A wordless piece, the seed of the melody came from the bassline of yesterday's piece. Named for the clear Melbourne winter weather of the last few days.
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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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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.
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I have been having some really nice conversations with my friend Emilee Seymour lately, as she is visiting Melbourne from Paris for a few weeks. Today we went to the Australian Tapestry Workshop, which was a big leap back into my past. I posted about it on Instagram, and after a comment exchange with Lucy Roleff (a fellow Melbourne-based musician) I thought I would explore the issue of identity a little in today's blog.
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I love lyrics, words, text and poetry. They have always been the driving force of my composition practice, and I think Lydia's Needle from last week was possibly the first thing I've ever written without any kind of textual component. That makes today's contribution is my second ever instrumental piece (although can I call it instrumental even though I'm singing the melody?)
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I completed my Honours year in music at the Victorian College of the Arts last year, and studied with my friend Joanna Kerr who is a wonderful vocalist and composer. Her research was looking at "seeds" - small ideas that inform compositions, which in turn inform improvisations, which in turn offer up new material for composing and improvising with. I'm definitely over-simplifying her work, but that basic idea is central to this project. There are times when I find getting started on something impossible, often becoming paralysed by procrastination, and this project is attempting to circumvent that by offering a ready-made starting point. So far it seems to be working, as getting started today (day two) was much easier than yesterday. I'm still in the honeymoon phase of course, so I'll have to wait and see how long that lasts
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