Buy Me A CoffeeLoose Notes with a Cup of Coffee
“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world.
Who would be born must first destroy a world.”
— Hermann Hesse, Demian
1. The first time I ever touched a piano must have been when I was 10 or 12 years old. It was the piano at my school, set in the library. One day, I was there alone, opened it up, and pressed down some of its old ivory keys. Though out of tune, the sound had such an impact on me that, unknowingly, it would alter the course of my life forever.
2. One day, still a child, I saw one of the many versions of The Phantom of the Opera on television. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the pieces featured in that film was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I think that experience and the 1985 earthquake in Santiago de Chile are among the most powerful memories I have from those early years.
3. I cannot live without making music. I don’t want to live without making music. I don’t want to, I can’t, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t.
4. My relationship with music is constant, deep, intense, passionate, radical, playful, violent, cubist, serious, abstract, warm, tender, emotional, multifaceted, energetic, imaginative, luminous, dark, dense, fragile, mechanical, sweet, loving, experimental, eternal, fast-paced, arid, quick, vertiginous, surrealist, poetic. And so on.
A brief journey through my work across formats, exploring contemporary composition, electronics, and music theatre.
5. My mother encouraged my approach to classical music. She always suggested that I listen to it, saying it would be good for me. One day, with all her love, she handed me a cassette. Everything changed after that. I must have been around 12. I owe her so much.
6. One day, my father bought me a piano. It was a significant financial effort at the time, but he did it with love, so I could dedicate myself to music, to learn and to play. I’m still making music. I owe him so much.
7. Although classical music has been the core of my life, I’ve ventured in many directions. Classical, experimental, “neoclassical,” free improvisation, contemporary, graphic scores, improvisation guides, music theatre, electronics, hybrids of all kinds, music for dance, for film, ambient music, strange experiments for interactive installations, and on and on. There’s nothing better than navigating through different sonic worlds, getting to know them, playing with them, combining them, rejecting them, incorporating them.
8. Sometimes I ask myself: what’s my tribe? And I respond: choose only one kind of music and you’ll have a tribe. So, I prefer to remain without a tribe and stop asking myself such useless questions.
9. I’d say I’m a musical explorer, perhaps an adventurer, close to Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also ventured in countless directions, or to Bryce Dessner, or Laurie Anderson. But undoubtedly, I am much closer to Sakamoto than to anyone else. Thank you, Sakamoto-san.
10. First Bach and Sakamoto, then Jarrett, Bruckner, and Mehldau. Later Sassetti, Satie, Fauré, Poulenc, Ligeti, Takemitsu, Awadis, Goebbels, Glass, Richter, Mompou, Johannsson, Lutoslawski, Feldman, Kilar and so many more. If only there were enough life for so much music.
“Memoria”, for piano and electronics, from my latest Ep Invisible (live version):
11. I compose in different ways depending on the project I’m working on. Sometimes I do it by improvising at the piano and recording. Other times in Ableton, playing with sounds and ideas or provoking situations I can’t control to find things I didn’t know I could achieve. Mistakes are a fundamental part of my creative process.
12. I read a lot—whatever I can, whatever interests me. Essays. Novels. Poetry. Philosophy. Astronomy. Science. Reading is a fundamental pillar of my creative practice.
13. I listen to a huge amount of music. Sometimes, I even listen to music while I’m already listening to music. Sometimes, I listen to music while I’m composing. It might sound chaotic, but in my internal order, everything has its place. It’s like listening to myself and the world at the same time, making the right (or wrong) connections.
14. Sometimes I read about music and different creative processes. I like developing new ways to approach creation. I copy everything that interests me, or rather, everything that resonates with me. Sometimes it’s just to learn an approach, but sometimes it’s to incorporate a new method. Sometimes I realize it doesn’t serve me, but the pleasure of knowing it and learning it outweighs everything. I’m full of useless knowledge.
15. I use many notebooks to jot down ideas, thoughts, projects, lists, and whatever comes to mind. I try not to discard anything, no matter how exotic it may seem. I try to do the same with my musical ideas; I jot them all down when I come across something I like. My musical notation notebooks are full of ideas, scribbles, bits and pieces, unfinished works, moments, fragments, microfragments, sounds, chords, situations. Sometimes I feel like a collector of ideas.
16. A good part of my music is basically literature. I’ll say no more, but first Cortázar, Bolaño, Tomeo. Then Aira, Auster, Perec, Manguso, and many more.
17. My music, especially for piano, doesn’t usually begin with any specific emotion. I can create deeply sad music without feeling even the slightest sadness, or the other way around—I can create tremendously intense or joyful music without internally being in that state. I don’t believe one should always make catharsis and transfer their feelings to music. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What fascinates me are the colors, the physical sensations of sound, the rhythm, the superimpositions, the harmonies, the modulations, the dissonances. Let emotions arise from the music for the listener—I am just an intermediary.
18. Sometimes my music is based on concrete ideas, concepts, situations, constraints. In smaller pieces, sometimes I just want to explore solutions based on a rhythm or the exclusive use of certain notes that come to mind in the moment. But in my larger works, especially in music theatre, there are always concepts that carry significant research behind them. I never start composing until I’ve clarified everything that underpins the work. And most of the time, I write all the texts first (Insomnia, Microteatro, etc.).
19. I borrow a lot from cinema: rhythm of the image, camera movements, time jumps, counterpoint, editing, transitions, lighting. Pure gold for making music. And yes, my music is often quite cinematic. Kubrick, Nolan, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Villeneuve, Wenders. Scorsese, Herzog, Eggers. Buñuel, Lanthimos, Garland, Joon-ho, Lang. More time, I need more time…
20. I’ve had more failures than successes. I believe I have very few of the latter, or perhaps none at all. But failures—yes, plenty. And the big, resounding kind. It’s quite a long list.
YouTube: “Artificial”, Part II, excerpt (violin, viola, percussion, electronics)
21. My tempos are slow. Though I’ve been making music for many years, it’s only since the pandemic that my own voice, my sound, my true artistic self has begun to emerge. It’s not something static—far from it. It mutates, shifts, moves, transforms. But whatever makes it mine (something ineffable, perhaps) is always there. It wasn’t easy to find, nor did it happen overnight. It was a conscious, almost desperate search to uncover it. Some readings helped spiritually: La música os hará libres (R. Sakamoto), Words Without Music (P. Glass), Vertical Thoughts (M. Feldman). Others helped psychologically: Art and Fear (Orland, Bayles), The Artist’s Way (J. Cameron), La vía del creativo (G. Lamarre). But without a doubt, reading between the lines, listening, listening to myself, stripping away everything, and leaping—that was the most important thing. I went back to the basics (Sakamoto), and then everything else came.
22. Although I always wanted to dedicate myself fully to music, for reasons I still haven’t entirely clarified (though I certainly understand them well), I spent 22 years in academia. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy teaching, but I am not a teacher. I am an artist.
23. One of the most important moments of my life happened at the end of 2022. The Ensemble Vertixe Sonora premiered my piece Artificial in Spain. That was the year I decided to leave everything behind and devote myself 100% to music. I left my position as director and professor of a university program—with an excellent salary—to dedicate my whole mind and energy to making music, launching myself into total uncertainty. It was the best decision of my life, and luckily, I made it before turning 50.
24. Once, my piano teacher told me I wasn’t cut out for piano—that I should dedicate myself to anything else. “I’ll study composition,” I said. He let out a loud, brief laugh while I crumbled inside. But a thousand years later, here I am, standing, happy, making music.
25. My first trip outside of Chile was at 26, and it was to Japan. It was the most incredible and exotic experience of my life. It happened because I was selected to participate in a Contemporary Music Festival in Yokohama. They covered everything, and they performed my only string quartet. There’s definitely a before and after that trip.
“Microteatro Psicopático” Teaser (Music Theatre)
26. I stopped studying piano formally because of that teacher. Even so, I was never entirely distant from the instrument and managed to resume my studies seventeen years later. Since then, I not only play and record my own music, but I’ve also been able to perform it in concert.
27. Since dedicating myself fully to music a little over two years ago, I’ve created more music than in all the 22 years before. I’ve published some of it, but there’s still so much waiting to come to light, much more waiting to be shaped, and much more waiting to be played live and shared.
28. The next 50 years, I’ll make more music than in the previous 200. This is just the beginning.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oscar.carmona.i/
YouTube: @Oscar-Carmona
Linktree: https://linktree.com/oscarcarmona
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