There's this process with my music but it doesn't necessarily happen in any particular order. The process involves some basic hardware: vinyl, turntables, a mixer, amp, speakers or headphones, a computer if I want to record, various chords, and that's about it. I like to keep the hardware to a minimum, stripped down. I've seen a lot of artists getting caught up in the trap of equipment and it can exhaust all their time, energy, and money.
I think creativity is the greatest resource for this kind of art; creativity with the music and with the words. Being creative with music has become going into the uncharted realms of sound. This journey has taken me in a surprising direction: stripped-down and simple. It's like this sweet spot of sound right out in front of me or even inside of me. I can get to this place if I'm sensitive and keep things simple. This place can be the rhythm of a heartbeat, or maybe just footsteps. The paradox with sound is the quiet. Sometimes silence seems to be the most important element of my musical creations.
What I've discovered about the words for my songs is; the words come out of other words I've written down. I keep buying notebooks and filling them up, and in the process of writing, the songs start to fall. The more I write down, the more songs I'm able to chisel out; like a sculpture. The words are my stone, my marble; and it seems the more honest I can be with the words, the better quality the stone.
One part of process is getting words on the page to create the word material needed to shape my songs. So I try to write down what I'm thinking, what I'm going through, my frustrations and my triumphs. I call them my 'MC Quixote Journals'. I'll write and write and write and I'll mine words from my own writing and after doing this over and over, I might get a song.
So I write and I write
Sometimes the words do take flight.
They fly from the page
With the wings of a sage
The more I write the more I fight
With the words, day and night
This is my plight
So my story is the fuel
Fuel for my songs
Fuel for my art
And sometimes
that's all I've got up here
To fill my heart
YOU ARE READING
MC Quixote
General FictionThis story is about a fifteen year old moving from Mexico to the United States with her deaf father. She experiences many challenges and turns to writing songs and creating music to overcome the difficulties of moving to a new culture while growing...
