Hands was my starting point for this piece, and I found it quite meditative to both compose and perform. This is only the second piece I have performed on electric mandolin. The other attempt was interrupted by flooding, which was about the time this project really started to challenge me. I haven't even thought about what to do when it all ends, but I suppose I should watch everything back through from start to finish. Although each piece of music is not exactly a journal entry, they will certainly reflect my mind and life in that particular moment. If I can bear to sit through twelve months worth of videos I am curious to see how the music I have made has been shaped by the life I have lived alongside it.

SCP #140: Between Two States

Before I was interrupted with Migraine+Hives I had been working with the theme between, which I think came from piece #136. I never managed to work my research/writing up into a song, so I used that text for a series of improvisations. This is the first.

SCP #129: Naughty Verses From An Old Folk Song

Moving on from my glove mind map, this piece came out of a songwriting exercise I did with one of my young students in her lesson. I had her make a mind map starting with the theme "forest", and then make pairs of words from the map. We each chose a different word pair to use as a prompt for a three-minute writing exercise, and mine was "singing night". Here's the result of my own three-minute exercise, which became the chorussy part of this rollicking drinking song.

SCP #113: In The Dark

Most of the linguistic connections to vista focus on light, and this piece explores the opposite, continuing the same camera angle as the previous day. A quick improvisation taking advantage of the background noise in my apartment. I have a new mysterious British neighbour, and ever evening he speaks on the phone in our building's stairwell. Yet I've never managed to actually see him, only heard his voice amplified by the shape of the stairwell. Perhaps he is a phantom?

SCP #89: Filter (III)

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.

SCP #88: Filter (II)

Part II in a mini series. No wind this time, just lots of coffee.

SCP #80: Will-'O-The-Whisper

Thursday's piece. I continued on with the whisper theme and one of the words that appeared in my mind map was Will-'o-the-wisp, or a mysterious ghostly light that lures travellers from safe paths. Other words and concepts from the mind map also made it into the lyrics, including spider silk, secret, float and shout/cry.

SCP #78: Lullaby For Adam

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.

SCP #68: Café Terrace At Night

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.

SCP #61: Salt and Grease

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.

SCP #59: My Grandmother's Earrings

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.

SCP #57: Hummingbird

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.

SCP #39: Nothing To Be Wished Upon

I composed and recorded this one after having a wonderful chat with an old friend of mine for next week's episode of Mind Over Myth (which is now available for you to subscribe to on iTunes). He stayed for dinner, so once again I was chipping away at my daily song late at night. Since transitioning to a career as a musician and music teacher I have struggled with the change in schedule. Unlike my old 9 - 5 jobs, I do the bulk of my work in the late afternoons and evenings. The habit of many years' relaxing in the evenings is a hard one to break, and I feel strange and guilty if I sit down in the morning or early afternoon to watch a film, knit or sew, or just do something mind numbing for a few hours. All the late-night songwriting is taking its toll, however, and I realise I really do need some downtime. I spent a few hours before lunch today watching Vice documentaries, and there was one about Romanian witches that stuck in my mind. In particular, it was the idea of the witches tearing open the sky to read the future that really struck me.

SCP #32: Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

Today marks the first day of month two of this year-long project. I should probably write a bit of a reflection on month one, but I might do that as a separate post tomorrow when I have a some free time. Today I'll keep my writing about my composition, and I might get a little nerdy in today's post. If you're one of my non-musician friends you might want to skip through to the bit about the lyrics.

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.

SCP #26: Lemon

I won't write too much tonight, instead I'll direct you over to Rehearsal Magazine, who have just published an interview I did with them this week. I will say that today life took over, and I was left with only a small window of time for today's composition. That window didn't coincide with my feeling particularly creative or inspired, so I forced myself through a few 90 second lyric writing exercises and then improvised with results.

SCP #25: Don't Say It

One of the things you learn while studying jazz is how to be complicated. Every time I write something simple I have this voice in the back of my mind telling me it's not good enough because it's not full of crazy chords or in some kind of weird time signature. It's a ridiculous mindset, as there is plenty of beauty and skill in composing simply, but I really have to work hard to convince myself of that when I'm in the middle of writing and my inner critic is judging like mad.

SCP #18: Fig Tree Slumber

I worked out today that I have been writing songs for about fifteen years, which sounds like an amazingly long time, and I feel I should be much better at it than I am by now. One chunk of that fifteen year period was plagued with horrible writers' block, which was largely due to not knowing how to write about things that were not highly and specifically personal. Learning how to separate myself from the songs and treat them more like works of fiction really helped me to get past that period, and now my writing tends to draw as much from my imagination as it does my own life experiences. Opening up space for my imagination means I can turn to books, films, mythology, poetry or art for stories and ideas, without having to wait for something in my own life to throw me a spark of inspiration.

SCP #15: Nyx

Week three begins, and I started today refreshed and ready to write again. The last few days had left me feeling quite stale, so I decided I needed to introduce some fresh creative material into my process. From yesterday I took the idea of the night, and did some quick and dirty Google research into night-related mythology. I was intrigued by Nyx, the Goddess of the night, and so I used her as the basis for this piece. In particular I was interested in the ways she might bring on the night, by physically casting a veil of darkness over the sky.

SCP #14: Waiting...

Today marks the end of week two, and I'm feeling awfully burnt out already. I'm mentally, physically and vocally exhausted from a six hour gig yesterday, and all I wanted today was to have a day off. I have to be kind to myself though. This project was never going to be easy, and will ebb and flow with my mental and physical energy levels, and it's something I have to learn to work with.

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