Here's yesterday's song. It's late, so I won't write too much, instead I'll just share the lyrics. Very loosely inspired by the etymology of Tuesday, a love song
I am the square of sun
That moves across the room
Slow and languid
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.
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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.
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About a week before I started my music degree I met someone at a party who had studied a similar degree overseas. He told me to just do the first year, learn the essentials, and then quit. This is what he and his friends had done, and he said they were more successful and making "better" music than the people who stuck it out until the end. In his opinion everyone who finished the degree was brainwashed by the jazz education, and the music they were making was either boring, complicated or weird.
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My research into vista led me to the name Gwendolyn, which led me to Merlin, which led me to wildness. Merlin was also a seer, which connects nicely back to the word vista. Other vista-connections that found their way into this were kaleidoscope, clarity and vision.
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This one came out easily, unlike most of my recent attempts. My starting prompt was venetian blinds.
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Back at home, Monday. Following on from the shell-on-the-windowsill theme of the previous day with trinket on a shelf.
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A second song written and recorded while camping, my starting prompt was brittle.
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It's school holidays and my teaching load has lightened up, so I spent a leisurely amount of time on this song. I have found through this project that I often run out of steam half way through a composition, particularly when it comes to writing second verses of lyrics. All my best ideas from writing exercises usually end up in the first verse or section of lyrics, and then there is pressure for the second part to equal the first in quality, and also move the song along somehow. I find a more traditional pop song structure much harder to write in a day, but these less traditionally structured songs come much easier. I treated this one a little like a painting, with both verses adding new layers to the picture.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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