I was quite busy with a show last week, so stretched for ideas I decided to write the text of the previous day's song out backwards and use that for a little improvisation. Hence Scuffle Reverse.
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Letting go, I can create anything. Some notes generated from the word SPIDER, and an imagined soundscape of a spider working away.
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The second in my series of spider-themed improvisations. I have been working on a series of performance pieces for this opera, which is debuting on Thursday, so most of my music and lyrical creative energy over the past week has gone into that project. I have been indulging my cinematographic creativity as part of this project instead.
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A spider mind map, and some writing exercises, which I divided up to form a trio of improvisations. This is the first.
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I reached 100, though only just. This was some rejected text from number 99, what I lacked in creative songwriting energy I made up for in creative visuals.
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Hailstones was my starting prompt, but this was just a small snippet of text from some writing exercises that went on to inform the next day's song.
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Not many words today, just a backlog of songs. From Wednesday 12th, the starting prompt was nonsense.
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These are the words from the previous day's random word selection exercise, strung together into nonsense, recorded right before I crashed onto the couch in my pyjamas for the rest of the evening.
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Part III in a mini series, an actual dream. I've been having lots of bizarre ones lately, I think my imagination is on overdrive.
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Part II in a mini series. No wind this time, just lots of coffee.
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My three-month, one-season marker came and went without a blog post, and I've finally got through the backlog of stuff on my camera. I'm still finding this project incredibly difficult, and I think the madness present in the pieces of the past week speaks for state of mind right now. I am mainly struggling to sit down and write, and the inner critics in my head are shouting very loud. However, watching back over the last week of videos makes me realise it really doesn't matter what I create. I can make anything! I can let the slamming of a door be part of the project, as in this piece. Or my crazy dreams about a barnyard brawl (Filter (II)), or picking out random notes on the piano (New Year's Even Aquarium), or making strange noises with my voice through effects pedals (The Grey Lady), or simply stringing a bunch of nonsense words together (Up Glasses!). These pieces all felt like a last resort, when my creative anxiety wouldn't let me make anything else, but they are legitimate creative expressions that capture my mood and mindset.
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On Friday afternoon I had just started recording the day's song when I heard a dripping sound from the hallway. My upstairs neighbours' flat was rapidly flooding, and as a consequence flooding down into my flat too. This is not the first time this has happened, so I knew exactly which areas of my apartment needed to be evacuated of stuff. I hauled everything out of the wardrobes and used every towel in the house to try and hold back the leaking water.
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Tuesday's piece, with a whisper following on from the hush of a lullaby.
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This one is Wednesday's, my starting point was ink from the previous day's piece. I had very little time to spare, so it's just a quick improvisation on a small lyrical idea. I borrowed a little bit of descending whole tone melody from the previous day's piece too.
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Song 70, and the completion of week 10 of this project. I am desperately in need of a quiet evening, so I was kind to myself and kept this one as quick as possible. A 90 second writing exercise and a free improvisation while the sun slipped down on this hot, Autumn evening. Now I'm going to make spaghetti carbonara with some "Bulgarian pancetta, the best kind!" from the gruff Eastern European deli-man, and try to finish knitting the collar of a jumper that has been languishing on my table for several weeks now.
So goodbye from week 10, see you all tomorrow for week 11.
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I delved into my experimental self for this piece, but unfortunately my audio recorder didn't pick up much of the water sounds. I was pretty exhausted yesterday, and so I allocated myself a half hour window in which to get the piece done. I used ink from the previous day as a starting theme, and a mind map led me to cobalt blue. Some internet wandering brought up Renoir's painting The Umbrellas, which was painted using two different shades of blue: the first stages of the painting done using cobalt, and later stages with ultramarine. This idea of an umbrella in two shades of blue inspired the text, and my kitchen provided the props.
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Friday'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.
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It'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.
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Today was a can't-be-bothered kind of day, thanks to a very early start, awfully muggy weather and playing four sets of music at a wedding fair with the entertainment agency I run. It was still about 30℃ when I got home, and melting into the furniture was about all I wanted to do. I gave in to that impulse for a few hours, but eventually the nagging feeling of not having done today's song got the better of me.
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Just a quick post today, before I go and get a decent night's sleep. I kept on with the sea theme, and this piece is a kind of continuation of yesterday's story. Sonically it's structured in three sections: the sound of the waves above water, then the sound in your ears when you plunge under the water, and finally the sound of bubbles as they rush from your mouth.
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