The Project

In the last 18 months or so I've rediscovered something about myself. I like playing the piano.

No. That's not right. I really fucking love playing the piano.

Currently, I have two piano projects
# 1: Make the most valiant attempt I can to learn how to play jazz.
# 2: Compose 12 solo piano pieces in 2012.

#1 seems like it's going to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.

This blog is about #2. Without question #1 will exert a big influence.

Making music has always been a big part of my life. Even when I thought I'd 'given up' it snuck in. I didn't formally define it as making music but I sang in community groups, I became a capoeirista and I joined a Bloco de Samba Reggae. I was of course making music but somehow my brain didn't see it that way. Eventually life and music lead me back to the piano which I loved playing as a teenager. As I started relearning how to play, and learning jazz piano, I also started to compose. This is a project for me to channel and shape my rediscovered passion into something relatively tangible.

The first seed was a quote by the broadcaster Ira Glass that did the rounds as a facebook link last autumn.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

Shortly afterwards twitter directed me to this from Kurt Vonnegut. Good compost for my growing idea.

'...go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.'

So I thought why not? Why not just try and compose some more stuff? And quietly share it via the magic of teh interwebs. Not too much fuss and fanfare but also have courage and put it out there. Shortly after deciding that this is what I wanted to do I discovered an absurdly simple way of recording from my piano to my computer. The seed germinated.

So here I am. Planning to compose 12 pieces in 2012. I know 12 doesn't seem like that much and it's not the weekly output Glass recommends (though he's talking about writing words, I think). I'm still quite slow at writing music. I have a day job and a number of other committments. Including project #1. I think this is a realistic target.

Some of my pieces will be cliched and trite. Most of them will be very simple. Some bits will work. Other bits won't. Perhaps there will be some good bits. There will probably be some really bad bits.  Opinions will, doubtless, vary on which bits are which.

I hope you'll enjoy sharing the process with me.