime this week in terms of population!)

I mean, we all grow up wanting to be a superstar, a celebrity, someone that everyone looks up to, but the reality is that most of us will live out our lives, with 99.9999% of people not knowing or really caring about us in any significant way, and we won't really make any significant impact on the world around us. While that's incredibly negative, and massively depressing, it seems to be true. And I really wish someone would turn to me and say, "hey, that's not true, you can do anything if you really put your mind to it!" But in a universe in which so much seems to be based purely on chance and not really perseverance, I can't see how that's the case.

I guess all I've really wanted is some actual recognition. But every time I try to put myself out there for something, I get passed up for someone else. Thing is, I don't hold anything against anyone - I'm certain the competition was genuinely the better choice. But as this keeps happening, I'm left to wonder if maybe I don't even have talent after all. And even if I were lucky, and had managed to get many opportunities, how fair would that be, when there are probably millions of people more talented than me who are less fortunate? And, all in all, what good is recognition, anyway? Why is it so important to me? Doesn't that make me look rather greedy?

It's getting hard to be sure of myself - I keep trying to ask myself what it is that I really care about, what my real passion is. I used to have this feeling that, no matter what happens, I'd always have music. But I'm starting to even doubt that myself. I think it's because for most of my life I had this illusion of "free will," the idea that I could be anything I wanted to be. So rather than try to pursue anything, I went from here to there, dabbling in this and that, hoping that something would just one day hit me on the head, and I'd say "Eureka! I know what I'm going to do!" But as the days go by, I find myself caring less and less about things, as though I am slowly turning into a robot. If someone handed me a card with a random profession and said "here, you're going to do this for the rest of your life," I'm not sure I'd care. As long as I have some reassurance that I can make it into the real world in one piece, and afford to have a place to live and food to eat.

I'm even doubtful about my own interest in music. Here I am, making essentially re-arranged versions of stuff I already wrote rather than making new original content. And even as I look back at my past stuff, I can see that my music is derivative and sophomoric. Artist's curse of self-criticism? Maybe, but it still seems pretty clear that if I really want to be taken seriously, then I'm going to need to step my musical game up and start writing stuff that is more tasteful.

I'm sorry this post is kind of a downer, but I had a lot of things to get off my chest, and honestly, this blog is pretty safe space to do it, since nobody reads it anyway. And don't worry, I'm sure I can get through this rut - as it turns out, even just pretending to be confident can go a long way - I'll just have to figure out how I'm gonna do it. If you'd like to give your two cents, please feel free to send me an e-mail (I'm adding my address to the home page), I'd truthfully appreciate any and all words of advice.

Peace out everyone.

'Nother redesign

At least, for the music page.

First of all, the damn url was fixed so now it's simply ".../p/music.html" instead of the WAY TOO LONG "music-compositions-arrangements."

I'm also trimming the page down a ton - a lot of those descriptions were just too damn long, and there were some pieces there that honestly didn't need to be there. I'm also redoing it so that newer stuff is always towards the top - it was too confusing before. I'm also removing the "vocal" section, since hopefully in the future, more of my compositions will actually be vocal as well.

I'm also changing the metadata cover art that comes with the mp3s when you download them - a prototype of the new design can be seen to the left. This change won't take place immediately, especially since the actual cover art might change a bit, but this is the general idea - the old art just looked too strange.

In other news, expect a whole batch of new music to be uploaded soon - I'm going to do a new thing where whenever I upload a new piece of music, I'll do a new blog post about it. That way, anyone who's actually following this blog will be able to be updated about new pieces of music instead of having to wait.

Peace out y'all!

Breakthough - I get the point of "The Suite" now.

A while back, I had commented on the "End of the World" suite (I'm referring to my piece, just to be clear, which is on the music page), saying "There are aspects of each movement I don't like, plus, I'm still trying to decide what I actually want the sound of the suite to be as a whole." Obviously the second movement is the one that needed the most work, so I planned to re-write it first, but had ideas in general for how I'd want to redesign the first movement. Well, the other day I cracked a musical idea for it that works really well, and will expand it from the little short ditty it is into a full-blown piece in its own right. Plus, I think I'll challenge myself and actually do lyrics in it for once - it's high time I broke that ice and started writing actual songs. Plus, it's kind of important for the re-working I had in mind - from a love piece to a more remorseful one, dealing with acceptance and moving forwards. It's more powerful and more meaningful a theme, especially for me to be able to connect with (for reasons that should be obvious).

SITE REDESIGN!!

Hey guys,

You're looking at the first major site redesign of Maurus' Lair!
Why, you might ask, did I perform such an update?
Well, unnamed individual, a couple of different reasons:
One - I got Dropbox, which made hosting my music using box.net and its embedded media player now seem silly.
Two - Helping my mother with her final project - she had to create a multimedia-based web report, and based on my experiences with Blogger, I thought it'd be the perfect thing for her - made me realize that my blogspot theme had by this point become very passé. Having gained a year's worth of HTML practice designing TCT and OTF's forums, I realized this simply would not do and got to work designing a new appearance for the site.
So I went ahead and gutted everything - the new design is cleaner and more organized.
The biggest changes, of course, have been to the music page, which has been completely redesigned and features loads of new pieces I didn't post to the site before. You should definitely go check it out.

If you're reading this from Facebook, check out my website (and my music!) at http://mauruslair.blogspot.com/p/home.html.

Peace out everyone!