A Composer In His Natural Habitat
A Composer In His Natural Habitat
Habitat #001 - What's My Motive-ation?
In the podcast's debut episode, Thomas introduces himself, discusses his plans for the podcast, and talks about the value of learning all you can about how music works. He also discusses different motivations for becoming a composer and why it's important to have a good sense of why you want to compose music.
To join an ongoing discussion about the topics addressed in this and other episodes, we invite you to join our Discord channel ("A Composer's Natural Habitat") by going to https://discord.gg/8F7Yuc9Mne.
Welcome to A Composer In His Natural Habitat, a podcast about creativity and music featuring Thomas C. Baggaley Habitat number one. What's my motive-ation? Hello, everyone. Welcome to this very first episode of the A Composer In His Natural Habitat podcast. I am Thomas Baggaley, as the introduction suggested, and I am a composer. I hope you can live with the musical pun titles. I don't even know if you caught the first one. Motive ... Motivation? Yeah, if you have to explain the pun, it's probably not very funny, but I like to make them up, so you're just going to have to live with it because it's going to be a regular thing on this podcast. As the title suggests, today, we are going to be talking about a composer's motivation. Why do I compose music? Why do we compose music? What is it that drives that creative output for a composer? But first, let me introduce myself, tell you a little bit about my background, a little bit about the podcast, and what the idea of this podcast is going to be as we go through the next months and years. As I mentioned, I am a composer. I'm also a music educator. I have been composing music for about 30 years and teaching music for over 20. I now am an associate professor of music at Salt Lake Community College, and I teach composition and theory and music entrepreneurship. Prior to that, I was blessed to study with many excellent teachers. I did my undergraduate work at Brigham Young University and also studied and did my graduate work at UCLA. Had wonderful teachers that both institutions. Learned a lot. In fact, a lot of what I will be sharing in this podcast probably came from them, and I'll try to give them credit as I talk about things, and as I bring some of those memories forward for some of the wonderful things that they shared with me as I was trying to figure out how to become a composer myself, What kind of music do I write? My background is kind of in film composition. While I was at UCLA, I had the wonderful opportunity to study for a short time with the late Jerry Goldsmith, and also with another film composer who was teaching their Paul Chihara and learned some wonderful things from them. I've written a lot for the concert hall. Of course, I've scored some films. I've done some stuff for the theater and all of it kind of blends together for me, but I think that my sound, the kind of music that I try to write is very strongly influenced by film, by the drama, by storytelling. And so that's kind of where I come from. But my students at Salt Lake Community College are interested in all kinds of music. In fact, we get a whole bunch of students, and I've been teaching songwriting almost the whole time I've been at SLCC. We call it SLCC. That's the abbreviation for Salt Lake Community College. But a lot of them come in wanting to write hip hop of all things. So it's been a growing and stretching and learning experience for me to try to figure out how I can help these students to reach their musical goals, even if those goals are a little bit different than mine. And that's one of the things that I want to kind of talk about in this podcast because music is music. Whether you're writing music that is intended for the concert hall or for a film or for a video game, or if you're trying to write something for a popular audience in one of the popular genres, pop music, hip hop, R&B, you're still trying to shape sound. And there are still principles and ideas that you need to be aware of and quality music production, quality music composition ... There are some principles that are true and apply across the board. I would think that if you want to write music that one of the things you want to do is to get to understand how music works and what the listening experience is like, what a composer needs to do, try to understand what it is that you are doing at the greatest levels. I sometimes have students who don't really want to learn music theory. They think it's only for classical music or something like that, and that's just not true. There are lots of principles that can be very helpful to a composer, regardless of what his musical goals are. So one of the things I'm going to try to do in this podcast is to share some of the things that I've learned, some of the things that I've observed as I try to teach and try to help students reach their goals. I'm currently on a sabbatical from Salt Lake Community College, which is a wonderful blessing in my life because it gives me a chance to focus a little bit more on composition. This podcast is coming about as part of that sabbatical because I still want to be able to share the experience that I'm having as I'm working as a composer full time, basically for the next eight months or so. And who knows beyond that? Certainly, I've been composing all along, but the opportunity to really focus on composition for eight months and not have other kinds of distractions get in the way. I want to be able to share that with my students, the things that I learn as it becomes a full time thing for me. So those are the kinds of things that especially over the next few months I will be working on sharing in this podcast. It's going to be structured in a way. As you can see, I'm going to try to follow that structure today. Even in this first podcast, we're going to talk about some of the things that I'm working on. The experiences I'm having as I write, and I'll also try to share some of the observations that I have had as a teacher, as I've dealt with young composers, some of the traps that they sometimes fall into, and some of the things that I have observed that I think are worth discussing because there are some interesting subjects out there and interesting questions ranging from a variety of things from writing music for money and how does that affect the way that you write music to what do we mean when we say that something is good? What is good music? And I think that those are interesting discussions to talk about. One of the most important things that I want to do also is bring in some of my friends and colleagues and have them share some of their ideas. This podcast is not just about music. It's coming from a music focus because I'm a composer and that's where my main output as a creative person comes. But I do want to discuss a lot of issues relating to creativity itself, the creative process, the value of creativity in the workforce and in the world. And how do we go about creating things and so some ... some of the friends I will bring in won't necessarily be composers. I want to talk about issues that are related to creative people and trying to be a creative person in this world. That really a lot of a lot of our culture right now does not value creativity. There's a lot of a lot of forces, a lot of financial support forces, especially, that that don't necessarily reward creative output ... innovation ... because of the way that our economy is structured in ways and the values that we express as a society. Often we don't really give that much value or financial reward, at least to those who are perhaps most creative among us. So those are the kinds of things I want to talk about, and we'll get into those details and have some really good discussions over the coming months. I do want to encourage participation from listeners, so there will be a section where I will deal with listener questions. I do have an online discord and opportunities that I'll talk about a little bit later on in the program for sharing ideas, having a dialogue. I do want to hear what you think. I don't expect that most people will agree with me a lot of times and that's great. I love to hear other ideas, other perspectives. I think that that can only spur greater creativity among all of us. So I'd love to hear what you have to think about the different things we talk about in this podcast.
Alright, so let's move on to the first section of today's podcast:What are you working on? What are you working on? So what am I working on? Well, obviously this podcast has been a big part of the focus of some of my creativity for the last little bit. Getting together the bumpers. I hope you enjoy them. They were a little fun to put together for me and they involve little snippets of music that I've written and recorded in the past, but I've also got a couple of major projects that I'm working on. First of all, I have been writing a book based on, again, the kinds of experiences I've had as a teacher, the things I've learned, some of the exercises that that I have found to be effective with students. A lot of those exercises come from the second semester of composition class that I teach at Salt Lake Community College. The title of the book, I should say it's working title, because this can always change right now. It's working title is So, You Want to Write Music?, and it's a handbook of fundamentals for the learning composer. It's been a lot of fun to work on, to think about ways to deal with different issues. I've observed that there are a lot of books about music theory. There are a lot of books about songwriting, a lot of books about orchestration, but there aren't a whole lot of books that talk about the composition process. Learning theory is not the same thing as learning composition. Your theory is kind of like the grammar of music, and sometimes we kind of let that kind of handle some of the stuff that needs to be handled as far as teaching composers. But there's a lot more that composers need to learn. They need to learn about the creative process. They need to learn attention to detail. They need to also, especially young composers need to learn to focus on those little details to make every decision ... one that they make on purpose. Not just think about the notes you've got and then kind of leave it at that. But think about articulation. Think about dynamics, think about phrasing, expression. Think about the overall shape of the piece of music. So this book is designed with a hands-on kind of approach for composers to get them to think about those things. Some of the things, of course, as a composer, you may have thought of already before, but other things, maybe not so much. And so there are discussions and exercises in the book that take on those kinds of challenges and make make suggestions to composers. Hey, what about this? What about that? Why don't you try this? How can you make this sound good? What doesn't mean if you do that? What is the meaning of what you're writing? It gets you to think about all those little details, both small and big, that can be found in a piece of music. So it's been a lot of fun. I'm getting near the end. There's about two chapters left. As far as a first draft of the book. That does not mean the book is done by any sense of the word. There's going to be rewrites, peer reviews and things like that to make sure that it's an effective tool for teachers, for learners. But it's been a lot of fun to be working on, and it involves some creativity on my part as well. When you think of creative stuff, sometimes you think about creative solutions being about music, art. But anytime you come up with something new, something that's not been done before, a different way of doing things. And I don't think ... You're trying to solve problems, right? And as I've been teaching, this book and the things in it have come out as a result of problems that I've run into. How do I teach this? How do I teach that? How do I get these students to think about this? And so there's a lot of creative thought process that goes into that brainstorming. Okay. What if I try this? What if I I try that? Maybe this can be a little bit different ... those kinds of things. How do I make the connections? That's one of the big things I also try to do in the book, how to make the connections between the academic stuff that we've taught in music, and some of the more maybe applied or practical things about composition. If a student doesn't want to be a college professor himself, he may be wondering, okay, why are they teaching me all this stuff that doesn't seem to apply at least directly to the music that I like or that I want to write. So how do I make that connection for students so they can see that these principles are universal to all kinds of music. And trying to solve those problems has been a creative process for me and a lot of fun to work on. I'm also looking for a story. During my sabbatical, one of my big projects that I want to work on is I would like to write a music drama of some kind. I don't know if that's an opera, necessarily. It depends on the story, I guess. It could be a work for musical theater. I certainly have a lot of background in writing music for theater. And so I'm looking for a story right now. I had some ideas, but it's hard to find a story that lends itself really well to a musical setting and also is available. Now, I could write my own story. I have written stories in the past. In fact, I wanted to be a writer before I ever wanted to be a composer. But one of the things that I run into, I mean ... why would anybody want to go see this musical? That's a question you have to ask yourself, especially if you want to have a large audience, which is what I'm hoping for with this when it's finally produced. Why would anybody want to go listen to this? Now, it may be a great story. I could write a story that's just amazing and wonderful. And maybe that will be enough if word gets out about the musical and people will go see it because it's a great story, even if they aren't familiar with it. But one of the projects that I worked on in the past and I should have said this a little bit earlier about myself, but I'm also the executive director of an orchestra called Elacor ... E-L-A-C-O-R ... It's an acronym for Electroacoustic Orchestra. We've been on hiatus for a couple of years, mainly because of COVID, but also because we've been trying to sort out how to proceed from where we were at. We've produced an album. The album is called Take Flight. You can listen to it on Spotify and lots of different places. And it's an album that we've been trying to get a lot of ... It's original music ... music that people had not heard before because it's new. It's brand new, and it's written for this orchestra. It's Broadway-style music, a lot of it. And people who love Broadway music, I think would love to listen to this album. But most people discover their music, at least in this genre ... and when we're talking about musical theater, most people discovered the music that they that they want to listen to ... That's in that vein of music through the shows themselves. It gets on Broadway, it gets a following there, and then they discover the music or maybe it's a Disney musical. They discover the music because it's part of a movie and they go see the movie. Well, our album, this Take Flight album, was just original music in the same style as that kind of music. And it was a full orchestra recording, a wonderful production to be involved with. And I really like a lot of the music that we put together. We did it on what I think is an amazing job with a very, very skeletal budget ... had some wonderful composers that I worked with on it. I did not write all the music on the album. I helped with some of the arrangements, and I wrote a couple of songs myself, but I thought that especially given the resources we had to work with, it's an amazing, amazing, wonderful recording. To give you an idea of the budget we were dealing with it, we did the whole thing for less than $100, and you're thinking, wow, how do we do th ... well, part of the reason we were able to do that is because we gave part ownership of the music to the instrumentalist that play with it ... that played in the recordings, because if we're going to benefit from it, what we wanted them to be able to benefit as well. We didn't have the funds available to us to hire an orchestra. So we formed an orchestra, and we gave the orchestra part of ownership of that recording. And they were wonderful to do that. But a big problem we had then was getting people to listen. With streaming audio the way that works now ... I mean, we got thousands of listens on Spotify, but if you get a couple of thousand listens on Spotify and on YouTube, that doesn't equate to very much money. And the question we had to ask ourselves after we created this wonderful album that we were very, very proud of, and we were trying so hard to get the word out about is why would anybody listen to this? And part of it is because they might like that kind of music. But the people that might like that kind of music are used to discovering their music through film and through the theater, the actual productions. And there wasn't a production to go with this. So that's one of the things that as I turn and I want to create a musical, myself or an opera or something to do with the music drama, something that tells a story. I'm looking for a story. It's not hard to find a story, but it needs to be a story that at least because nobody knows very much about who I am. They don't have a real reason to go. It may be a wonderful story, but if they don't actually experience it, then it doesn't matter. So I'm looking for a story that will bring some people in. "Hey, I know that story. I'd love to see it as a musical." And that's hard to find, especially since some of the great stories that ... they already have other kinds of contracts involved with them. For instance, if you have a novel and you sell the rights to the film for somebody to make a movie of that. Now, they may or may not actually get that made into a movie. But during that time when you've got that story that you've sold the rights to the movie along with those rights, they take the rights for a musical or theatrical version of that as well, because they don't want to be competing with that. You can imagine your multi million dollar movie comes out the same week that a musical production shows up on Broadway of the same story. You don't want that kind of competition. So you want to have those rights, so I'm looking for a story that that really lends itself to to a musical adaptation of some kind, something that people will be familiar enough with, a story that they'll be interested in seeing a musical version of it, but something that's also available. And that's a real challenge that I'm facing right now, and something I've been dealing with this week. So, just to share a little bit about what I'm working on and where that's at. If you know of anything, please let me know. I'd love to hear your suggestions about what you think would make a good musical or opera or musical drama of some kind, and what would be available, because that's what I'm looking for right now. All right. Today's question, the first one of the whole podcast comes from Sarah. She says, how do you inspire people to be interested to learn more about composing in order to expand their perspective and choices when composing music? And she goes on, I'm not going to read the whole question here, but she goes on and talks about an experience she had with another student, I guess, where they didn't really have that much interest in studying and learning about music in order to become better composers. And they were referring to artists that they considered who have been effective and successful artists without having study music theory. And this is a common kind of experience that many of us run into. So, Sarah, as far as how do you inspire people to be interested to learn more about composing in order to expand their potential? One - it's kind of kind of come from within. So there's not much that you can do to force people, I guess, to be interested. Inspiring is different than forcing, of course. But what you can do is you can kind of help them to see the benefits of of studying and understanding how music works. I think that the problem is that we have a myth out there. And the myth is that these popular artists don't know music. Now some of them don't. And what's really interesting is I went to the ASCAP Expo the last year they held it before they changed the name ... in Los Angeles. And there was a panel that they had there with a number of major songwriters who had a great deal of success. And in this panel, they asked them, basically, what do you wish you understood better and knew better? And every single one of them in this panel said that they wished that they could write, they understood music notation and music theory better. Every single one of them said they wished that. What they had done to compensate is that they had friends or people who had studied this, and they kind of let them carry the ball when their own knowledge of music theory and of music notation fell short. They had other people that were working for them and helping them to be successful in that. So they could focus on the part of the music that they did well, which was often lyrics knowing a little bit, maybe creating a groove and things like that. But they were working with other people. And so this myth out there that you don't need to know music well, you don't if you know someone else who knows music theory, right, that can do it for you. I'm reminded of one of the great composer ... or songwriters of American history, Irving Berlin, who could not actually read or write a note in music music notation. He could only compose in one key. He would write in that one key, and then other people would transpose it to other keys for him. They would write down his music for him. And that's fine. I mean, he paid people. He probably could have saved himself a lot of money if he learned how to do it himself. But you don't have to know how to do everything yourself. And that's a good story of music in general. You don't have to be able to do everything yourself. You don't have to play all the instruments. You don't have to be able to do everything yourself in order to be successful in music. Music is a very collaborative field, and you can have someone else doing that for you. But still somebody's got to know how to do it. At some point. The great composer, Quincy Jones, wonderful composer, one of the more influential composers of the late century in film and television especially, studied composition with Nadia Boulanger, who was probably the greatest music teacher for composers in the twentieth century. And what he said. He said that when he was studying with Nadia Boulanger, that she would joke about jazz musicians saying that they were always the hardest to reach because they, as she put it, shack up with music before they marry it. And at least that's the story as Quincy Jones tells it. But he said that she would say there are only twelve notes, and until there is a 13th, learn everything that everyone has done with those twelve. And then he went on to say, and that's exactly what I did to this day. There isn't any type of musical genre or musical experiment that gives me pause. I don't care if you're a musician, arranger, composer, engineer, music supervisor on a film or a producer. If you want to be a master at your craft, you should endeavor to know everything that has been done with those twelve notes. And that's kind of what I get to when I talk to students who wonder, why do I have to stay this music theory? I mean, didn't this other person, not know music theory in that. Well, how can you be a master of your craft unless you understand all the inside workings of what you're doing? I think we get a lot of young people today who don't want to pay the price. They don't want to put in the effort to learn to really master this stuff. They want shortcuts. They want a computer program that's going to write it for them so that all they have to do is kind of be creative and bring in loops and stuff like that. Loops are a great tool. Computer programs are great tools. Technology is a wonderful tool for composition, but if you don't understand the music, the medium that you're creating, that tool will not do for you what it can do, alright? And that's the point. Technology is a tool. It does not create music. It does not do the creative side of things. And if you don't understand music at its depth ... How it's working? What's going on? If you're just slapping on loops and you don't understand what's in those loops in your recording, you're just putting them there because they kind of sound good to you, and you have no idea what's actually happening. You are limited in what you can do. Now, what I'm saying is that you could do more if you understood more. I'm not saying, you can't do great things, alright? Music is a lot like language, like the English language. I learned to talk in English long before I learned to read and writing in English. We all do. I also learned to ... I learned grammar. English grammar when I was in junior high. That's when we studied it the most. But I could communicate and I could say some neat things without having steady grammar and without having learned to read or write. Does that mean that it was worthless for me to learn to read or write? No, absolutely not. Because learning to read and write and learning the grammar of the English language made me a better ... made me better able to communicate. And there I go, stumbling right in the middle of my talk. But it made me better able to communicate both in speaking and in writing. I can communicate better because I studied the language and understood how it worked. That's the value of studying grammar. That's the value of learning to read and write. It opened up more possibilities for me, and it helped me to understand even more how to communicate using the English language. Well, the same idea works for music. Alright. A lot of musicians ... They want that shortcut. There was a mean that was going around the Internet a few months ago and it had a picture of two doors and on the first door, it said, "Write a song in five minutes." And on the second door it said, "Learn music theory." And of course, everybody was lined up for miles and miles at the write a song in five minutes door. Everybody's looking for that shortcut. They want to write a song where they don't want to pay the price to really understand how to write a song. They just want to write a song. They just want to ... They just think that they can be creative, and it's gonna kind of come to them. They don't understand the price that these artists, most of these artists have actually paid. The hours of alone time practicing their craft that they put in before they get out there in the public. So how do you motivate someone to do that? You can help them to see, I think, you can help them to see the value that they're gonna get out of it. It's gonna make them more able to express themselves. It's going to help them see more possibilities. It's going to make them better, and hopefully they'll be motivated by that. And they'll be willing to pay the price and spend it ... spend time. It takes about ten years of hard work to really get good at this craft of music, and that's regardless what you're doing. I mean, they call Nashville the ten year town. It takes you ten years to build a career as a songwriter in Nashville, alright? It takes a lot of years if you want to be one of the great intellectual composers writing academic music. It takes about ten years of schooling, and you start with music theory. That's the beginning of all that schooling. It takes a lot of practice and time and effort to get there. Now, I don't want to say that to discourage people. I want people to just go in with their eyes open, but you do have to pay the price to become really good at this. And that's regardless of what genre of music you're trying to do. A lot of people to try to take shortcuts. Some of them succeed because they have other friends who took the shortcuts for them. It's not really a shortcut when he works with somebody else who has done part of the work. I don't have to learn to play oboe. I don't have to spend time learning to play oboe. I can learn to write for oboe, and I have friends who play oboe, and they can record the oboe for me. And I can ask them questions about how to write for oboe, and that works. That's part of the learning process for me as a composer. So you don't have to learn everything. But you should understand some of the basics. That's why every music major has to take music theory at a university program, every single one. It doesn't matter what they want to become. If they want to go into music history and want to become a musicologist, they still have to study music theory. If they want to be a composer, they study music theory. If they want to be a performer, they study music theory, because that's the grammar of music, understanding the choices that composers of the past have made and why they've made those choices. That's what music theory is. Music theory does not teach you to be a c ... and we're going to spend a whole episode on this at some point, and here I am going on and on. But music theory does not teach you to be a composer. And I want people to understand that it does not teach you how to be a composer. It teaches you the fundamentals of how music works. The experience of the listener has when they listen to a piece of music, and it gives you names and labels and ways to talk about music so you can understand it. People get all caught up in the rules of music theory. The rules are just descriptions of the expectations of the listeners. And when you understand how those rules came about, that's what's really more important than learning to follow or not follow the rules. So that's what I would say. I would say, look, do you want to be good at this? Do you want to be as good as you possibly can be at this, or are you gonna settle for what you're able to do right now? Hopefully you're motivated to be better. And one of the ways to be better is to learn everything you can about what was done with those twelve notes. What other people have learned, what they've done and that's the process of studying music theory. That's the process of going to school and studying with other composers. And because you want to learn what other people have already learned about those twelve notes and what they've done, so you can build on their shoulders and do your own thing. But you're starting at a much higher level when you do that. All right. Hopefully that works out. Now, again, we'll spend a whole episode probably on music theory at some point down here, down the line, because it is an important concept to talk about. And what is the value of studying music theory as a composer? But that's it for now. If you'd like to send some questions to me so that we can discuss them in the podcast, I would love for you to do that. Please send your questions to Thomas, T-H-O-M-A-S at baggaleymusic dot Com. That's thomas@baggaleymusic.com. Baggaley is spelled B-A-G-G-A-L-E-Y. baggaleymusic.com all together. All right. And I'd love to get your questions. And we'll discuss that on the podcast. It's time for the theme of the day. All right. We're ready to dive into today's topic, which is what is my motive-ation, my motivation, and that's kind of a two-layered topic, really, because first of all, what is my motivation as a composer? We'll discuss that. Why do I want to compose music? But let's talk about why it's important to even know why you want to compose music. In fact, let's start there because I think it is important to understand that. It's not easy to compose music. Composing music is hard work. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes ... There's a lot of alone time when it's just you and the music and your ideas and you're trying to work it out. And if you don't love that work, you're kind of going to spend ... you're kind of going to be miserable trying to be a composer if you don't love the process of creating music. Because the moments of glory, the oh, wow, I'm this great songwriter and look at me up on the stage and then million people clapping and applauding me for my efforts. That is both fleeting and rare. I mean, first of all, a lot of composers never get that. A lot of times, especially if you're a songwriter or composer, who someone else perform your music. A lot of times when that's being performed, you're not even there. They're playing your music in Australia and Europe and the United States, writing some more music. And so you don't even get to see that. And if you are an artist who is also a songwriter, yeah, sure, you're up there. But how many artists are there out there that that are kind of laboring in obscurity? A hit is really a rare thing, and a lot of things have to come together to make it happen for you to really get a lot of attention for your music ... a lot of things that you don't have control over. You can work really hard. You can make a good living at doing music in lots of different ways. But to, to ... the accolades that come with that, they're hard to get, they're not guaranteed, and it only lasts for a minute and then they move on to the next person anyway. So if you're doing it for that, it's not really ... You're going to get disappointed long before that happens to you. If you're doing it for money ... Money, I don't think is a very good motivator. Alright, I say the same thing about grades. I have had a lot of students, of course, over the years, and students that are motivated by the grade ... I have seen over the years that those students who are most worried about their grade want to do the minimum possible to get the grade they want and nothing more. They'll come to me and say, "How can I get an A in this class?" And I'll say, "Who are you? I haven't seen you for the last four weeks.""Well, I had these other things that I've been ..." [Laughter] They just want to be able to do the minimum amount. They're not really that interested in learning. They're interested in the grade. Grades are not good motivators. They're nothing more than a stick. They're not really a carrot. If you want to talk about motivators in terms of sticks and carrots, students want to do the minimum to do it. And the same thing with money a lot of times. People who are motivated by money, often they're trying to figure out how they can get the money that they want with the least amount of effort, because they're not motivated. There's not any other motivation for them to do the work. Once they've got enough of whatever it is they're after, then they're not ... Why do more? Money is not a good motivator, especially since there's a lot of better ways to make money ... a lot more sure-fire ways, I guess, to make money, the money that you need, than pursuing a career in the arts. So I think it's important to understand why you want to compose music. People who are successful in music often talk about the idea that they they can't not write music. It's a part of who they are. They are ... There's an inner impulse that they need to create, and they love the act of creation and of discovering things and working on details. And music is such a detailed work. Every detail, you're tweaking single notes, tweaking the performance. If you're working in a DAW, you're going through that MIDI performance and you're taking every single note and you're checking the velocity and you're shaping each note and there's just a lot of time involved and you just try it one way, try it another way and there's experimentation. It's a lot of time and a lot of effort. And if you love that process. Oh, wow. What if I did this? What if I did that? Let me try this. And you get excited by trying new things in the creative process, then you're gonna love this work, and you're going to be excited about the process of creating things. That's wonderful. That's part of what motivates me. You know, I love ... First of all, I love detailed work. I love to work on the smallest things and get things exactly the way I want them. And I love the creative discovery that happens, the small discoveries. It's not just that 1% of the time when you have, "Oh, I love this idea for this song!" It's all the little discoveries along the way to making that song actually work that are so exciting to me. And I love doing a good job of something. I'm really motivated by doing something well. And so I'll spend extra time, and if you're one of those people who, like I am, who get so focused on something ... and I'll start working on a piece of music, and I had to set an alarm on my computer, actually, when I'm composing because I don't want to neglect my family. And so in order to not neglect my family, I had to set an alarm say, "Okay, this is when you need to stop, and tomorrow you can come back and compose more." Because otherwise I won't notice the passage of time. I will get so focused on what I'm working on. And it's a wonderful feeling to get lost in that idea of flow, to get lost in that that flow of consciousness as you are working out and solving problems and making things work. It's a wonderful feeling and very exciting to me. And I love to have something come together and discover things along the way. And it's very motivating to me as a person. I'm also motivated by a desire to tell stories, to share the drama, the emotion ... And there's something about music that helps you to communicate on an emotional level, on a raw emotional level, so much better than any other form of art. And I love that connection that I feel like I can have through the music I create, trying to communicate very ... ideas and concepts that don't translate to language very well. But when you feel that, oh, yeah, that music really does communicate what I'm trying to say. That's a wonderfully motivating feeling to have it. And those are the kind of things that motivate me. So I think it's important to ask yourself if you want to learn to be a composer, why? Why do you want to do that? What do you find motivating about it? What's going to carry you through when you're 2 hours into working on something and it's just not quite working, but ... and you're alone and you'd rather be out partying with friends or whatever. I don't know. What is it that's going to motivate you to continue to work at that? Why are you doing this? I think it's important to think about that and figure out what it is about you that drives you to do that because that's what's going to carry you through when the money is not there and the fame is not there. But you're doing it anyway. There's got to be a reason. Alright, so that's some of my thoughts about motivation. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. Come on our Discord channel. We have a Discord channel. It's called A Composer's Natural Habitat on Discord. You can come on and join and talk with us there. Also, you can email me at thomas@baggaleymusic.com B-A-G-G-A-L-E-Y music dot com and Thomas, you can email me. I'd love to talk to you there, but we can get a discussion going on the Discord channel, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the idea as we go on about what kinds of things motivate you as a composer. How can motivation ... what kinds of motivations are effective ones? Because there are days when you sit down and you're just like I just do not feel like ... I'm not feeling it today. What gets you to get into it and go with it? Alright, that's it for today. It's been fun putting together this first episode. I look forward to the second one. Next week, I'm not sure exactly what we'll have for you, but I do have some friends that are coming up. One thing you can look forward to in a near coming podcast is I'm actually going to bring my wife on, because we're going to talk about composers and families and how do you mix the two? There's kind of a belief out there sometimes that you have to choose between having a family and having an art. I don't necessarily think that's true. My wife and I have now been married for 28 years, and I've had a wonderful family life and I've been able to compose music, so I wanted to bring her on in one of these future episodes coming up and have some thoughts from her about how you can balance family and creativity. So that gives you a sense of what is coming up in the next couple of episodes. I've got some other composer friends and musicians that I'm talking to, so we'll see what comes up in next week's episode. Another thing I wanted to bring up as well is that the podcasts are not free to produce. Actually, they take a great deal of time, of course, but also some equipment and getting things posted and there's some costs involved. If you would like to help support this effort. We do have a Patreon page that will be releasing soon. The Patreon that you can find us on patreon.com/composerhabitat. That's patreon.com/composerhabitat. We'd love to have some help with that. If you'd like to help out financially, just go ahead and go to that Patreon. We've got a number of benefits for you there, including some subscription things that are kind of cool that we'll be talking about as we go forward ... some prompts, composer prompts and different things as well as special status in our Discord channel environment, access to some content that we'll be producing specifically for patrons. So if you would be so generous and feel so inclined to help out with the podcast in supporting it on the Patreon page, we'd be extremely grateful to you. If not, that's fine too. Please listen and participate anyway, as part of the community. And if you have some ideas, I would love to hear your ideas about the kinds of benefits as patrons you'd like to see through Patreon. I certainly am new at this. I'm learning how to do this in the best way that I can. And so I'd love to hear some of the ideas that you have, things you like to see, and we'll definitely take a look at that. Part of the reason I'm doing this is really not not a financial thing at all, but I want to be able to teach my students better how to do the Patreon and things like that because it's such a big part of the arts and the way they support that. So any help and guidance ... advice, thoughts that you have would be so helpful to me in that effort. In any case, we'll go ahead and call this a completed episode. Yay! Episode number one. And we'll see you next time. Until then, keep composing. Thanks for listening. A Composer In His Natural Habitat is made possible by the support and donations of listeners like you. We welcome your thoughts and comments on today's show at our Discord channel, A Composer's Natural Habitat, or by sending an email to thomas@baggaleymusic.com. More information about Thomas and his music can be found on our website at baggaleymusic.com. If you'd like to help support the show, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com/composerhabitat. Musical Themes by Thomas C. Baggaley. Special thanks to Thomas's wife, kids, parents, students, colleagues, teachers, and all of you listeners. Until next time, keep creating creatively.