PERSONAL

8

750

Music Therapy

1 year ago2,107 words

I'll finally be seeing someone again about my crippling mental issues! I got a tin whistle! I replayed Memody: Sindrel Song for the first time in years and found it very moving!

I meant to use this week to address some tasks that weren't directly related to games dev. You'll never believe this, but I failed to achieve most of them! But not for the usual reasons (depression etc) this time.

I got a call on Tuesday from a counsellor from one of the two organisations that I contacted about that a while back. This was the one I contacted most recently (and which I think is the same one I saw in the past, though it's unclear because several differently-named entities are all intertwined so I'm not sure exactly which one does what), and I was told when I talked to them on the phone that I might have to wait something like five months, at least, so this was a very pleasant surprise!

Long story short, I'll be going to have my first appointment next week... though it's further away than I'm used to (in terms of physical distance, I mean). When I got counselling with (probably) them in the past, I had to take a ten minute bus journey, but they've since moved their offices, so this time it'll be three or four times as long as that. It'd take like ten minutes in a car! But I can't drive, so... ugh. I really should learn, one of these days. It's on the long list of things I need to do to crawl out of this pit.

I get anxious about going to places I've never been before, and a way of reducing that anxiety on the day is visiting the location beforehand to familiarise myself with where I'll need to go. Reconnaissance, essentially. I did that when I had to see the 'Community Navigator' a few months ago at some library I'd never visited before: I used the idea of visiting there myself a few days in advance as an excuse to meet up with my uni friend, who I hadn't seen in ages. Luckily, that friend called me of her own accord this week on the same night I got the call from the counsellor, so we talked about meeting up in this new place like we did in the last one.

So I'll be going outside and interacting with people at least twice next week. A big deal for me, since I'm essentially agoraphobic these days. Just the knowledge that I'll have to face that soon has been quite distracting.



Also, for reasons I can't even recall, I got one of these:



It's a ∞ tin whistle ∞! Also called a penny whistle, because they could originally be bought so cheaply. They're still ridiculously cheap as far as instruments go; I bought mine on Amazon for £7.

I've wanted one for ages, for a bunch of reasons. One is their cheapness - I really like the idea of something with so little investment but such huge potential - and another is because they're often used in Celtic music, which I'm personally very fond of. I use the Flute a lot in my own compositions, too, as I love the sound (I know this isn't a flute, but flutes are more than ten times the cost, and likely far more difficult to play). Also, the only instrument I play is the piano, but I only ever had a handful of formal lessons and never tried to do any of the grading exams, so my sloppy skills leave a lot to be desired.

I've been curious for a while how I'd fare going through the early stages of learning a new instrument as an adult, doing it 'properly' this time. Playing simple beginner pieces, learning how to form the notes. And a tin whistle was cheap enough that it wouldn't be a major loss if I got bored of it in a couple of days.

I was expecting to spend a week on like two-note nursery rhyme reductions or something... but instead I spent a few minutes reading about the note mapping and basics of playing on some random website, then found an archive of simple beginner tunes which I mostly breezed through without any significant difficulty. This surprised me a lot!

Maybe it's because I played the recorder at school when I was a child? I remember almost nothing about that, though, and I haven't picked one up in more than two decades. The note mapping isn't the same anyway.

Or maybe it's because I can already read music? Because I'm an adult? Or maybe everyone would find it easy to pick up? I don't know.

Either way, I've had it for less than 48 hours, and I've already composed three pieces for it. That was an interesting experience in itself, as I started composing the first one before I was familiar with how well I could even play certain notes, and it took until the third attempt before I had something I felt like I could possibly learn, memorise, and use to show off to all the many people I know and who'd be receptive to that.

Here's the third one, which only took a few minutes to compose:




The whistle's range is very limited: two octaves in a fixed key, D (major) in the case of mine. I like composing in Mixolydian mode, so I was curious if I could come up with something in that. And I succeeded! It's in A Mixolydian, which has the same two sharps as D major.

It was also interesting being so limited - to just one instrument with a very restricted range and essentially no accidentals (which are possible, but most are beyond my current skill level) - and still trying to come up with something with enough musical exploration to be worth listening to, which felt like a complete piece with different sections and everything. I personally feel fairly happy about the end result. I keep wanting to play it back again whenever it ends!

I was hoping to learn to play this piece and then to include a recording of that here - for the personal satisfaction rather than because I expect anyone would want to hear such a thing - but considering that I only composed it a handful of hours ago and just got this tin whistle the other day, I haven't done that! I can actually play it, though; just not as cleanly or fluidly as I'd prefer.

I'll likely bring this whistle when I go to meet up with my friend next week. I brought it up on the phone and we joked about that idea a bit, and I'd be curious to know whether I could actually perform for someone at all. I wouldn't if we were sitting in a cafe or something - I'm not that insane - but the place we'll be meeting has a big beach that I imagine will be fairly empty, so I'll be interested to try it there. I'll likely just mess around sillily for the most part, play some half-remembered folk songs I breezed through on day one, but I also like the idea of having a proper learned piece to perform, so I'll aim to master this one before then.

I like having an instrument where something like that is even an option! Obviously hauling a piano around would be absurd, and most instruments are either too big, too expensive, or too limited in range to be worth carrying around in essentially your pocket. But with this, I can just shove it in my bag. I can also keep it on my desk, and pick it up to play around with whenever, which I couldn't do with a piano (mine's at the other side of my room, so while going to play it isn't a huge deal, it's still more effort than picking up a whistle from my desk in front of me).

(Hmm, actually my friend mentioned she owns an ocarina that someone once gave her as a gift; I should ask her to bring that. Maybe I should learn to play one of those too! I wonder how much they cost... Not much more than a tin whistle, it seems! I'll think about getting one; don't know why it didn't occur to me before, considering I used to love Ocarina of Time...)

Speaking of music, compositions with limitations, and things inspired in part by Ocarina of Time...





I did at least achieve one of the things I meant to do this week: I wanted to replay Memody: Sindrel Song, for the first time in years, after people in my Discord server mentioned it and said that it moved them emotionally.

I spent about five hours over as many days working my way through it, and I enjoyed the experience a whole lot. Especially the writing, a lot of which I'd forgotten about, so it was almost as if I were experiencing it for the first time. Some bits gave me chills, or brought me to tears.

I feel like it's the kind of thing that had the potential to make an impact on people... and it's a shame that so few ever even saw it. I worry though that the frustrating, unfamiliar gameplay and some themes - which are reminiscent of incels' obsessions or racism (as evolutionary psychology was a huge influence) - would get in the way of that...

But I've been thinking maybe I should post about the game on Reddit, most likely in the form of a postmortem reflecting on its performance, things I'd do differently now, etc. I still haven't posted about my games on Reddit, so this would be a way of finally getting around to breaking through that icy barrier.

I also have a blog post about the game that I want to post here. It's pretty much ready, but I didn't want to post two on the same day, so I'll likely post it some day next week. I actually wrote it back in 2020, just six months after finishing the game, and much of what I said in it is still relevant now, so I've only had to make small edits (I didn't post it when I wrote it because I think the Black Lives Matter stuff was big in the news, and I got worried people would be even more inclined to look at it through the lens of racism).



As for other stuff I wanted to do:

I started writing a post about the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I finished playing recently, but I started seeing the post like work and kept putting it off like I did with uni essays. I do still want to finish writing it! Hopefully I will next week.

I meant to try using a DAW for music composition. I looked into which ones were popular, and got one called Reaper. I opened it, tried to import a midi, which made no sound when played back, found no obvious way to assign virtual instruments to midi channels, found a Reddit thread where someone was asking about this, saw that one of the answers in the comments linked to ∞ a User Guide ∞, noticed it was 450 pages long, thought uggghhh, and gave up. Hopefully I'll come back to it later in a better state of mind.

I also hoped to tackle some obstacle that's been in the way of me porting my other games like CBC to Steam, but I'd been meaning to talk to a counsellor to work through anxiety I had about that, so when I got the call about getting counselling soon I thought maybe I should just wait another week.

Next week, I'll be distracted by having to venture out into the world, but I hope to also at least get a post about Memody: Sindrel Song ready for Reddit. I'll also definitely finalise the blog post I've already mostly written about that. And I'd like to finish the one about FFVIIR too. I also hope to master and record a tin whistle piece too which is obviously the most interesting and important thing!!