Editing Your Work…

Author: siggy

Editing your own work is always painful.  Having one or two persons who can give you helpful feedback is invaluable.  My wife is such a person and I don’t take her for granted.  I like what Stephen King said in a book he wrote about writing, ‘take out what is not the story.’  It is not easy to do.  And an outsider is in a much better position to tell you that.  I have one test:  if you take something out of your story (poem or whatever) and you do not miss it, it did not belong there.  The beauty of a well written piece is what is left out–like a beautiful piece of music where every note counts.  You do not want to discourage the reader with clutter.  You want every word to count.  Having said that, it is not easy to do.  A good editor is worth their weight in gold.

Music Is Mathematics

Author: siggy

Music is mathematics.  A beautiful piece of music is composed of empty spaces and notes of various intensity and pitch and somehow they all fit together and become a composition.  I can not tell you how to get it there but I can tell you when it works.

I can tell you when I string together on a cassette, let us say forty minutes of music, composed, maybe, of thirteen songs, it somehow fits together.  It is done intuitively and is based on forty years of listening ten of thousands of hours (???).

An anthology of music I put together that way contains the “best” of what is out there and fits together.  Ultimately taste in the quality of music is a gift.  Music is mathematics and my experience in listening enables me to separate the mediocre from the very good and also know what music blends together.

The best songs from the “Stones” and “The Beatles” to name two familiar groups hold up well because the musicianship is impeccable and holds up well to repeated listening.  The composers had a superb ear and the ability to get it “right”.  Music is always mathematics.