A small update

So, I’ve written a book. It’s a small book and although complete, I feel it will never be finished (I will always add revisions). With that said, I think it’s a most powerful book. It was written for those of us that have been told that we couldn’t do something simply because we lacked the talent for it. An implication that hard-work means nothing and only some of us are born great. Of course, the book isn’t that general, it is actually about making music.

Or rather, how to begin a journey into music even if you were told that you lacked ability. Anyway, it’s a free download and I welcome suggestions to improve or anything to add or anything I missed. So take a gander, and hopefully it’ll make a difference in someone’s life.

Where’s all the time gone?

Well it’s been over a year since I’ve written here. Why’s that? Did my life get too busy? Did I just get lazy? Or do I secretly hate the internet? All those things but no, that’s not the reason I stopped.

I actually started a separate blog. It’s more general so I didn’t want to write the things I did there in this blog. But I have learned a lot since then! In fact, it was because of my journeys into music and programming that led me to the conclusions I have come. And I’m not alone in this. But if you’re curious just check out that blog. In the meantime, here’s a bit of an update. I quit my old job  just a few months after the last blog entry ( a job which was slowly killing me, I’m sure) and soon after acquired a new job giving music lessons. Before then, I never thought I would want to teach because (list any stupid excuse here) but I had a kind of spiritual awakening my first lesson. I found that I actually enjoyed talking about stuff I knew, who would’ve thought it? It was this and practicing my martial arts that propelled me into the realm of what my new blog is about.

Now I am working hard to come up with a plan for music coaching lessons. Using the same principles I’ve extracted from the martial arts and applying them in my music lessons, I’ve seen a lot of success and it can only get better from here. Here’s the main gist of it: From all the martial arts books I’ve looked at, they all had a common theme running through them. I’m hard-headed so it wasn’t until something my sifu said that finally confirmed what I thought I had noticed in these books. The language used to describe the form or movement or anything always had an observational tone. That’s when it occurred to me that for thousands of years, the Chinese have been practicing martial arts so it makes sense that they’ve figured out not just to explain the movements but to explain how it should feel when the movement is done correctly. Not only that but this feeling is coming from the perspective of one who’s mastered it all.

When you take away the martial information, all you’re left with is the information on how to go about practicing. That is, to imitate as much as possible how a master does something, including the feel, what goes on in their minds, everything. This seems obvious but based on my experience taking music lessons, my teachers never gave me such advice. The Suzuki method of learning is closer to this but that isn’t all. It’s not just imitation that’s important. That’s why the books also include theory and the philosophy. In other words, theoretical knowledge is just as important as the physical knowledge. Finally, all acknowledge that once you reach mastery, you will not look like you’re imitating your master anymore, you will have made it your own.

From this, I’ve extracted that there’s a physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspect to practicing any one thing. Once we become aware of these things in our area of expertise, we can assess what needs to be improved on and work in that particular category. For example, if we have excellent knowledge of the subject of hammering a nail but have never actually performed it, then we can go ahead and practice the physical part of that. Once we have the physical and intellectual down, we can work on the spiritual or the part that makes it an art. You may not think hammering is not an art but you’d be surprised. Just look how much fun he is having, that’s what it’s all about.

Boosting Creativity

As one may have concluded after long, hard work at their chosen profession, creativity is an important trait to have. Now, what does that mean exactly? Here’s an example: a musician must learn his instrument first. Then he must understand the notes he is playing and the scales. Once he has become proficient in this, now he is free to explore other sounds and perhaps other uses for his instrument. Once the technical aspect of something has been mastered, we seek different ways to use this mastery and that is creativity.

But what if you’re good at something and still feel you lack creativity in that field? Some people claim to be more creative than others while others feel they lack creativity and can’t be bothered with it. Fortunately for us, there are ways to boost creativity. This doesn’t mean that you will get MORE creativity, what it means is that you will be given the chance to realize you were always creative.

First off, learning and reading about new things. The more you learn about things that you find interesting (and don’t have to be related to your field) the more your brain can make new connections and perhaps a new (or not so new) idea will spark. My example being that I play music and I know computers so what better than to combine the two? Sure many people have done that but the point is not to generate NEW ideas, it’s to generate ideas, period.

So you’ve learned some cool things but still can’t make connections? Brainstorming is a great way to enhance creativity. Listing the things you’ve learned and forcing connections where they may be none and then coming up with ways to connect them is one way to go about it. There have been many books written on similar “forced” connections such has opening the dictionary to random pages and picking out two words and making a connection. In fact, this man is to be thanked for the dictionary idea. He’s also the one to come up with the term “lateral thinking.”

What’s even better than generating ideas? Organizing them! Any ideas you come up with can be grouped in a specific category, this’ll help with understanding the purpose of the idea. Again, an example is listing my idea of making music with the computer under the category of “potential career” or “music for game” or “testing programming skills” and so forth. There’s more to organizing ideas and I will point to this http://www.organizingcreativity.com/ which should be helpful to most.

Ok, ok, this is all great stuff, you may be thinking, but you still can’t seem to come up with any ideas or bring yourself to being creative and this may be due to something much deeper than techniques. This video is an excellent talk by John Cleese of Monty Python fame on creativity. He explains the things one needs to be creative but also talks about the “open” and “closed” mode in which the “closed” mode is where one is not creative. When we are doing routine things such as brushing our teeth and getting ready for work, we are in the closed mode. The open mode is essentially the mode of being a child. What I mean is being able to mess around and experiment and play without fear of anyone judging or criticizing and without being self-conscious about what it is you’re doing even if it is silly. Cleese goes in to greater detail and I encourage you watch the video.

Meditation is said to help with creativity as well. The goal of meditation is the stillness of the mind (no thoughts running wild) and single pointed focus. So meditation teaches one how to focus and stay focused so it makes sense why it can help boost creativity. Focus is also said to lead to that “flow” state everyone loves to talk about, that is, the state in which you no longer think about whether what you are doing is good or bad, silly or serious, you lose yourself in the activity and only living to serve that one purpose, the activity you are currently participating in. Sounds a lot like the “open” mode doesn’t it?

Finally, even the least creative people are creative even when they don’t realize it. This blog post wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for my learning of new and interesting things (meditation, creative talk, creativity books, organizing creativity site) making connections to all these ideas and thoughts, and bringing them together to a, I hope, coherent post that summarizes my thoughts of late. Even though this post is a bit general compared to my previous posts, one can easily see how it can be applied to what I’m trying to achieve but as well as any other field and maybe do something with it I hadn’t thought of, that’s the whole point of being creative! I encourage all to look up youtube vids on Edward de Bono and anything else creativity related for more in depth information.

Lastly, I want to finish this post with a perfect example of the beautiful things that hard work and creativity can create.

Hiatus? Why I never!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post on here but I assure you, it’s all for good reason! In my search for knowledge, I ran into a website that offers courses online—for free! This, here, has consumed my life. Why is this good? Because I have now taken a course that furthered my knowledge of Python but not only that I have signed up for several courses on computer programming and music like digital sound design. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for and have been working hard at it.

Also, a reminder to anyone that reads this, for those interested in digital music and csound, there is a csound journal that has been updating regularly (seasonally it looks like) so catch up on your reading and csounding!

The last bit of news is that I’ve been fully immersed in the world of programming (just found some podcasts on it too)  so I’ve been slacking in the music practice department but never fear, I pick up the instrument at least once a month!

Anyway, I wanted to bring up a youtube video. Mark Applebaum is a composer and associate professor at Stanford University (thanks wikipedia!) and this video gives us a look into the mind of a musician. He is funny and a brilliant musician but I also noticed that he and I are on complete opposite ends of the music spectrum. His talk is about how the question of “what is music?” is not relevant but in fact the question should be “what is interesting?” This leads him to create some strange instruments and pieces and throughout the talk he lets us know that he does this for himself. He is inventor, composer, narcissist, etc.… What I find fascinating is that I enjoyed everything he presented except for the concept that this is for himself. While Mark wants to do stuff that amuses himself, I want to create things that allows others to join in. He reminds me of my music professors in which the music has to be performed according to their instructions but I want my music to be a more social activity, I want people to be able to perform it and have fun doing it.

Now, some ‘smart’ people think this to mean that they don’t have to play what’s written or some other loop hole they think they found. This is not true, but I adhere to the principle of giving the musician some freedom to express themselves, not what I want them to express. I’ll perform the music how I want, you can perform it the way you want. My ideal performance of some music has the visual of no dividing line between the audience and the performers. There is no stage, the musicians are surrounded by the audience and the audience can be participating, adding their own flavor, or dancing, or doing anything to enhance the piece.

Children are a perfect example for this. They will do how they feel if they hear something they like. I have recently been given a task to write some music for 4th graders and the more I think about it, the more excited I get thinking that these kids will perform the music with more freedom than serious musicians that would make the music sound mechanical. Or I could just write on the top page of every piece of music I write “with freedom”. Or jazz. I think I’ll write jazz.

Python, not a snake.

And now a  short break from music to introduce the computer. I mentioned this in a previous post but I have a goal of combining music and computers together and in order to this I have to learn how to program (I don’t have to but I don’t want to work pre-existing software plus I’ve always wanted to program.) I haven’t blogged these past days because I have been studying rigorously. Really.

While I am (relatively) new to programming, I have had run-ins with it since I was a teenager. I had my first ‘kit’ back then, programming in C, came with a book and a cd full of cutting edge software (the C compiler and editor) and ebooks as well! In fact, the book was Learn C in 21 days and the ebook was learn C++ in 21 days. At that time, though, I honestly had no idea that ebooks were a thing so when the package advertised that it came with 2 books, I was pissed. I remember searching frantically and then I’d calm myself and then search again until I finally gave up and thought “I guess this only came with one book.”

Anyway, I attempted to learn C and I pretty much gave up. I don’t know if I had some mental deficiency or short attention span but I could follow the examples well enough but actually understanding the concepts? All I remember is how to make the “Hello World” program. It was then my on again, off again love affair with that kit began. I’d pick it up again years later, attempt to learn C and then give up. When I matured a bit, I started snooping through the CD contents when suddenly I see a pdf file titled “Learn C++ in 21 days”. Suffice to say, I felt embarrassed even though no one knew about my previous mental rants of how the kit ripped my father off for promising a book that wasn’t included.

Sure enough, I also gave that up.  By now I figured it was a short attention span that kept me from learning how to program. I would always go back to it now and again but I could never get myself to move past “Hello World”. At least until now. I had taken a course in Java at university and that class taught me what I felt I always knew: I wasn’t meant to be a programmer. But what I didn’t realize then was that the few things I had learned in my past run-ins with programming actually stuck in some form or another and now I feel my attention span has increased markedly. So what language do I learn?

I had decided that Python would the my first official programming language. It wasn’t based on a whim, I’ve done my research but I didn’t just want to learn python, I also wanted to complete my goal of learning C/C++ and added to that list, Java. There are also programming languages specifically for audio/music making but that will wait for another post. These 3 languages, though, are also not far removed from music. One of the free software tools for music making is made in Java and not only that but you can use python scripts within the program! What about C/C++? With this one can create extensions to another piece of software that, you guessed it, is used for music/audio! Plus, the book “The Audio Programming Book” specifically uses C/C++ for its language.

I’ve been making great progress with Python thanks to the free books out there for learning it. I plan to learn C and Java concurrently but for now my main focus is Python. And speaking of music and programming, I came across a site with a blog of similar nature.

Next blog post: more music talk!

I’ll write a story and you sing it to me.

When I was at university, one of my classmates remarked, about an orchestration course, why was he required to learn this stuff? He wasn’t studying to be a composer, why should it matter if he knew how to orchestrate or even write music? All I could do then was smile and shrug. I hadn’t really thought about it but as time went on, I came to understand the importance of writing music even if you don’t call yourself a composer.

Then I forgot again. When I restarted this blog, I knew I was going to be writing about music composition eventually and when I got to thinking about what I was going to write for this entry, my mind drew a blank. I could not remember why writing music could possibly be important for a musician. I went on the internet to research but could only find results for songwriting, or writing about music. And I wanted to kick myself. I finally came across someone else’s blog about writing music (songwriting of course) but I read it anyway.

Writing music can be a fun, creative outlet! Well yeah, I thought. It can also be a social activity, by co-writing a song with someone else. OK. Other similar things were listed but I didn’t get my answer. As soon as I finished reading the article, though, like a door in my brain was blown open, I had received the insight that I had learned just a few years back. I cannot tell you if the blog article helped me to re-achieve this insight but I felt so much relief.

The thing about writing music is simple: it helps us become better musicians! Just like practicing, just like ear training. When one writes music, one is forced to think about every little thing a composer thinks about when writing music. It seems obvious but this is something that is often overlooked. No one questions why this note was chosen or why this tempo is the way it is or why this phrase is piano and the next one is forte, we just read the music, ‘express’ it as well as we can and move on, but when one writes the music, she has to really think as to why these things are being put on the page. The composer cannot overlook the crescendo or the tempo marking or the key signature or the articulation of the notes or the text she chose for the music or why one bar is legato or if the notes should be marcato or etc..

If I work on a theory exercise, I can just focus on the notes or the voice leading or the spelling of the chords but an actual piece of music needs more than just black dots on a page. I know this because I’ve had to do it. I know this because when I arbitrarily choose pitches and rhythms and articulations to put on a page, I could fool others but I know in my mind that what I have created is not real music. And the moment you begin to think about music in this way, if you want to get inside the mind of the composer and ask “Why does he modulate to this key?” or “Why is the highest note played softly?” that’s when you understand that there was a lot of thought put into the writing of this music and that same amount of thought and focus should also be placed into bringing that music back to life, to the ears of those who are willing to listen.

There are more practical benefits to writing music too. Firstly, just like writing sentences, writing music (by hand at least) will help improve your (music) handwriting and make it less likely that you make mistakes like placing the note head on the wrong side or the eighth rest looking very much like the quarter rest. Writing music on the computer is a bit harder, probably because we still don’t have keyboards with musical symbols on them (a quick internet search brings me to http://www.arpegemusic.com/ so I suppose we’re making progress on that too).

Secondly, in order to be a versatile musician, one may be expected to be able to transcribe music (requires ear training skill + writing ability!) or even create a new or different arrangement of some music or maybe even copy music (music calligraphy is something I find interesting but I don’t think I will ever develop a skill in) but the point is all these things require for one to be able to write the music down.

Finally, there is that ‘fun’ part! There is something magical about being able to notate some music and then having someone perform it (even in something unexpected like, oh say, a game of Loaded Questions) Or if you’re the puzzling type, music is full of them! Coming up with a proper counterpoint or making a fugue fit in just right or challenge yourself to write in a certain style of music and if you really want to go far out, don’t use music notation at all and then try to interpret what you create, musically. This may not seem practical but it in fact helps with your creativity and helps keep you from becoming too rigid and always seeking a way to express what is in all of us. I think that’s the most practical thing of all.

The Virtues of a Good Ear

The ear is probably the most important organ to a musician and yet it is taken for granted. Based on my experience growing up, when I was taught music in elementary school, notation and learning to read notes was emphasized and it wasn’t until university that we would take a course on ear training. What I find most interesting, though, is that I’ve been reading materials (on music) that have been around for much longer than the past 30 years and they all emphasize the hearing aspect of music. So why is it that music education is just now starting to realize the importance in teaching ear training to their students?

As a child, we are bombarded with all sorts of sensory stimuli. Colors and things to see, sounds and music to hear, smells and smells, lots of textures to feel, how things taste. Eventually we learn to name objects and colors and the smell of things, and what something feels like, what’s good and not good to eat but in terms of sound, we are supposed to just accept it for what it is. Ear training can be vague term because it can mean a lot of things. One can train one’s ears to be good in discerning a major and minor chord or one can be trained in hearing which frequency sticks out before you use a filter to remove it. My goal is to be good at all these things. Working with acoustic sounds and digital sounds, I feel, would help in that.

But for now, I want to write about ear training in the classical sense. It is important for any musician to start training their ears as soon as possible. One may think that this means to learn what a minor second sounds like and then a major second and so forth but I like the idea of doing the reverse. Thanks to the Ear Training Companion, I can learn the sounds of intervals without learning what they are called. Of course it’s too late for me since I know what they are called but the idea is, like language, to listen to these sounds as the sound itself and then later you can label them.  No one learns the word “cactus” by someone saying “C-A-C-T-U-S spells cactus.” This teaches you how to spell it but you learn “cactus” by hearing the word “cactus.” So the goal is to hear the interval first, then call it by its name. It’s not “this is a major second” and then play the sound, it’s play the sound then say “that’s a major second.”

But this nifty little program has more than just that. There is a game where you learn the sounds of different chords. Of course, the intent of the game is to identify which tone is present in the other chords. But I feel that this game also helps in hearing the individual chord tones and is helpful for learning how 2 of the same chords sound different because of inversion. Then there’s the Absolute Pitch Avenue game. This game helps you to identify a note’s chroma, that is, the unique marker that makes a particular pitch sound the way it does. This won’t gain you absolute pitch, though, but it’s a start and Mr. Aruffo’s site is full of information and research in regards to this.

Of course, I don’t leave all ear training to that great little program, there’s chord progressions to learn and rhythmic and melodic dictations. There are plenty of websites and software in existence that do these things but I also want to emphasize the human element. The software solutions are for if you are lacking a partner or tight on time but it would be best to do ear training with someone else. I only suggest this because a person might be able to help the pure beginner much better than a website can. I took a look at the forum of a site that, although it’s for learning absolute pitch, the exercises make for good ear training. The forum had many members that, based on what I read, had no formal ear training prior to joining and would struggle with the early exercises. Other members would then give “advice” which was essentially  “use a melody trigger” and I think this hurts the ear trainer more than it helps.

With a live person with ear training experience, they can further explain what to listen for when testing intervals. Also, a note can be emphasized when playing chords and other things that on a computer would be slightly more difficult to do. One would also learn to hear intervals in a musical context as opposed to an intro to a song which is not practical. But all of this ear training is mostly passive. How can one be more active in ear training?

The answer is singing. The voice is the second most important thing to any musician, even instrumentalists and is the only instrument you have on you at all times. Want to know what a perfect fifth sounds like? Just sing one. You should know what it sounds like based on your practice so reproducing the sound should be as easy, if not, that’s why you sing, to solidify this knowledge. You can arpeggiate chords or sing the bass line to a chord progression. But the best part of singing and ear training is sight singing. This is almost its own thing but it is still a part of ear training. Once you know how to read music, you can put your ear training abilities to the test by choosing a starting pitch (either arbitrarily or the one notated) and singing based off your interval knowledge.

At this point, though, this is not efficient. Eventually, you’ll want to learn how to hear all the tones in a key as scale degrees. What does this mean? It means that if you’re in the key of C major, then if you hear a D or a G or and A, each tone has a quality in relation to the tonic, C. So a D gravitates to the closes C and a G wants to gravitate to the C as well. Whether this occurs in the music is not the point, the point is this is, again, something that one must hear to understand how all these tones relate to C or any other key. So back to the singing exercise, if your sight singing music is in C and the starting pitch is a G then goes down the scale to the C, you’d know to sing a fifth then sing down the scale as opposed to “ok a G to the F is a major second, F to E minor second” and so on. But nothing I write can help one learn this stuff, that’s how important the listening aspect of music is.

The goal, I feel, to ear training is to be able to read music on a page in your head just like one reads a book and hears the voice in your head (everybody reads like that right?) but also, to be able to know how any tone will sound against a particular key which is helpful with improvising (although you still should know your scales and theory!) With a good ear, one can also find transcribing music to be easier simply because one is familiar with how every tone is working within that particular key in the music.

Although I feel as if I wrote a lot, I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface on ear training so if anyone else as any input, feel free to comment. Now that I’ve thought about it, I’m gonna start looking for software that trains your ear for audio production and if there’s no such thing, maybe I’ll get to work on one. Some day. Until next time!

Practicing Perfectly

From the moment we begin to learn a new instrument (or learn how to use the one we are born with) we are unconsciously practicing. It’s how one actually obtains command of the instrument. But beyond that, very few people know how to actually practice. In fact, I was one of those people.

Most of my life I’d hear the saying “practice makes perfect” and it wasn’t until I started learning music that I would often hear “perfect practice makes perfect.” At first this seems a bit contradictory. If you practice perfectly, then doesn’t that mean you are a master at the thing you are practicing? Of course, I just assumed that it meant to strive for the highest of standards when it came to practicing. My private lesson instructor wasn’t much help either. A simple “practice this” was always in order but it always bugged me that no matter how much I practiced, I made very little progress.

It wasn’t until I asked some of the better players in school how they went about their practice and they all had varying answers but I would slowly pick out the answers that they had in common. “Practice slowly”, “use the metronome”, “practice phrases before putting it all together.” This was definitely better than “just practice” but it still felt like I was missing something. It wasn’t until I did some internet searching and found an ebook that addressed all of my questions and concerns.

The book’s author, Simon Horsey, had done most of the research for me so I didn’t need to look anywhere else and finally put into concrete words what I’ve been slowly gathering from talking to others. Although the book mentions different techniques, the one that I felt that really had me stuck was the first which was to: practice everything 100% correct.
I felt so dumb when I read that. It was almost too simple and yet it made 100% sense. If I couldn’t play some phrase or measure or entire composition, I was to slow it down and continue slowing it down until I could hit every note, 100% correct every time. Let me repeat that. No missed notes, no mistakes, not once. It is similar to how we learn to walk. First we try to stand and stay standing. Once we accomplish that, we start moving our legs and try to keep our balance. No one starts off by running. It also reminds me of the philosphy behind Tai ji quan, the movements are learned slowly and this is repeated until you can do it without thinking. Then you are free to speed up the movement and still be able to perform effortlessly.

This simple technique is powerful but requires patience. You will not see results immediately which is something we tend to forget and sometimes give up all too easily. The point of this long introduction, though, is to talk about where I’m at now. Since I started this blog reboot, I have consistently practiced my clarinet for 1 hour for 5 days now and having employed the effective practicing techniques found in the book, I can say I am extremely happy with my results. I found that I’ve improved so much quicker than when I used to practice in my school days and this also means that I can knock out practice goals much quicker too. I don’t want to spend too much time writing about how I spend my hour on the clarinet but maybe I’ll make other blog posts about that in the future.

In the meantime, I’ll link to the website of the book, http://www.essential-music-practice.com/, and if you are wary about buying the book, the author’s offering a free book with some stripped down techniques from his book. (I am in no way affiliated with the author nor am I getting paid to plug his site)

Next time, I will discuss ear training!

Reboot, Restart.

As the title suggests, I am rebooting this blog. All the previous posts will remain, for posterity! But I now have a clear mind as to what I will be writing about. As I start this new chapter in my life I studied music and will always be a musician. If you had asked me 7 years ago what I would be doing, music was definitely not on my list. In fact, I was on my way to studying computer science. I’ve always had an affinity to music but never thought about a career in it. And I still don’t. Maybe.

Anyway, I have been on a path of bettering myself in many ways. One of them being starting and finishing projects. This project that I have begun? Becoming a better musician. Not only that but improving on musicianship skills. I will use this blog to write about different aspects of musicianship, especially those that may not be all that obvious! Because musicianship is not just about ear training or knowing your theory or interpreting music, it’s also getting along with others, improving your mathematical,writing, and reading skills, analysis and critical thinking, physical and mental fitness, and so on. So I will end this post by stating that a few days ago I started up an instrument (clarinet) practice routine as well as ear training and music composition (and theory) practice. But also, what may seem not too relevant, a computer programming practice routine.

You see, I have always wanted to be a programmer (which is why I was studying computer science at first) but somewhere along the way I told myself I sucked (which I did). Turns out I don’t suck so much when I think POSITIVE, or something but more importantly it is related to my goal of eventually working with digital audio and programming within this medium. I have had a taste with Csound and Pure Data (as well as Max MSP) and felt that learning programming would ultimately extend my abilities with computer music and thanks to books such as The Audio Programming book, I know it’s definitely possible!

So expect talk of music, love, and computer languages and hopefully my mastering them all!

I have a job now, lord of the flies

…and because I have a job, I feel that it is my duty now to continue to post on this blog because I feel it is the only way I can maintain my sanity. On the lighter side of things, I have started composting these past 5 months and have created two bins out of old garbage bins. The best part? I enjoy every minute of it. Take note potential future employer!

But most importantly, my bin is not big enough to create a hot compost. I’ve had to tweak various formulas because I lack certain materials such as using cardboard and paper instead of sawdust for the cover. Anyway, I also wanted a ‘let it rot’ type system so I don’t do any turnings or wetting (in a sub-tropical climate, that pretty much takes care of itself)

This unique combination though, led to a surprising find. Here’s where I’d show a picture of maggots to gross you out but instead I’ll keep it text gross only. Yes, maggots! Not just any maggots, though. These are the black soldier fly larvae. I had never heard of these creatures before, let alone seen one. But now, I am very familiar with these guys and I think they like me.

After becoming almost obsessive about them and researching them, I learned that they will eat just about any rotting organic material that gets thrown in the bin and this bothers me none. The best part is the fly itself allegedly does not eat (because it lacks mouth parts) and therefore has no need to enter houses and become a pest to humans. There’s only one place I found that claims they will take in nectar though. But anyway, this presents an interesting life cycle. They must mate and lay eggs before dying in 5-8 days, maybe longer (presumably they use up the fat stores from when they were larva).

Anyway, I’ve had a few land on me and they really are gentle little critters. Of course I found a problem. When they are ready to pupate, they leave the bin in search for a dry area where they can remain undisturbed. The bins are far enough away from the house, I thought, but it looks like the larvae have gotten through the sliding glass doors and have been pupating inside of the -secret- room in the back of the house. This room is closed off so they cannot go into the rest of the house but lately I’ve been heading back there daily to open the doors and try to get the flies to leave. If I don’t, they end up dead on the floor, with no chance at mating.

I also learned something interesting. People harvest the grubs to use as chicken and fish feed. I have cats. These cats do not eat maggots. But they sure love eating the flies! These are the only flies I see the cats go after. I’ve seen them eat dragonflies and butterflies but once they spot a BSF (that’s how all the cool people refer to them) they go nuts and will chase it down if it doesn’t fly away quick enough. They will even eat the dead ones, they must be ultra tasty. So I’ve already seen lots of benefits from my compost and it still hasn’t matured!

I also get a chance to look at all the critters that end up living there and feeding off each other. The soil food web is quite fascinating and I am currently kicking myself for not studying this in university.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must gather some more food scraps for my composting/maggots.