Mazz,mazz wrote:Hi Wen,
Welcome to the forum. It's great that you had an awesome time at the Rally!
Harp is a beautiful instrument and if you can make excellent recordings of your instrument, then you may have some folks that would be interested in collaborating and also may be hiring you for some session work if that interests you. Very cool!
On another note, I want to mention that my composing really expanded when I stopped identifying my composing with the instrument that I played. Once I stopped being a "keyboard player that composes" and changed to a "composer that plays keyboards", I expanded the horizons of my composing. Now the keyboard is a convenient way to get my ideas into the DAW but it's not my main "voice" for most of my compositions. Of course, it's still my main axe and I use it all the time, but it's become a tool for realizing my ideas and not always the centerpiece of my voice as a composer. Taking my hands off my instrument and letting my musical imagination guide my compositions has really helped me become a much better composer. For what it's worth!You may already be doing that, I'm just responding to your statement about being pigeonholed by virtue of the harp being the featured thing in your music. Nothing wrong with that at all, just putting another idea out there!
Have fun and thanks for coming on board!
Mazz
I'm probably totally doing this reply-stuff wrong, but anyway, THANKS for that comment. (By the way, you probably don't remember, but we met in the elevator at TAXI, haha! I just subscribed to your blog!). I also do some keyboards and formerly, guitar, but once I found the harp it was like, part of my soul. Anyway, I've been doing music in isolation for a long time and one gets blind spots. One of the great things about the Rally is having those wake-up moments. The songs I've done so far have harp played THROUGHOUT and Duh! Of course it should just be featured; for one, it is too complex a sound for most people to take in all of a sudden. But I appreciate that point very deeply and will let that further sink into my mind. I appreciate your generosity in taking the time to express that.
Some good feedback I got was that my harp recordings sound good so I was happy to hear that, although I'll be experimenting more with recording tips I got at the Rally. I'd be up for session work, sure, or just collaborating. I will say, for example in Dave Trotter's film/TV class, *I* can tell a MIDI harp from a real harp and for me it kinda ruins an orchestral piece.
Talk later!
Wen
