SCP #30: Counting The Trains

This one was recorded at about 1:30am, which is by far the latest I've stayed up writing and recording for this project so far.  At about midnight when it was only half done I crashed, and was almost asleep at the piano.  I didn't like the melody, I had holes in my lines of lyrics that I just couldn't fill, and I was annoyed that I hadn't captured the mood from my initial writing exercises either musically or lyrically.  Basically, my inner critic was telling me everything was crap, and that I should just scrap it all and start again.

Eventually I played what I had to my poor partner, and he suggested a chord change to make the melody sound better, and gently reminded me that one of my goals for the project was to remove my personal judgement from the composition process and just go with whatever came out.  That's a lot harder than it seems, especially when you're posting the result publicly to be judged by it.  Of course the only person really judging is me.  IThe key, I think, is separating myself as a person from the creative process.  Right now, if my art is no good then I am by extension no good as a person.  That's such a destructive mindset, and one that I have needed to get a hold over for a long time now.

So here you have Counting The Trains.  I started with the thematic idea of rain outside the window from yesterday's piece and did a few three minute free writing exercises to get some lyrical ideas flowing.  For the melody I took the E harmonic minor scale I used yesterday and moved the tonic to G, which resulted in the unusual melodic phrase at the beginning of the piece.  A lot of my recent pieces have been limited to one mode or just one or two chords, so having this bit of colour right at the beginning of this piece helped introduce a more fluid harmonic space to work in.