The Song-Chain Project: an introduction

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.  

I have been thinking about this idea since before the new year clicked over.  It's the kind of project that should really be started on January 1, simply because it's a nice, neat date, but it's taken me a little time to work up the courage to commit.  I'm still terrified of the challenge I'm setting myself, but the worst that can happen is I don't make it to the end of the year and am left with a smaller pile of creative works to sift through.

The one guideline for the project is that the new day's work will begin with something from the previous day's result, hence the "song-chain".  This "something" may be a word, a melodic fragment, a sonic texture, a rhythmic idea or any other element that can be taken and built upon.  The purpose of this guideline is to avoid the tyranny of the blank page, with each day's work already in progress before it is begun.

Despite the use of the word "song", the creative works are not necessarily intended to adhere to any kind of traditional song form.  While the project may produce songs, it may also produce soundscapes, free improvisations, musical poems, nonsense, noise and other pieces of musical art.

Inspiration for this project comes from Emily Hope Price's 365 Project (with thanks to Biddy Healey for bringing it to my attention).  Inspiration for the song-chain comes from my friend and study-buddy Joanna Kerr, who was writing on the cyclic nature of composition and improvisation during our Honours year at the Victorian College of the Arts.

So join me, for 365 days of music.  You can follow along via this blog, or Facebook, Instagram or Twitter if you'd prefer.  In the words of one of my favourite teachers, what could possibly go wrong?