I came across Peter Cox’s music blog via a Yahoo egroup which I’m a member of which probably deserves a blog post in itself as its a valuable musicians resource – its a place where muso’s across the world hang out to exchange ideas and tips and music chat called Music Thoughts – and theyre a really friendly bunch of people.
Your Music Blog is a new enterprise and well worth checking out, particularly for rock music which is Peter’s own specialty (he’s in established rock group Chinawhite).
He’s given Valentine Court an interesting review too. He starts with some kind words about the music and then goes on to do what many reviewers shy away from and gives some interesting critical feedback. He suggests that I might consider experimenting with some pieces with fewer notes in the future, or putting it the other way around, with more silence and space.
This I found an interesting comment – composer/pianists I enjoy such as Satie (as Peter states) and also Ludovico Einaudi are able to produce much simpler and sparser arrangements than I and I wonder if this is partly me compensating for a lack of confidence by keeping things busy. Or perhaps to put it another way, one’s music reflects one’s state of mind and to date I’ve had to work quite hard (in a way) to achieve space in my mind and I think thats reflected in my music – there are moments of relative stillness – particularly in the climax of Jewel and Namaste, but these tend to be hard won, coming as the result of a build up towards that moment.
Mind you, Satie was an absolute master of tonality and Einaudi has a remarkable ear for melody, so perhaps the relative simplicity they sometimes achieve is hung on those particular gifts.
One of the many musical ideas I have saved on my digital piano is a very still and simple piece with only two chords, so perhaps I will be exploring that territory more in the future. Time will tell of course, but in the meantime, thought provoking comments from Peter.