I just had my presentation of my programme for the performance project in the spring, and it was a complete disaster. Or, I thought I did rather well, actually, and the only comment Nigel Beer had was to voice is concern over me choosing to play primarily original tunes, and how to balance my cover songs so people would still recognise them and find something familiar to hold on to. But then it was Steve Spencer’s time to talk, and he basically spent ten minutes asking me over and over what my “rational” for the programme was.
I said during my presentation, I want to be a rock singer, so I want to put on a rock show. I want to create something unique and interesting, with elements of improvisation and experimentation, trying new things. In essence, I want to put on a good show, and isn’t that what a performance is all about?
But no, that’s not enough for Steve Spencer… He wants to know how the lyrical content is gonna be bound together. Said he didn’t feel I knew what it was I wanted to accomplish or something. I dunno, I blanked out after about two minutes, completely stumped, didn’t have a clue what to say to him… Once they let me leave I just hurried to the back of the room to put away my things, where I completely broke down and started crying in front of Memos and Antitsa.
I just felt so mortified. I could never have imagined that I’d be put on the spot to that extent. I thought it was perfectly clear what I wanted to do. The way I write songs would be the connecting feature, obviously. My sound, my voice, my lyrics, my music.
It’s not like it isn’t hard enough for me from before, coming here a stranger and trying to put together a band when I don’t know anyone, finding, once I know people well enough to have an opinion, that the people I like best and who are the best musicians are all taken since last year. I have a drummer whom I’ve never heard play and a guitarist I’ve never heard play electrically, I lost the guitarist I was originally gonna use which meant I had to reevaluate and recreate my set entirely because it just wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to without his unique style. I need to communicate in a language I’ve never communicated in musically, and here this ridiculous man feels he has to put me on the spot and ask me questions that I’ve already fucking answered!
It’s just not fair. And I’m crying again. Shit.
I need to calm down and keep writing my analysis. I have a tutorial in the morning with the only decent human being on the pop music staff, and I really should have something to show him.
15 Comments
Poor dear. Sounds like a bunch of assholes; unfortunately the worlds full of them. Besides, they’re usually harder on those with more talent and ye are a great musician, so just keep at it and do yer best ^,^
To be fair, it wasn’t like he criticised abilities as a musician (it was a presentation, not a performance, I didn’t sing anything)… He just asked me all these questions I couldn’t answer and made me feel pressured and stupid. *hug*
Damn if I dont know that feeling, overly harsh critic is one of the reasons i gave up photography .
Dont listen to him listen to the people you care about and fuck the rest, there is room for every on in modern music!
Thank you, Daniel.
*hug*
Come on, pretty. You can do this! We all know that you can. *hugs*
Thank you. *smile* *hugs*
I read this, then went away and had a wee bit think about it.
What I think you took out of Steve’s questions was “Your vision does not match my vision. Change your vision to match my vision.” Yes?
What I think he probably meant was more “I don’t think your vision of what you’re trying to do is clear enough in your own head. You need to clear up what you’re trying to do in your own mind”. I could be completely wrong of course. Do you happen to know if he’s into “high concept” rock like, as example albums, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, Deep Purple’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”, Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene”, Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and “20 Miles Out”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” (which notoriously took 3 years, and 90 songs, before he was happy [of course, at that time he couldn't release anyway])? Yes I know there’s a mix of styles etc in that; this happens when you get late 40s rockers thinking about albums as a whole rather than songs as discrete entities.
Remembering that you’re all “unknowns” in the wider scheme of things, I’d start with a few well-chosen covers to convince the audience that you can actually sing and play, and warm them up, even if you want to do mostly your own work.
But I don’t want to play cover songs… How am I gonna develop as an artist if I only do cover songs all the time? It’s when you play songs no one’s ever done before that you develop your individual expression and artistic identity, rather than, consciously or not, copying other people’s styles.
I’ve spent years doing cover songs. Now that I finally have the opportunity to play a full set of songs, I’d like to do something REAL.
I AM going to play a couple of cover songs, but I want the main portion of my set to be my own material.
I’m sure I have no idea what kind of music he likes, but I hardly find it relevant. I think if he meant what you think he meant, he would have realised that I was on the verge of tears and stopped torturing me quite a bit sooner. No, he was just being clever.
I would have thought it was quite obvious what’s going to tie my set together… Every song-writer has a style in the way they write lyrics and music, what chords they choose, how they rhyme, what themes they pick… My set will become a whole based on the sound that I create while playing and arranging my own songs. Perhaps he thought, since I’m just a singer, that I would be incapable of this. Perhaps he’s not used to expecting that much from a vocalist; there weren’t any other singers there who were going to do their own songs, at least not that I saw.
“I’d start with a few well-chosen covers to convince the audience that you can actually sing and play even if you want to do mostly your own work.” – What in that sentence makes you think that I think you can’t write, or shouldn’t play a set of mostly original work? All I was suggesting was that you should play the covers first, like as your own warm-up act!
I picked the high concept stuff I did because it was written to be played as a whole, in a specific order, and I think that’s the sort of thing he was looking for; an explanation of why and how your chosen songs relate to each other within the set, rather than just relating to each other because you wrote them.
I didn’t say I thought YOU didn’t think I could write. I said I maybe HE didn’t. Sorry about the misunderstanding…
As for the rest of your comment, I don’t think that’s what he thought… We’re not expected to have a complete set yet, and I don’t either, I have way more songs than I’m going to play, just like everybody else. Building the set is next in line, when we’re rehearsing with our bands we figure out what works and what doesn’t. How can you know if a song will work in a set before you’ve played it? I presented a completely reasonable rational for what I wanted to do, and he simply wasn’t listening.
The bottom line is he really was being completely unfair. Everyone agreed, I could tell the other tutor there even thought so; he made an effort to rescue me, but there wasn’t really much to be done after he’d got going…
Anyway, regardless of what he meant, it doesn’t make the humiliation of it any less. He made me stand there in front of everybody while he asked me questions I couldn’t answer, and he wouldn’t let up, he wouldn’t stop. Over and over, same question, same phrasing, making me feel small and insignificant and nothing. He bullied me.
Ok, my turn to back down (because we both misunderstood each other). I thought maybe he was asking questions you didn’t know the answers to about why you’d laid out the playlist you had the way you had, and was trying to suggest why he might feel that a playlist needed more thought than you’d given it.
From your expansion though, it was just bullying! Was this taped (audio or video)? I’m only asking because some of my college presentations were videoed, and used to back up our final assessments, and a video record would be the best place to start if you wanted to raise a formal complaint against him. If you do, I’ve a friend who’s a senior lecturer at another university, and could advise you better on the hows, whys and why nots, so if you think you want to do this rather than try and avoid the guy as an @sshat, e-mail me and I’ll put you in touch.
Thank you, that’s very kind. I think it’ll be all right. I talked to my other tutor today, as per advice from a friend. I’m gonna wait it out and see if it affects my grade or not, and just be prepared for his arseholery for the next assessment (which is gonna be a 15 minute extract of the set, in march). I’ll get in touch if it seems prudent, though.
I dunno if it was taped… They had a video camera, but it ran out of battery two presentations ahead of mine, and I’m not sure whether they managed to replace the battery or not, I wasn’t paying attention… I can probably find out, though.
Focus up all the nrrrgh and write a song about it, and then hit them in the face with it.
Music has a magical sort of power. You are a musician, a maker of music; you are the wizard among the boring knights who only know how to hit things with their swords in boring repetative motions that don’t change year on year, a cover of the song to the wizard’s constant creation of new phrasing.
BE THE WIZARD!
Lol! That’s a good theme for a song… Maybe I will be a wizard?
You are the wizard. Now stop denying it! BLAAARGH! ;P