SCP #7: The Sun Makes It Grow From Your Feet

Today marks the end of the very first week of this project, and perhaps the end of the honeymoon period, as it's getting difficult now.  It's a little surreal to realise I've churned out seven new musical ideas in as many days, and terrifying to realise I still have to find another 358 to make it to the end of the year.

I decided to keep going with the shadow theme from yesterday, and I took the chord I used in the improvisation (kind of a major 9 cluster) to use as a starting point.  I noodled on my mandolin for a while, got incredibly frustrated that it wasn't leading anywhere, so I stopped and did some writing exercises to tease out a few ideas.  I know other musicians who love playing around with harmonic ideas when they are writing, but it's something I really struggle to do successfully.  I find it much easier to let lyrical and poetic ideas dictate the skeleton of a composition, building the other elements around them.  I'm sure I'll discover as this project continues that my compositional palate needs to expand, or I'll end up with 365 very similar sounding pieces of music.

The melody of this one only uses four notes, and there are three two-note "chords" as the accompaniment, so as the groups of three and four cycle throughout the piece the harmony changes.  The points in the text where the changes happen were improvised in performance.