Burnout crisis, compositional block

Ok I mean no drama with this post it's just that I turn here for advice since I think I may not be the only one who suffered through this period in musical life.

SITUATION: Just recently I found myself lost in almost everything concerning piano training, performance and music composition. The feeling I had when I was playing and the dedication I had for training slowly diminished as I started taking music more seriously. Playing turned from trans-like stance into mechanical hand movement and I tend to overthink composition so much that it paralyzes me. Let me divide this into piano and composition paragraphs.

PIANO:

1. PROBLEM: Pieces I learned and played at my first year (this year) in conservatory are no longer in my head. They feel like obligatory stuff I learned just to pass the exams. Nothing that I played moved me like when I was playing Chopin nocturnes and preludes few years ago. Back then I had almost no performance anxiety and had this "inner ear" feeling when I played when I felt it inside just how right will the sound come out of piano when I touch the key. This inner ear + emotion corresponded with reality and that was what made piano playing such a joy to me. Now it seems I am only preparing my hand to position and being aware of metrum and tempo but I feel empty when the tone comes out. It may be that I somehow grew bored of old music and dissonance is what interests me now and makes me feel more connected to the music. Also now the performance anxiety grew so strong I feel like having a cement in my veins or really jelly fingers. The anxiety probably grew as my hobby was turning from passion into strict set of academic rules I was trying to fulfill. It should be balanced right? It seems like I let the sense of rules crush my passion and made everything too rational.

2. SOLUTION: I decided to fight this by making some more correct goals. Improving my sight-reading through Bartok's Mikrokosmos, Joplin's pieces and sonatinas from Mozart and Clementiny. Practicing my technique with Burgumuuler's op. 100 etudes and Stephen Heller's op.46 etudes (with some Czerny's etudes needed for a second year at conservatory aside). But as to performance pieces I am lost (I don't mean that etudes are inferior to performance pices but I should have some sonatas in repertoir as well). The only thing that moved me was hearing Bacewicz: Boli mne glowa (which was May of this year I think). When I heard this piece I was so moved I felt like exploding inside. I was unable to converse after the concert because I just had to have a cigarettte and ponder on the emotional impact the piece made on me. It woken up utterly different parts of my brain I suppose. I try to listen to music every day and some new pieces I find get me a little bit but mostly it is only analyzing the construction and sound of the piece. I tried to take pause from classical and moved a bit into jazz to maybe awaken the feel for music in me (jazz also has very colorful harmonies sometimes on the verge of dissonance that excites me as well.)

COMPOSITION:

1. PROBLEM: This year I made 4 miniatures for piano, two choirs and fixed a third one already made for it had some compositional + voicing mistakes that could have been done better, and one polka and one tango (that should have been a part of a suite but other pieces were unfinished sketches that I just could not get through with for never being satisfied with the result). The only thing that keeps me from loosing absolute trust in my musical cappabilities are praisings of my compositional teacher (who is also a well acknowledged and played composer in my country and has comments + advices to the point when it comes to composition without sounding too academically complicated so I highly respect him for that) who says I am quite inventional and creative. This little push makes me think "Ok you are not living in your own world, you are getting positive feedback." His comment on my compositional frustration is that I want too much from me when only just starting and I tend to overthink things too much so I should keep it simple sometimes. I think that my piano performance unsatisfaction plagues my composition as in since I fail to find harmonies and sounds that move me I fail to imagine melodies and harmonies in my head. It's like I grew hollow. An empty mind full of rules yet drained imagination.

2. SOLUTION: I decided to fight this by just following the advice "Write, write and write." I'll try to just fight my way through the unsatisfaction and actually finish a piece even if I feel that the harmonies are uninventional, uninteresting or melodies are too cliche/overused. The only way I feel not dissatisfied with composition is when I give it some strict rule "Melody composed of only augmented fifths, scale composed of numbers of my date of birth etc... But this I fear is leading into too mathematical/combinatorical composition that is unappealing to the majority of audience and lacks emotion. What kind of composer would I be should I be able to compose through such means and yet have no sence for emotional, natural melodicity/tonality?

Why am I posting this?

As I said I think I might not be the only here who felt this way and so I try to hear some perspective from person who managed to get through this. Also I feel that I can find a mature community here who could share their more intellectualy balanced perspective on the whole matter.

Also advice on solutions to my problems as for example where to move in the repertoir (apart from etudes and sight reading exercises) since Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Grieg and others I played before don't excite me anymore with their harmonies and I find myself going towards 20th century dissonance. But just jumping from tonality into Schoenberg, Boulez or Carl Vine piano music would be harsh and too fast I think.

Also it's good to let this off my chest since I really don't want to burnout from music as those situations when I hear my piece playing at a concert or listening to/playing a piece that just brings me waves of chills that I can ride on bring me a great sense of purpose into my life.

If you managed to read the whole thing to this point I thank you for your patience and apologize for possible eye twitching english mistakes :P

Hi

First of all, I want to say that I've read your post (the whole of it). It's interesting what you say here.

Regarding the piano (as a player) I can't tell you anything. If I play the piano it's only by accident, because it is the instrument I use to write music. But I am not interested in becoming a very good player. Of course, I'd love it, but I have no time for that.

But as a music writer I can share some facts that helped me in the voyage of composition.

1. If you are open minded (I think so, I listened to your piano pieces)... the more things you know and study, the more tools you'll have to compose music. I mean classic harmony, jazz, atonality, clusters, minimalism, jazz, bolero, tango, etc, etc... Perhaps you won't be happy with some of them. Never mind. Spending some time in them allows you, although you dislike something, to use it at your convenience.

2. I think that even the best composers in history have had different periods in their production. Take any of them: Schönberg "invented" atonality, but he also wrote tonal music. Stravinsky went through several periods. R. Strasuss, etc.... I mean, we don't need to worry about sticking to a particular harmony or language. Surely we will change sometime.

3. Studying classical Forms was crucial for me. This is the best way to organise and develop your works coherently. It will be useful for any type of music (classic and contemporary). Once you learn the essentials of Forms (which is not complicated) you can do with them whatever you want, but your music will have coherency and variety.

4. Plan a project that is real for you. Choose the instruments or ensemble you know best. It is the piano, ok, it's the string quartett, ok. Whatever, but it's a nonsense working with large orchestra without experience and knowledge. Many times I've planned things like this: some studies on exotic scales, a suite inspired in my pets (I have 7, enough for a suite), sonatinas, sonatas, song cycle...

Well, this is my experience.

Hi Kamil,

I will make a response to your topic next week. I want to respond properly but I do not have time at the moment and am already indebted to respond to somebody else first. I have been going through a similar crisis for the past two years and I guess am still going through it in a way but I found a way to make it constructive instead of being a black hole in my mind. I of course cannot promise that anything I say will make you discover a way out of the crisis, you will need to do that for yourself (in my case it took the form of an epiphany), but I could tell you about my realization and what I have been thinking lately. Hang in there.

On 29. 7. 2016 at 10:34 PM, Gylfi said:

Hi Kamil,

I will make a response to your topic next week. I want to respond properly but I do not have time at the moment and am already indebted to respond to somebody else first. I have been going through a similar crisis for the past two years and I guess am still going through it in a way but I found a way to make it constructive instead of being a black hole in my mind. I of course cannot promise that anything I say will make you discover a way out of the crisis, you will need to do that for yourself (in my case it took the form of an epiphany), but I could tell you about my realization and what I have been thinking lately. Hang in there.

 

Very well. I shall hang around :D Thank you.

Hi Kamil, 

You sound like you need...  a vacation.  I'm completely serious.  You've been using one part of your brain all year long at conservatory to do a few specific things.  Brains need rest, just like muscles.  They also need cross training.  To be a better runner, some days you train by biking, or swimming.  If you run marathons, you don't just run long distances every day.  Some days you do sprint intervals, or nothing but hills.  We aren't made to do the same things all the time.  We get bored, we get run down, and we lose perspective on why the thing we are doing is actually important to us.  

Music is so glorious because it is a way of expressing things in life that we can't put into words.  But you need to have a life for that need to express to be there.  Is it possible to organize your schedule next year so there are some things in it that have nothing to do with music, that will stretch your brain or your body in new directions?  Carry novels around to read, just for fun, and when you need a break during the day, read a few pages.  Walk places you could drive.  Stay in touch with non-music friends and ask them lots of questions about what's going on with them.  Find something to volunteer at for one afternoon a week that has nothing to do with music.  Learn to cook.  It doesn't matter what you do, but you need a non-music life in order for your music life to feel important.  

I suspect this will help with the stage fright too.  You have diligently made music the focal point of your life, so now it feels REALLY important that every performance is perfect, in a way that it didn't before.  My favorite stage fright trick is tell everyone I know about how nervous I am before the performance.  Just admitting that I feel that way to people makes me feel better.  Then friends in the audience know that if I'm a bit stiff, it's because I've got nerves and not because I haven't practiced.  I don't feel like I've let them down if they know what's going on.  I also like to record myself practicing and listen to it.  Sometimes I catch problems that need to be adjusted that way, but mainly it gives me a chance to really focus on listening and I find out that I really do sound okay.  That makes me less nervous on the day of the performance.  I also try to practice with other people around as much as possible.  If you get used to practicing when you know lots of other people can hear you, it bothers you less to know that all those people in the audience can hear you at the actual performance.  

Good luck, and don't be too hard on yourself.  Look back at where you were a few years ago.  I bet you've grown a lot!

On 31. 7. 2016 at 8:30 PM, pateceramics said:

Hi Kamil, 

You sound like you need...  a vacation.  I'm completely serious.  You've been using one part of your brain all year long at conservatory to do a few specific things.  Brains need rest, just like muscles.  They also need cross training.  To be a better runner, some days you train by biking, or swimming.  If you run marathons, you don't just run long distances every day.  Some days you do sprint intervals, or nothing but hills.  We aren't made to do the same things all the time.  We get bored, we get run down, and we lose perspective on why the thing we are doing is actually important to us.  

Music is so glorious because it is a way of expressing things in life that we can't put into words.  But you need to have a life for that need to express to be there.  Is it possible to organize your schedule next year so there are some things in it that have nothing to do with music, that will stretch your brain or your body in new directions?  Carry novels around to read, just for fun, and when you need a break during the day, read a few pages.  Walk places you could drive.  Stay in touch with non-music friends and ask them lots of questions about what's going on with them.  Find something to volunteer at for one afternoon a week that has nothing to do with music.  Learn to cook.  It doesn't matter what you do, but you need a non-music life in order for your music life to feel important.  

I suspect this will help with the stage fright too.  You have diligently made music the focal point of your life, so now it feels REALLY important that every performance is perfect, in a way that it didn't before.  My favorite stage fright trick is tell everyone I know about how nervous I am before the performance.  Just admitting that I feel that way to people makes me feel better.  Then friends in the audience know that if I'm a bit stiff, it's because I've got nerves and not because I haven't practiced.  I don't feel like I've let them down if they know what's going on.  I also like to record myself practicing and listen to it.  Sometimes I catch problems that need to be adjusted that way, but mainly it gives me a chance to really focus on listening and I find out that I really do sound okay.  That makes me less nervous on the day of the performance.  I also try to practice with other people around as much as possible.  If you get used to practicing when you know lots of other people can hear you, it bothers you less to know that all those people in the audience can hear you at the actual performance.  

Good luck, and don't be too hard on yourself.  Look back at where you were a few years ago.  I bet you've grown a lot!

 

You know.... you are not the first person to tell me this. So it must be true to some considerable extent :D

But I have exams to get into Academy of Arts and I have to give as much repertoir I can and it should be more than just piano instrumentation. So I cannot give myself vacation and be ok with it. But I should certainly lay down somewhere in the garden with a good book and chill for a bit. Thank you.

As for the stage fright that is also very true. I got less nervous to train when people around me thanks to practicing on a piano in university and later in conservatory as well. But I know it's nothing when I train. But to play on exams or a concert I gett jelly fingers and cold sweat. BUT! I am going to fight that once more this year in internal concerts (which I ignored with an excuse I had two schools to go to and no time to stress over a concert with 10 people) so no time for self-pity here. :D