I felt a lot of pressure to produce something decent after my break, as though the imaginary audience in my mind were waiting to judge me on whether the pause was worthwhile, and if I still had it in me to create a decent piece of music. In order to keep those voices at bay I kept myself to some very strict compositional exercises.
Read MoreWhen I started this project back in January I was still sailing along on the time-rich bliss of summer school holidays. I had a great routine of waking up, practicing mandolin or guitar with coffee, doing some exercise while listening to a podcast, showering, practicing some more before and after lunch, then working on my daily song in the evening. But then the school term and private teaching started up again and my routine got thrown into turbulence and I haven't been able to steady it since.
Read MoreFriday's deadline failure has made me realise that 2am bed times for the rest of the year are just not sustainable, especially when I am teaching at 8:30 or 9am the following day. I have generally been good at actually writing and recording the day's song before midnight (or at worst before 1am), but I don't feel my task is complete until I edit the video, upload it, write the day's blog post and then share it across my social media platforms.
Read MoreApparently I'm 9.5% of the way through this project, which doesn't seem very far at all. I already feel that my process is becoming stale, so I introduced some rigorous serial composition into today's piece to shift me away from habit. I took the words ruby and secret from yesterday's title and used them as the basis for the composition.
Read MoreAs I start to write this it's just gone 1am. I think every song so far has been written and recorded before midnight, but today I didn't set up my camera until well after 12am. I started working on the song at about 8pm with lots of enthusiasm, but that quickly turned to frustration and I spent far too long languishing in pages of failed ideas.
Read MoreWeek three down, only 49 to go. The end is nowhere in sight, but I'm still mostly enjoying myself. Yesterday was a first for me in terms of improvising on guitar and voice at the same time, today's piece is a first in that I've never really used my loop pedal with a guitar before, only with my voice. Each of these daily compositions give me a chance to try out new ideas, but they also give me a chance to struggle at actually performing them without much practice.
Read More
