From the previous day's gelatin to wishbone, dug out of a hot roast chicken. In my bone-related research I discovered that the wishbone used to be called a "merrythought", which is kind of nice.
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After my three improvised experiments using the glove mind map I used it for a little sung piece too.
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The third of my glove mind map improvisation experiments.
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The second of my glove mind map improvisation experiments.
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This is the first in a series of three experiments with a mind map for the theme glove. The mind map became a kind of graphic score, with a random starting point chosen and then the lyrics improvised in performance using parts of the mind map as prompts. This is similar to the way my brain works when I sit down to do a timed writing exercise, but I find it much easier to translate my thoughts to pen and paper rather than speech. This exercise was an interesting way to bypass the pen and go straight to my voice. I found it quite challenging, but resisted the urge to record second takes of any of the improvisations.
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In my attempt to catch up I allowed myself to just play around with the previous day's video for this one.
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Another spontaneous improvisation, taking the theme ring from the previous piece.
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I am not top of this project at the moment. I am chasing it, and, like a Will-'O-The-Wisp, when I run for it it retreats and I can never catch it up. This was meant to be Tuesday's piece, but I didn't manage to get anything done that day and ended up a song behind. I caught up on Wednesday, but then I spent Thursday editing this podcast episode in preparation for my gig with Lucy Roleff on Monday night, missed Thursday's song, and had to catch up again on Friday. There's a fine line between allowing myself to take a day off and catch up the next day when I really need to, and taking the day off and catching up the next day just because I can. I need to find the balance between the two.
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This one marks the end of four months worth of songs. Goodness gracious. Still so far to go...
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A very quick one, somehow connected to kaleidoscope but I can't remember now how I got here.
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Part three, I destroyed my installation and it was incredibly satisfying.
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The second in a series of three, playing with mirrors.
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Taking the them kaleidoscope from the previous day's song, I made a little installation out of tin foil and let it guide a series of improvisations. I played with light, breath and mirrors. This is the first in a series of three.
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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?
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For the next small set of pieces I worked with the theme vista. To help the difficulties I've been having motivating myself to write I decided to implement some rigour to my process. I adopted the pomodoro technique, and chunked my work into 25 minute blocks, both songwriting and all the other tasks I have on my plate at the moment. I have literally been carrying a kitchen timer around the house with me so that I can set it when I get started on something. This has made the last few days fairly manageable, and I have been able to maintain my focus for the short blocks of time.
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I had a little songwriting energy back, so I took the original Scuffle text and used that as the starting point for this piece. I kept the spirit of the previous video's randomness by improvising the melody and piano part. And by improvising on piano I mean randomly hitting white keys without much consideration for what I was playing. Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted that...
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This is the first time I haven't actually recorded something new. Instead I decided to see what would happen if I reversed my reverse-talking video. Then I layered the non-reverse video over the top and did some video editing as my creativity for the day. So although I didn't record anything new I still created a new piece of art.
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I was quite busy with a show last week, so stretched for ideas I decided to write the text of the previous day's song out backwards and use that for a little improvisation. Hence Scuffle Reverse.
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From scuff to scuffle, to looking out my window and noticing the leaves blowing down the street.
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Letting go, I can create anything. Some notes generated from the word SPIDER, and an imagined soundscape of a spider working away.
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