Self Portrait

Listen to the Music: https://soundcloud.com/yi-chenglin/self-portrait

If your headphones are weak in projecting lower frequencies, like small headphones go with iPhone, please listen to this link: https://soundcloud.com/yi-chenglin/self-portrait-for-normal-headphone

I spent 9 days composing this piece. This is the most difficult piece I have composed so far.

Of course that each piece of a composer is a kind of Soliloquy. I tended to have “Self-Portrait” as the title so that I could compose more freely, or I can look at my inner-self through the piece. And then, I found that it is not the case, instead, it is a painful process.

If people google “portrait painting” and “self-portrait painting,” you will notice that there are extensive differences between the results. The “portrait painting” tends to be brighter, but “self-portrait painting” be darker.

On the second day of my composing this piece, I went into a self-judgment and was angry about myself. Soon I discovered that If I continue composing with this mood, the music becomes really bad in quality. Till the third day of my composing, I started to transfer the music idea into another energy. This kind of self-judgment, self-accepting, and transfer the negative energy into a positive one, is just like our life.

After the middle part of the piece, the person in the portrait seems to have its own consciousness and starts to dance.

Everyone spending their life doing the self-portrait. If there is no darkness, then there is no energy to move on, and without self-accepting, there is no dancing. This piece taught me a lot.

I tried to have each sound mimic the touches of the flesh of the body, and the skin, and the weight of the body while dancing.