I can't quite believe it, but I have made it to the end of six months. I should write a proper update about how I'm feeling, but for now here's a song. My starting theme was slow, and branches of a mind map led me to the lyrics. The melody is mostly improvised save for a little hook, and a few questionable notes snuck their way in and will need to be plucked out when I finally get time to revisit all these songs and do something exciting with them. What that something might be, I have no idea yet.

SCP #175: Somewhere That Isn't Here

A song! As much as I have been enjoying playing around with light it also feels nice to spend time on some composition. I was woken very early the other morning, and sitting waiting for the sun to rise I began daydreaming about being on a plane to somewhere else in the world. I took light as my theme from the previous piece and spun that together with my travel imaginings. I was originally playing this on piano, but something about it sounded too much like musical theatre so I rearranged it for vocal loops and bass. I was back to late night recording, so everything is played very quietly.

SCP #136: At My End

This is yesterday's song. I didn't spend ages on it, but I did engage myself fully in the research, writing and recording process, which I must admit I haven't been doing recently. I'm perhaps regaining control over the project, and the other parts of my life too, and it feels very nice.

SCP #128: The Flat Of Your Hand On My Shoulder Blade

After my three improvised experiments using the glove mind map I used it for a little sung piece too.

SCP #121: A Cool Ring Beneath My Eyebrow

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.

SCP #91: The Grey Lady

My starting prompt doorway led me to this ghost story, which formed the basis of my writing exercises. I eventually gave up trying to turn my scribblings into some kind of traditional song and just had fun with my effects pedals instead.

SCP #85: Walnuts And Chestnuts

I spent yesterday afternoon trying to sort out a pedal/instrument setup for my gig this Thursday night with Joyce Prescher and Kerryn Fields. While everything was plugged in I recorded this short little vocal piece, continuing with the autumnal theme of the previous piece. I love to cook, and I love the change in produce each new season brings. Autumn is probably my favourite time of year, and as the song says, I have been waiting for walnuts and chestnuts.

SCP #71: Calendar Says Autumn

The calendar says autumn but the weather says summer, summer, summer. Indeed. It was over 30 degrees and humid yesterday in Melbourne, so I wrote about that. I feel like a broken record complaining about the weather, but I've never really had to really push through creative work in uncomfortable environments before. In the past I would have just taken a break for the day and gone to find somewhere cool to hang out, but there are songs to be written, so I might as well mine the discomfort for ideas.

SCP #67: Shiver

Yesterday I had to go into one of those huge city office towers to drop off some documents. It was the kind with a concierge in the lobby to direct you to the correct floor, and a stream of suits, motorcycle couriers and cycling lycra coming and going through the glass lifts. I spent a large chunk of my twenties quite unhappy in office buildings like this, and whenever I end up back inside one I feel very uncomfortable as the negative memories come flooding back in.

SCP #62: Moon Parade

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.

SCP #52: Butter Yellow

My first song of March. I'm writing this post from the library in air-conditioned comfort, taking a break from my hot and stuffy apartment. It might be autumn here in Melbourne now, but summer is still holding on. I uploaded this video from the library too, and was prepared with my songwriting notebook, water bottle and knitting to keep me occupied while I waited for it to upload. Except it took less than a minute to complete, so I lugged all that stuff down here for nothing. It seems slightly ridiculous, as a video of this length takes approximately two hours to upload on my home internet connection. I definitely think I'll be spending a lot more time in the library this year.

SCP #43: Read My Heart

For this piece I took a fragment of yesterday's melody, wrote the notes on scraps of paper and pulled them out of a hat to create a new melody. The first time I pulled them out, however, they were in perfect ascending scale order, so I discarded that melodic idea. If I were really giving myself over to randomness I should have gone with that first attempt, but I found the orderliness uninspiring so I had another go. Really, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make something interesting out of half a scale, and I didn't even give myself the chance to try. Next time I'll stick to my guns, and work with whatever material my methods throw up.

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 #36: A Pin On A Map

I have two younger sisters, and we are close in age and in friendship. My middle sister moved to New York last year, and although the internet makes it easy for us to send little messages back and forth throughout our respective days, it's not the same as having her here in Melbourne. I worked with the theme of distance from yesterday's piece, and wrote this for her. Recording it made me a little emotional, because I miss her, and reminds me of the power music has to move and change us, and make us think. Songwriting, for me it seems, is a balancing act between keeping unhelpful emotions out of the process, while allowing helpful emotions to flow freely through the composition and the performance.

SCP #31: Popcorn

Today marks the end of my first month of songs and I can't quite believe I've produced 31 new pieces of music in as many days. I can barely remember what I did last week, let alone the first week of this project. I think my next task has to be to book a gig, so that I have an excuse to workshop some of these songs to completion.

SCP #29: Selkie

So far the most reliable source of inspiration for this project has been folklore. I'm not sure if it's because I feel comfortable working in that kind of lyrical and thematic realm, or if it's just what I'm interested in right now, but I turned there again for today's piece. I started with the word skin from yesterday, and the first Google search result for "skin folklore" was selkie, which proved a fertile place to start.

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 #22: String Of Pearls

Just a quick post today, before I go and get a decent night's sleep. I kept on with the sea theme, and this piece is a kind of continuation of yesterday's story. Sonically it's structured in three sections: the sound of the waves above water, then the sound in your ears when you plunge under the water, and finally the sound of bubbles as they rush from your mouth.

SCP #21: The Sea

Week three down, only 49 to go. The end is nowhere in sight, but I'm still mostly enjoying myself. Yesterday was a first for me in terms of improvising on guitar and voice at the same time, today's piece is a first in that I've never really used my loop pedal with a guitar before, only with my voice. Each of these daily compositions give me a chance to try out new ideas, but they also give me a chance to struggle at actually performing them without much practice.

SCP #19: Dandelion

There are several recurring themes that are emerging in these pieces, and one is clocks. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with clocks, but they seem to be right at the top of my unconscious mind all the time and keep springing into my writing. This morning while I was teaching a singing student the clock in my studio fell to the floor and smashed. This was completely down to my inappropriate choice of 3M Hook size, yet it still felt somewhat significant. Perhaps the clocks in my house are sick of me writing about them? Or maybe they are crying out for attention in our age of digital devices with time-keeping capabilities. Either way, I chose clocks as a starting point for today, which led me to memories of "dandelion clocks" from childhood - when you would count the number of puffs it would take to empty the flower of its feathers and that would tell you the time

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