Update

I’ve always preferred music theory to music practice, but for the past year I’ve been taking guitar (and bass!) lessons again and so I’ve been working on it. I was better at music that was a visual exercise: I can sight sing pretty well and follow a conductor, but I’ve never been very good at learning music by ear. When I was in high school I tried to sing “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” by Tame Impala with a band of my friends and I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have sheet music and couldn’t find the beats or feel the counts. It just sounded like a wave that went on and on and on and I couldn’t figure out when to come in. How pathetic, honestly, but that kept me from playing or singing with them or any subsequent group. Just too intimidating, and I’m terrible.

When I can see it written out I can consider the music as a timeless block of eternally “now” that I count through from one beat to the next, but when you don’t have that luxury you have to actually know what comes next and how the counts go. It’s been a pain, but my teacher has been having me learn songs by ear from recordings, which helps and has made it become easier; but really I ought to practice more.

Somehow it feels extravigant to just enjoy music in the moment rather than worry about the next beat or the previous beat, but I guess that’s how real musicians do it: they just live on the edge between too late and too soon in a space that has no name because it’s just a feeling. It’s like being high — better. Oh and I’ve taken a break from cannabis because it was giving me headaches and making my chest sore, surely bad signs. My sleep schedule is all messed up, but it already was that way .