Explosion

Yesterday morning, I was messing around with my pedal board and out of nowhere got an idea for a song. In a few hours, it was finished. After listening to it on repeat several times (it's play count at iTunes since yesterday is 18), I opened up a few more GarageBand projects, and ideas just started pouring out. This isn't too unusual, except for the last year or so of my life. My musical experience moved beyond the ambient, indie, folky stuff I had listened to for years, and an explosion happened. I discovered Krautrock. I discovered shoegaze. I discovered psychedelic, free jazz, noise rock, noise pop, post-rock, avant-pop, post-punk, dub reggae, etc., etc. My palette of influences jumped from a major influence list of about five (Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Wilco, Fleet Foxes) to about thirty (Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Wilco, Fleet Foxes, Deerhunter, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Grizzly Bear, Charles Mingus, the Flaming Lips, Dirty Projectors, early Pink Floyd, Neutral Milk Hotel, Explosions in the Sky, Can, Scientist, Animal Collective, etc., etc.). And on top of that, I had started expanding my effects pedals, expanding my sonic palette as well. Ideas just leaked out of me. So much was coming out of me, and it was so different, that I felt completely lost. In twelve months, I wrote maybe four songs I was happy with, and I had a thousand other pieces of ideas that would never fit together.
And now, I think the clouds are starting to clear. In the past three weeks, I've had several ideas come together that I am really happy with. Time will tell if the ideas will flesh out like yesterday's song did, but if they don't something else will. That's one of the things I love about music. It always changes. There are songs I wrote four years ago that I'm putting to record now, and they're almost unrecognizable, and I like that.