Sunday mornings

I love my Sunday mornings.  They are the highlight of my week.  It's weird that I'm not at the age where instead of Friday or Saturday nights, I look forward to my Sunday mornings (Saturdays are usually similar).

I wake up, get a shower and get ready and get to Starbucks so I can compose and get a coffee (lately pumpkin spice latte's).  I don't get coffee from there during the week as it's too much money, so I save it for the weekends.  I get there, get my coffee and just compose.  It's my designated composition time.  I look at it like time with music and God, because I have church at 11, which is a great time because it's enough time in the morning to get a good session in.  I don't have to think about anything else, work, school work, money, or anything else.  I can just sit, drink my coffee, think about God, write music.  It's really the perfect time for me.  Today the sun was out, it was blue skies, and I worked on getting to the end of my final hand-draft.  I got there and came up with a great idea for the end which extended the ending by over 30 seconds which brings the total time for the piece to 13 minutes.  I still have 9 bars after the mid-point to work out, but I have a good idea of what to do and I'm going to take care of that after church.

I realized two things about who I am as a composer and how I look at my music:
1) I'm not experimental for experimental's sake.
    -Too many composers are trying to be experimental just to be experimental.  Their music usually lacks soul, emotion, and creativity.  It becomes a gimmick, and people usually forget about it except for maybe some gimmickey "experimental" aspect.  I want people to remember my music for what it makes them feel, not that I'm writing gushy-hyper-emotional-trash just to get people to weep.  There is a balance between the brain and the heart but they both should be fully engaged.
2) I'm not composing to impress anyone.
   -Too many composers write to impress other people, namely musicians and namely other composers.  My music is not impressive from a technical, or virtuosic standpoint.  I really don't care for it to.  Not that I write simplistic music, although I value simplicity and a clear sense of direction.  I don't care if anyone listens to my music and are impressed by it's exciting elements.  My music is not bombastic, or overly intense.  It has times where it can be a little 'notey', but overall I like space to be a factor in the structure.   My SQ has a lot of space in it, maybe too much in fact.  The first three and last four minutes are long phrases with just a few notes held throughout.  I like it and think it will be a meditative thing.