Creative Process
Inspiration
Tibetan musicians unified music with spirituality, and used the sounds created from striking different sized singing bowls as complements to meditation, achieving spiritual healing through the process.
Attention Management
I found myself sleeping on an idea a lot during the brewing of my compositions. I usually feel an exhaustion in my creative outlet after a couple of hours of harmonizing, arranging, and layering, and I would usually need a good night's sleep to recharge my right brain (Wagner par.2).
Inspiration
Impressionist Era composers challenged the traditional underpinnings of music and blurred the lines between melody and harmony. Their works focused on a melodic line and more on establishing the atmosphere. The result is often something dreamy and Zen-like.
Techniques
Harmonization
Harmonies can be created to accompany melodies, but they can also be stand-alone entities that function in a piece of music. In both of my pieces, I used harmonies extensively, both with and without the accompaniment of melodies, to establish a meditative, zen-like feel.
Resonance
Each Tibetan Singing Bowl has a circular rim. Rubbing around the rim using a type of felt wrapped on the tip of a mallot will cause the bowl to resonate. Different sized bowls will produce different frequencies, thus different pitches. It is important to apply a uniform force and maintain a steady speed to create a quality sound.
Meditation
My music pieces serve to aid the listeners achieve a meditative mind, a mindset that brings about the easing of tension and the potential for positive self-reflection. When listening to these pieces, try to work on separating your mind from your body, and have each of them relax independently.
Evolution of Work In-Progress
From Left to Right: piano prelude sheet music written in MuseScore, Tibetan Bowls used to recording of Tibet, LMMS song editor for the production of Tibet