I periodically order things through bandcamp, and one thing that happens when you do that is every time the record label and/or artist you bought something from releases something new, you get a notification. Labels are, you know, kind of stupid and they reflect someone else's taste or their belief in what people will buy, so often I don't care much about the other stuff, but I almost always give it some kind of low-key, quick listen. Usually I listen to the first track of an album (though often, irritatingly for me, bandcamp world decrees a single 3-minute song as an 'album' - that is, everything is an album) just to see whether it grabs my attention. Generally speaking no it doesn't. Sometimes it totally does. I instantly fell for an album by Oiro Pena, which is in a genre. But it is really great.* In many cases I will say that I just don't have the attention span to latch on to new things, though I try hard and try to be open to anything, really. Of course by 'new' I don't mean only new, old can also be new if it's new to me (to state the ridiculously obvious).
But the reason I ask why music is hard last couple of nights I have been trying to compose some music for a documentary film project I am involved in, mainly because while I have a massive amount of incredibly talented friends who could do it 50 times better than me, I don't want the guilt or emotional hassle of saying 'thanks we didn't use it because...' I figure I can handle rejecting myself. What I've come up with in basic GarageBand with musical typing (and a $10 download of royalty-free Clyde Stubblefield loops - let's be fair, I didn't really come up with it, he carries it) is nothing to march through the streets with joy over but nor is it the most horrible thing I've ever heard. It makes me wonder, is music hard? I know I have no specific talent at it, at very best I aim to reference other things I like, at worst I flail. Of course, the other option is that what I have come up with is actually gruesome but I can't tell. Who knows?!
By the way the image above is from a notification I just got from Humu Records. The tracks are pretty good. I may purchase it but it's a digital-only release and I am not particularly into digital-only releases, that's how I am.
*It just occurred to me to find out anything about them. I was further intrigued by this skerrick of a tiny interview here: 'Did you start Oiro Pena? Antti Vauhkonen: I didn’t start Oiro Pena. Pentti Oironen started it a long time ago. I don’t know the exact year, but Pentti contacted me around 2016. Oiro Pena, myself, and the current band members solely channel Pentti Oironen’s universal vision.' By the way, it seems like Antti Vauhkonen is actually Pentti Oironen, but this is probably something created to confuse me and you.
