My theme from the previous song was swell. I did some word fishing from the book I'm reading at the moment (The Master and Margarita in case you're interested), picking the first word on random pages starting with each letter of the word swell. I did this a couple of times and then mixed up the results, and the phrase little white embroidered eyebrows was the one that resonated. I turned that line into this song about a childhood doll.
Read MoreI started with the word draught from the previous piece, and then opened the book The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (highly recommended by the way) to random pages and chose the first word on the pages starting with each letter of draught. The words led me here, and I let myself just hit random keys on the piano for part of the accompaniment as I'd run out of energy to nut out something more functional.
Read MoreI concluded yesterday's blog post by saying that I would let interest and enjoyment be my guide, and I think that's something that deserves a little exploration. It's not quite as simple as just doing what you are enjoying, especially if you want to develop your skills at something. What is good for you may not necessarily be enjoyable, and it is easy to become bored or to feel like your practice is stagnating if you don't work outside of your comfort zone every now and then.
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 MoreIt's summer in Melbourne, and even though it wasn't particularly hot today my flat just won't cool down. I don't like to play or practice with the windows open for the sake of our neighbours, so spending time locked in a small room with no airflow has been particularly uncomfortable the last couple of days. I got about half an hour of guitar scales in today before I'd had enough, so I kept today's piece very simple.
Read MoreToday's contribution starts to stretch the definition of music a little, but it falls within my use of the term. This was a purely lyrical endeavour, and came from the line "tripping through streets in insensible shoes" from yesterday, which I found myself turning around in my head long after I'd finished the recording. I decided to take the dominant sounds of that line, S's and T's, as my starting point. After brainstorming a whole lot of words that featured those sounds I put them together into random sentences, and the one I really liked the sound of was "the taste of a stammer". I used that as the starting point for a narrative, and fleshed out the text with other words from my brainstormed list, weaving them together in ways I liked both alliteratively and narratively
Read MoreToday 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.
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