Tuesday's piece, with a whisper following on from the hush of a lullaby.
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I owe it to this project to be honest, and I am still struggling to find enjoyment in the writing process at the moment. What I really want is time to sit down and work on some of the music I've already written, arranging and practicing it ready for gigs on April 9 and 16. Instead my time and creative energy is going into writing new music, and I am procrastinating quite badly at the moment.
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This is Sunday's piece, and I had regained a little of my mojo for this one. I started with the theme clumsy from the previous day's piece, and did a three minute timed writing exercise. I then took all the nouns, verbs and adjectives from the result of that writing exercise and created word pairs with them. I used two of the pairs, "somewhere rain" and "another kitchen", as prompts for two additional three-minute writing exercises, and the results of those exercises led to this song. The day after I wrote this song it actually did rain in Melbourne, so I like to think I summoned the rain with my song.
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Saturday's piece, a very quick improvisation before I took the night off. Just one take with both the text and melody improvised in the moment.
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My last post was Thursday, which seems like an eternity ago as the last few days have been really difficult. This project was never meant to be easy, although up to now it has never felt impossible, and I've generally kept to my deadlines and retained my confidence in my ability to churn out new music when required. Over the weekend, however, I fell apart and spent a large part of it paralysed by anxiety. My rational brain knew that if I could just sit down and do the work I would end up with something, but when I tried I was unable to concentrate and found the anxiety expressing itself in physical symptoms, which is something I haven't really experienced before.
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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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This is Tuesday's song, continuing the fingerprint theme. Fingerprints look a lot like topographic map markings, which was the inspiration for this one. I did a little fingers-in-random-places on my ukulele to find ideas for the harmony.
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The calendar says autumn but the weather says summer, summer, summer. Indeed. It was over 30 degrees and humid yesterday in Melbourne, so I wrote about that. I feel like a broken record complaining about the weather, but I've never really had to really push through creative work in uncomfortable environments before. In the past I would have just taken a break for the day and gone to find somewhere cool to hang out, but there are songs to be written, so I might as well mine the discomfort for ideas.
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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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This project is as much about practicing performing as it is practicing composing. I was really struggling to get through a successful take of this one last night. I kept making small mistakes, and then rather than letting them go they were growing in my mind, forming distractions, and leading to larger mistakes and abandoned takes. The clock was edging toward midnight when I finally had a take I was happy with. I'm still learning ways to manage all the mental stuff that goes along with performing, particularly performing for recording, which I find more difficult than performing live. This project is definitely helping, although it's slightly stressful putting these raw recordings out into the public space where they can potentially exist forever.
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For this piece I took the theme coffee from the previous day and in some internet wanderings came across Van Gogh's Café Terrace At Night, which I used to inspire this piece. I focussed on the bright and dark areas of the painting and did a three-minute writing exercise inspired by each. I then wove the result of the two exercises into this piece using minimal additional text. I really enjoyed this process, as the painting provided a wonderful source of inspiration. There was so much to tease out of it, and I think I might have to start a series of these pieces inspired by impressionist art.
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Yesterday I had to go into one of those huge city office towers to drop off some documents. It was the kind with a concierge in the lobby to direct you to the correct floor, and a stream of suits, motorcycle couriers and cycling lycra coming and going through the glass lifts. I spent a large chunk of my twenties quite unhappy in office buildings like this, and whenever I end up back inside one I feel very uncomfortable as the negative memories come flooding back in.
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Yesterday's song. I took the word spine from the previous day's piece and used that as the starting point for some writing exercises. I did some image searching of X-Rays for inspiration, which are strangely beautiful to look at. I took the notes from my favourite chord from the previous day's piece and used them as a basis for the harmony of this improvisation.
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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.
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If it weren't for the very public nature of this project I think I would have pulled the plug on it by now. Or at least taken a break. But I know from experience that if I take a break at something challenging it can be really difficult to start up again. Especially now, when the rest of my life seems to be getting in the way, if I stopped now I'd probably never find the "right time" to start back up again.
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Sunday's song, continuing with the moon theme. The rhythm and harmony were pulled from serial composition using the word moon, and the unusual 9/8 ostinato took a lot of practice to sing over. I'm not going to write any more about this one, as I need to take some time to relax before starting today's song, and it's supposed to be a public holiday today in Melbourne.
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Last week was challenging, as I never felt like I caught up from the previous weekend. I was generally exhausted all week, and by Saturday I knew I'd make myself sick if I didn't get a decent night's sleep. So although I wrote this one on Saturday, I decided to put off the recording until Sunday morning and make the most of an early night. Unfortunately that was interrupted by an incident that woke my whole apartment building at 4am, and I didn't manage to get back to sleep after that. I spent the rest of Sunday feeling pretty horrendous, trying to get through both recording Saturday's song and writing and recording Sunday's.
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I live in Melbourne's southern suburbs, and for those unfamiliar with our city there is a strange North vs South divide that sees people hating on residents on the other side of the river to themselves. I have lived on both sides, and while I was a North-sider I spent a lot of time thinking the South was inferior. But then I moved across town and realised that I much preferred the South, and I barely think about the North at all, except when I have to travel over there to play a gig (which I'm doing tomorrow). Because while I prefer to live South of the river Melbourne's live music scene is concentrated in the North.
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Two months of songs down, and it took me all this time to do something on ukulele. I have never really enjoyed playing uke, as I find it uncomfortable to hold, and just use it for teaching. But yesterday I finally went and got a strap button installed, and it made such a difference. While I was studying at the VCA Jo Lawry gave a master class, and spoke about the advantages of writing songs on an unfamiliar instrument. For her it was guitar, and she enjoyed just putting her fingers onto the instrument and letting sounds guide her. The ukulele plays a similar role for me, as I find its tuning very foreign. This song came about from simply putting my fingers in random places on the instrument and letting my ear be my guide.
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