Chasing Keys

I’ve been practicing the organ for a week now.

I wait until long after the final mass of the day has ended and I slip my key into the side door, wind up the uneven cement staircase and unlock the top door as well. The intense darkness of the church is always its own reveal and it hides the organ like a wonderful secret.
Although I have permission to play, and the church is in the middle of a regular lived-in district, it does feel like my own little secret. I flick the light switch on and the dim bulbs on either side are enough light for me to drop my bag and get settled on the bench.
It is a personal pleasure to turn the key and feel the organ gasp to life with air running into the pipes behind me and the lamp clicking on to give me my real source of light for the evening.

For the short time I’ve been playing it, the organ has proved to be an enjoyable and rewarding instrument; at least for me. Even simple 4-part harmonies are a challenge to play at first, especially when I’ve got each hand on a different manual. The stops slide out smoothly and sometimes I play around with the nasally trumpets or the squeaky music box effects, before finally settling on mellow, oboe-esque pipes. (I’m trying not to wake the neighborhood after all) and even with the little door slots closed, the instrument is almost painfully loud.

As a pianist I’m used to having a certain level of control and awareness on the keys. Even if I’m practicing a difficult fugue and I have to leave a bar or two to muscle memory, at least I can see my hands. Maybe it’s not the whole hand I’m leaving to its own devices, but merely a few finger switches.But when you’re using both hands and both feet something’s gotta give. At least when you’re still new to the organ like me. Every day I’m finding the foot pedals more comfortable to play, the balls of my feet can find C and G and my heels can find the adjacent notes.
This means that on a good session day I can play the tricky parts of the hymn by focusing on both hands (as I find it’s usually the left hand that gives me error with its jumpy middle harmonies) and my feet move of their own accord. More times than not they find the right locations. It’s a bizarre experience but then again living in Vienna and playing an organ feels like a daydream in itself.

As of this moment I’m waiting for Distrokid to finalize my original song and send it off to itunes, amazon and wherever else I clicked “yes” to on the publishing list.

It’s not a world-breaking single, it’s certainly not my best composition for either voice or guitar. It’s a little thing I wrote in high school that’s stayed in my muscle memory for all the years after. I remembered it only two years ago when someone on my Twitch stream asked if I wrote songs. Yeah, but it’s been a while.. Uh, I’ve got this one. And I played a few bars of what I could.
To my surprise it was well received. So recently, having time before school starts and the intense desire to actually put my music within ear-shot of the general public, I polished the little thing with a final verse and sent it off.

I am the first to say I’m a perfectionist. Unfortunately it’s a trait that goes far past the “redo it until it’s perfect” and goes right into the “never get anything finished even if I have pretty good recordings because I’m always sure I could do it better tomorrow.”
It’s a crippling habit and partially why I haven’t published any music until this point, even though I’ve been writing songs since I was 11 years old. But so much has happened in my journey as a musician and I’ve realized that, even if this song busts, I will have still gotten more out of it than having it locked away on a computer file.
If I can work through the “Perfection Paralysis” then I’ll be able to fix mistakes, learn from the results and eventually be able to publish better and better pieces.

I know self-published musicians are a dime a dozen. At first this is a scary prospect, being thrown into a sea of competition with people who are much more advanced at this than you are. (Frick, I don’t even have a way to record the keyboard in this apartment, I’ll have to rent a practice room in the city, carry my microphone and laptop through transit and set up shop there for two hours.) But at the same time it’s a little relieving. There are tons of people doing this, they haven’t burst into flames if their songs aren’t “one-hit wonders”. This is also a side project for me, a way to share my art with people while I’m in school getting my bachelors in composition. What have I got to lose?”

If you’ve got something on the back-burner cause you’re afraid it’s not good enough, just put it out there. There are always going to be people better and worse than you at that thing, but the art they’ve got is not your art.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/megvdm/the-circus-acoustic

Chasing Keys

I Love Organs: (The instrument not your kidneys)

My First Song Release.