Seeking joy and meaning in a joyless mind and meaningless existence

Sunday, August 16, 2015

"Nocturnal" by Michael St. John

Last weekend I was going through the endless mounds of materials, notes, etc. I've made over the years for all of my ideas for creative endeavors when I remembered the musical classes I took in college and the few compositions I wrote.  I've always loved singing and music, and when I was in high school and college, I was convinced that I was going to be an international pop star, in spite of having no musical talent or even knowing how to play an instrument.  I took a Fundamentals of Music Theory class, which I'm convinced I actually made a D or an F in but for which I received a "gentleman's C-" out of pity on the part of the professor.  I took Music Composition I and was barely able to keep up.  I flamed out in Music Composition II and had to drop the class.
 
Anyway, I dug up my musical scores and then found a free music program that allows you to drag and drop notes on staves for various musical instruments.  I found another online program to convert the resulting midi file into .wav format, and then I used Windows Live Movie Maker—which I had no idea came free with Windows—to create a video that I uploaded to YouTube.  All of this powerful, freely available software for actualizing creative projects and instant access to a global audience makes me think that my talented friend Marty and I were born too early because we would have rocked the snot out of these things in high school.  Most of the time we just sat around bored since neither of us partied or drank or did drugs.  (That came later for me.)  The summer after high school, we managed to make a complete vampire film with clunky old technology.  I can only imagine what we might have done.

So now I give to you "Nocturnal"...

 
Commentary
 
I admit that this is a fairly anemic little tune, but I was happy with it.  The image is taken from the Elder Scrolls series of video games, with Nocturnal being a demon goddess.  I hadn't actually played these games when I chose the title as they weren't even around yet, but it seemed a logical enough choice.