Creating the End

Wow that sounds dramatic. 

No really, I am making an ending to my song. That's one of the last things that have been nagging me (and Janet too--to finish the song! Ha ha). Today has been all about listening. Listening to my teachers. Listening to songs. Listening to myself. I composed an ending that I can live with, but there is just one more element--my solo section--that I need to face up to. I hate writing solos. Or maybe that's being dramatic too. Let's just say that the process of writing my solos is treacherous. I just make it all too hard for myself. I try to be too fancy and too complicated. I always think great solos are really mysterious and difficult, but when you get right down and listen to people's solos, they're really just simple things. There must be something in their presentation that evokes all that mystery. I have a solid base to work with. I've been working with a wonderful teacher who teaches really great things, but also a lot of her lessons are by example.

When I first learned taiko, my teacher told us to hold back on asking questions during class. She asked us to wait until the end if we had a question, and that we ought to just watch and pay attention and try to figure out the answers for ourselves. I don't insist upon this with my students, but there are moments when I wish I could divide myself; there is one part of me that wants to share and to make everything as accessible as possible, and another side of me that wants them to go through the struggle because I believe that it is in the struggle that our greatest lessons are learned. There is something about being handed an answer that is not quite as gratifying as figuring it out for yourself.

No one is going to hand me this solo. My teacher has taught me phrases, has taught me how to count and divide time, and how to put it all together so the phrases fit in time. There have been innumerable lessons in a single class. It is my job as a student to take those lessons and put them together in my mind so that in the end what I have is not just a line of music to mimic, but a real understanding of the hows and whys of that music. When you understand the how and the why, you can take it and change it and make it your own.

I guess that's what solos are. They express the culmination of all your lessons and are moments that you take all that you have learned and speak it in your own way. 

Now I just need to figure out what I am going to say.