One of the difficulties with this project is that each day's work is brand new. Starting from a seed, a new piece of music must be realised in whatever time I have available that day. This means that more complicated ideas that need some time to workshop are not really compatible with the way I'm working right now. There is the possibility of writing a song in sections, adding or revising sections with each new day's work, and this would be within the rules I've set myself. So far, however, I haven't worked like this, as I'm finding myself excited by the possibility of doing something new each day. I'm only 16% of my way through the project, so perhaps that will change as I find myself running out of ideas that can be executed in a day.
This piece is not what I was originally working on yesterday. I had planned out a whole story-song and done lots of timed writing exercises to generate material to work with, but by the time I got that far it was after 11pm and I was exhausted. I looked up from my piano and into the mirror and my eyes were red and watery, so instead of pushing through I changed tact and did something much simpler.
When I started this project back in January I was still sailing along on the time-rich bliss of summer school holidays. I had a great routine of waking up, practicing mandolin or guitar with coffee, doing some exercise while listening to a podcast, showering, practicing some more before and after lunch, then working on my daily song in the evening. But then the school term and private teaching started up again and my routine got thrown into turbulence and I haven't been able to steady it since.
This is Sunday's, and another very quick improvised piece. I followed on from the previous day by taking the fingers theme, and rather than improvising everything I did do a quick writing exercise, inspired by the sounds outside my lounge room window.
Keeping with The Getting Of Wisdom theme from the previous day, this piece is named for the protagonist Laura's sister, Pin. Pin is nicknamed Res'vor by their housemaid "on account of her perpetual wateriness", and so I worked with the idea of tears welling up for this improvisation. I had about a ten minute window to get this done, so I improvised it completely, without doing any thinking or writing exercises first.
This is Friday's piece, but I'm writing this on Monday morning as I had a weekend jam packed with students and gigs. While I did (just) manage to squeeze in a new piece each day, I didn't find time to download them off my camera and upload them. I really feel like I'm lagging behind having to upload three at once, so I'm just going to write a short post for each to try and catch up. After all, I still have to write and record today's piece.
I hadn't realised it, but somewhere along this project I stopped judging my work and just got down to the business of doing it. For some reason my judgement was turned back on for this piece, which is why I realised it hadn't been there for the past few weeks. Despite recent complaints about the heat and lack of emotional and physical energy, all those songs felt like a breeze to work on compared to this one.
My first song of March. I'm writing this post from the library in air-conditioned comfort, taking a break from my hot and stuffy apartment. It might be autumn here in Melbourne now, but summer is still holding on. I uploaded this video from the library too, and was prepared with my songwriting notebook, water bottle and knitting to keep me occupied while I waited for it to upload. Except it took less than a minute to complete, so I lugged all that stuff down here for nothing. It seems slightly ridiculous, as a video of this length takes approximately two hours to upload on my home internet connection. I definitely think I'll be spending a lot more time in the library this year.
One of the challenges to staying creatively productive is fitting the creative work in with the rest of your life. Before I went off to study music I worked a series of 9 - 5 jobs, however I only ever worked four days a week for most of that time. I tried my best to use my day off for creative projects, and I did accomplish a whole lot of creative things during those years. Ultimately, however, I found the constant shift between corporate and creatively mindsets exhausting. I think I'd be better at it now that I have some robust processes in place, but I do find it much easier when my work and creative practice are more closely related. My mind is never far away from music or art now, and my social circle is full of people who understand and support my lifestyle.
I don't feel I have much to say today, as I'm pretty exhausted. I still have to go and write today's song, so I'll go get to work and let yesterday's music do the talking.
This piece marks the end of week seven. At some point I stopped actively counting the days as they click past, so realising I've been at this for seven weeks is a bit of a shock. By the end of next week I'll have finished my third month, and one whole season of songs. These daily videos are not just a record of my creative output, but also a record of a year in my life going by, which is quite nice. We are coming to the end of Melbourne summer, so as the days become shorter and cooler I am sure my songs will adapt to the new season just as much as my wardrobe will. Despite fluctuations in energy and enthusiasm for the project my body and mind show no signs of quitting, so I really hope I can make through all four seasons of songs.
This project is making me really aware of the day-to-day fluctuations in emotional and physical energy I experience, and the very real effect that energy level has on my work. I wrote yesterday morning about feeling burnt out, which I absolutely was the day before when I was trying to work on piece #47. Last night, however, I felt entirely the opposite. I was refreshed, ready and excited, and looking forward to an evening by myself in my studio. I had tidied up a bit, which definitely helped entice me into my newly neat space, and I was anticipating the enjoyment of the night's work the same way you'd anticipate the enjoyment of a party. I even indulged the Saturday night vibe with some fairy lights.
I'm coming to the end of the third week into my full teaching schedule, and I'm starting to feel a little burnt out. When I don't have a lot of time for working on the day's piece I fall into tried and tested habits and processes, and while I'm in the composition process my inner voices are telling me that the music is becoming routine and uninteresting as a result. Many of the processes help me turn off those inner voices, but perhaps as I get better at using the processes the voices get better at finding their way through my defences. I think the answer is to keep introducing new processes and composition exercises, to keep my brain distracted from self criticism.
One of the songwriting tools I use regularly is an etymological dictionary. Looking at the origin of words is a really fascinating way of finding links between seemingly unrelated objects and ideas. My original starting point for this piece was umbrella, and the origin of that word comes from umbra, which is related to shadows and also to phantoms and ghosts. It is an interesting coincidence that the words shade and umbrella are linked, as shade also appeared in the previous day's piece. I took the ghostly route, and worked off the idea of trying to imagine a loved one back into existence.
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.
I 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.
For this piece I took a fragment of yesterday's melody, wrote the notes on scraps of paper and pulled them out of a hat to create a new melody. The first time I pulled them out, however, they were in perfect ascending scale order, so I discarded that melodic idea. If I were really giving myself over to randomness I should have gone with that first attempt, but I found the orderliness uninspiring so I had another go. Really, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make something interesting out of half a scale, and I didn't even give myself the chance to try. Next time I'll stick to my guns, and work with whatever material my methods throw up.
One of the reasons I started this project was to give myself permission to create whatever kind of music that day inspired. After releasing my debut album Twelve Moons last year I spent a lot of time struggling to categorise the music I liked to make, and trying to fit it into predefined genre boxes (folk? jazz? experimental?) that it was never quite the right shape for.
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.
I could fib, and tell you that I recorded this yesterday and just didn't have time to upload it, but that's not really in the spirit of this project. So no, I didn't record this yesterday. I didn't even finish writing it yesterday. I had the guitar part and half the lyrics done, and then I fell asleep, exhausted, on the couch with a pencil in my hand while trying to work on the second half of the words. I gave in, and went to bed, I woke this morning refreshed but very annoyed that I hadn't just recorded what I had, instead of labouring over it when my mind had clearly switched off for the day.
