SCP #65: Colours Of The Season

Written & performed 14th March 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. Composed 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

Yesterday I was going through my videos of the past few weeks, putting them onto a USB to give to my partner's parents, and it forced me to sit back and evaluate just how productive I've been.  There are a few songs I've written that have stuck in my consciousness for days or weeks after I'm done recording them, however most get forgotten as I turn my mind to the next day's work.  Going back through them made me proud of not only the sheer quantity of my output, but also the quality of many of the ideas.  It is not helpful to dwell on either the successes or failures of this project, however a look back through my work has given me a boost of confidence that will hopefully help me push through the dark and difficult patches that are becoming more and more frequent.

And now to this song, which was written and recorded on Tuesday.  I think I took notes from the previous day's melody to create the initial Gsus4/A chord, although looking back at my scribbled notes I can't quite work out how I got there.  Leaving aside that detail, I developed this small melodic idea on my guitar by altering the bass notes under the suspended triad.  The melody is simply a series of guide tones over each chord, with the phrasing improvised.  I have used this technique a lot throughout this project, partly because it is fast, but also because I like the quality improvisation adds to the music. Lyrically I took the theme of melting afternoon from the previous piece, and wrote around that idea.