i'm practicing a four bar piece. it's simple enough, should be in quick. but these are the timings on the four bars, in succession:

15/16
16/16
20/16
13/16

it might seem hard to count, but, see, the things is that you'll note it adds to 64/16, which equals four "regular" bars of 16/16. i was thinking consciously in those terms at the time, trying to find ways to make the signatures unusual without breaking the four. and it's why it works as a techno tune, despite being all over the place in terms of timings.

i could conceivably re-bar it to 16/16, but it would make the emphasis on the bass notes make no sense. bars aren't really about time signatures (i don't actually ever notate time signatures), they're about splitting up phrases...

so, if you tried to dance to this, you'd be confused, but you wouldn't get lost - you wouldn't know why you're confused.

well, unless you're a musician, then you'd get it.

i posted this to the wrong profile. whatever. not like anybody in my facebook list really cares...

but the truth is, while i'd like to say i've entirely given up on trying to sell anything directly, the actual truth is that i never really made a serious effort to market any of it. i've played something like four open mic nights over almost twenty years. i've never even asked anybody for a show, because i know better than to think i have enough friends to fill up a bar, so why bother playing in an empty room? meanwhile, those bars get filled by social groups producing music that i consider to be nowhere near as interesting, which keeps me out of the social scenes i'd need to interact with.

and i realize i'm too old for that, now.

maybe i should take a marketing class, but what i've instead always been interested in focusing on is ways to take myself out of the game and just create, under some kind of fatalist conception that it will find an audience after i'm gone. i used to think i could find a day job and just create in my spare time, but i learned that's not really feasible - and i've since lost the ability to gain a day job, anyways, making it unrealistic to think in those terms.

a self-fulfilling prophecy, i suppose, brought on by an unshakable (if naive) belief that it will all work out. all i can do now is continue creating, and hope somebody finds some parts of it that they connect to in some way.

i just woke up, and i have to keep going back to the same point.

i've tried to avoid friendships with market advocates over the last few years by reducing them solely to intellectual opponents, but i've heard a lot of those arguments and they're hard to shake if you're insecure, as all artists have to be. they're also a part of day-to-day life, whether we choose to reject markets or not....

in the end, after all the arguments, the only important conclusion is this: how am i supposed to know what kind of reaction my larger, serious pieces are going to get in society at large when they've been heard by around 100 people, on average? and, that 100 number is relative to recent attempts to promote better through social media. for a long time, it was more like twenty people, most of them friends and relatives.

it just doesn't provide for a large enough sample. and, i know that's my fault (i guess) for not having the slightest idea of how to sell a product. but there's just simply no logical connection between being a good salesperson and being an interesting musician, despite requiring both skills to be a *successful* one.

i've been through this so many times. there's no use going through it again. i just wish my brain would fucking drop it already.