This semester was unpredictable and made me realize many positives and negatives faced while collaborating.
I realized what little time it takes for Merryl to come up with something genius. Guess that's what happens when you play your primary instruments for hours upon hours every day. Computers take much longer to figure out. Problems happen. Things crash. Flutes don't crash unless you drop them. Often times Merryl would be very unoccupied while Ben and I trouble-shooted.
Toward the end of the semester, Ben and I started having separate meeting times to do trouble-shooting. This does not mean Merryl did not help us with “tech.” Merryl helped compose our track Purplopia in the MTL with Ben. She also learned how to set up and strike a lot of our gear. She also wrote every flute part.
I was surprised by how SUCCESSFUL all three of us were. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure if our music would be “academic” enough, “fun” enough, “technical” enough, or “creative” enough. You would think that after taking ECM I would be way over that hurdle, but academia is terrifying.
MANY unfortunate situations occurred throughout our collaborative process. My interface broke on the same day Ben’s keys broke. I erased a day’s worth of work in Ableton. Nights were spent in Davis until 2AM. Even during the show itself, things somehow got unmapped, and Ben had to map in Ableton during the show. But it all came together in the end. It always does.
I took this class to better myself in collaborative situations. I do fine as a solo worker, but I struggle to voice ideas and opinions if others are involved. Unfortunately, thoughts such as their ideas are better than mine constantly flood my head. I have been told this fact about myself by many others. They have criticized me for letting people unintentionally step all over me in creative settings. This semester I continued to struggle with this problem. Even when I didn’t like something we were doing, I assumed I was wrong to think so.
Toward the end of the semester, I felt comfortable pointing out what I didn’t think was working, but I still struggled to voice new ideas. What I did feel comfortable doing was experimenting with Max patches / Ableton plugins, designing cool sounds, and commenting on the mix. What?! The mix?! Also known as subjects I'm NOT good at! But what I specialize in, composing and performing, felt super scary to talk about with my group. This class now has me thinking. Am I scared that if people shoot down my ideas regarding composition, that means I'm a bad composer? Because if people shoot down my ideas regarding mixing, I won't care. I don't want to be a mixer for a living. (Does anyone?) The mind is really weird.
I view myself as a composer and a performer, but I feel like because of this weird mind concept, I didn't do much of either of those. I updated the blog, set up equipment, provided software, designed plugins, booked rooms, scheduled things, recorded things, wrote lyrics, held onto all of the files, etc etc etc. I didn't do much composition.
Because of the type of collaborative work my group was doing, most of the action was happening on one computer. Ben ended up programming the sends because both of us couldn’t do it at the same time. I ended up sitting in the middle of Davis listening to the mix and throwing out suggestions every once in a while. This made me feel extremely guilty and useless. I felt like Ben was doing all of the work, but there was nothing I could do to help him. I would resort to updating our blog or setting up equipment / striking what we didn’t need anymore.
Ben is fantastic at drums and bass. I am not. Because of this, Ben would work at home and complete portions of our songs. Sometimes he would continue to write even more on top of that. I constantly felt guilty throughout this process. At the same time, I was battling that dumb thought: their ideas are better than mine. Ben did not ask for my input, so I didn't want to bother him with my ideas. His were "better." It was not Ben's job to ask for my input. It was my job to shout out my ideas the way Ben did.
All right, I contributed compositional ideas sometimes, but they were always ideas that I was 100% confident about. They were ideas that I knew everyone would like. Any risky ideas I conjured up, I kept inside of my head. And if someone else ever had another idea in relationship to mine, I automatically assumed their idea was better and did not consider if I even liked it or not. (I'm sure I did though. Our group is crazy talented. I mean was talented. So sad!)
If I took a class already knowing how to do everything I was going to learn while taking it, then what was the point of taking it? I wasn't supposed to know how to collaborate with others before this class started. While in college, we're allowed to fail. That's not going to happen outside of this safe space. We can stay cooped up in our rooms for weeks, trying our working on one school project, trying our hardest, and end up not doing the best but OUR BEST, and still learn SO much. Can I get a round of applause, PAT451?
Thanks everyone. Student Partnerships rules. I hope to see this class continue for many more years.
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