SCP #3: A Linen Square

Written & performed live 11th January 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. Composed & performed by Erica Bramham as part of the Song-Chain Project. The Song-Chain Project is a year-long creative mission that commences January 9 2017 and will run until January 9 2018. Each day for 365 days a new piece of music will be written, recorded and posted online, and the process documented. For more information visit ericabramham.com/songchain-project

Today was hard, and it's only day three.  I had about four hours sleep last night and spent most of the day as a zombie, but at about 11pm I pulled myself together enough to get this one out.  These videos are the kind of thing I'd usually keep to myself, and not share them to become a public record of my experimentation. A huge part of this project, however, is about learning to put my inner critic on hold.  Besides, tomorrow is another day and another chance to create something new.

This one is an improvisation.  I play a lot of timed writing games when I'm composing, so I took the word needle from yesterday and wrote for 90 seconds, then improvised with the resulting text and my loop pedal.  One of my favourite song writing resources is Pat Pattison's Song Writing Without Boundaries, and his timed, sense-based writing exercises form the backbone of my composition practice.  I often use them to generate ideas for more traditionally structured lyrics, but I like using these short ones as is for improvisations like this.  I will definitely write in more detail about this process throughout this project, but for now I'm going to get some sleep.