One insanely creative day!

It started at 1.30 in the morning....

It's not like I'm an insomniac or anything (though sometimes I wonder if I am!) but I never seem to be able to sleep till at least twelve at night.

Still, that night I actually had a decent reason to be up at that hour. I'm not going to go into details, cause it was quite a confusing scenario and I'm still not quite sure what the full story was. It's significant enough to say that I was really worried about one of my friends from the hostel and as a result stayed awake just in case there was anything I could do to help. Though eventually the lateness got the better of me, I felt like I should be doing something even though there was nothing I could do, so I determined to stay awake until the whole thing was resolved.

However I was so tired by this point that I had to do something, anything to keep my eyes open. And with no reading material to turn to, I suddenly had a spur-of-the moment decision to write some songs.

This was actually probably the best idea I could have. I'd been feeling some sort of creative lapse all year, maybe as a result of being band-less for awhile.... I hadn't wrote any songs for months, and even lyrics, which usually come really easy to me, had been hard to find.

I didn't really have any idea of anything when writing those two songs. I just started writing, and it flowed from there.

Anyway, I only managed to get one song finished and started on another one before my tiredness finally got the better of me and I crashed out on my bed.

I had band rehearsal at 11 at UCOL today which was good cos it allowed me to get at least a little sleep! Despite being minus our drummer (we roped a few other people into help) it was actually a really good practice. We're doing blues at the moment which is such a cool genre, even though it's freakishly hard to play (well, the guitar fills & solos are at any rate..)! I still have got very little clue on how to play our control song, but at least we got some good advice by one of the teachers on the "feel" of the blues. I'm so used to playing fast and banging it out (albeit messily) that I forgot that was an important part of it.

The best part of practice today though was our 8-minute jam of "Sweet Home Chicago" by Eric Clapton. Our singer had left the room cos our time was up, but we kept going anyway. I wasn't even playing guitar cos our bass player had decided to take over (he's the man at playing guitar anyway), but I didn't want to just stand there and watch. Just for kicks I jumped over to the keyboard which was on and just started playing through the chords. Blues is mostly only 3 chords, so it wasn't really to difficult but I'm not exactly Mozart or anything so I think only every third note of mine was actually right... (I still have no idea how to play 7ths on a piano!). Still it was super fun anyway, and the first time I've actually done that in a band, improvise on an instrument I'm not really familiar with!

Speaking of that, I've actually been making a decent effort to try and teach myself piano lately. I don't know why, but something about being able to play multiple instruments is soooo much cooler than just sticking with the guitar (even though the guitar is still the coolest one out there!). So as well as my attempts at trying to play ukulele, I'm also trying to learn piano. It helps that there's sweet little keyboards at UCOL and I can just turn on Logic Pro, shove in some headphones and play the few chords/notes I know. I love Logic Pro, probably more than I should, considering I'm an actual musican whose never really subscribed to the idea of "computer music". But it's so much fun, and if you take out all the loops and play everything yourself, there's actually a fair bit of skill and creativity required! Can do some sweet recording with that! Honestly, if I had enough money I'd probably buy a Mac and one of those MIDI keyboards.... but I don't, so yeah.
Anyway, as I was saying before I got slightly carried away talking about the wonders of technology, I'm trying to learn keyboard in that way by looking up easy sounding songs on Youtube and trying to play along. But I mentioned this to my teacher today and he said he might get me some easy piano music to learn if I want. Score!

Anyway, after all that creativity, we had a songwriting class in the afternoon where we had to compose a song about a blues performer (in a blues style of course). We got Stevie Ray Vaughn and wrote a song about how he died in a helecopter crash. Slightly morbid, but it was cool anyway. Nice little exercise under pressure, and I helped with the lyrics this time. :)

After classes I stuck around and tried to compose some more blues tunes to the half a song I'd wrote at 2 in the morning... I kinda got somewhere but it wasn't sounding fabulous, probably because I was trying to write it in a minor key and I can't even sing that well in a major key....
I gave up after awhile and went back home.

I finally had a breakthrough in the songwriting after tea though, where I at last wrote a full song. I'd got the lyrics about 1 in the morning, wrote it all out and then fell asleep.... it was relatively easy to write actually once I'd decided on a key. It's a nice, simple, yet cool little song and I was pretty stoked cos I wrote it on the ukulele too! (One of my goals for summer was to write an original song on the uke!). For the lyrics go here:

I think it's safe to say I had a pretty full on day. And I'm still pretty tired from my mostly sleepless night... so I should probably be off now.
Drop a line if you feel like telling me what creative stuff you got up to today!

Night!