This daily composition thing is curious; you look at a year ahead and think, ‘no way.’ But days go by, and if you can find an hour or so each day to be at the piano (or even not at the piano, when there isn’t one) with a pencil in hand and the manuscript book open, gradually you cover pages and the ideas seem to appear and it’s a habit, a bit like practice.
I’ve said already how 2016’s daily composition routine came out of a wish to forget or to make amends for a silly drunken New Year’s Eve. This time it’s different; January 1 simply dawned and I thought, ‘perhaps I’ll start writing again.’ I was clear of head because I’d drunk absolutely nothing on 31 December. Also, last year all I wrote was a piece for solo trombone that Simone de Haan had sought. Something very different, and something I’d not done before, but a good experience (and Simone liked it! Best news).
So today’s the eleventh, meaning we’ve ten tunes in the book. Here they are.
compositions 1-10.i.18 (NB I don’t know why, but no link ending in .pdf seems to work in my Safari. Sorry about that, if it’s your problem too.)
Each day you start, and think, ‘what have I got?’ The only proviso is that today’s should ideally not resemble yesterday’s, although you can see for yourself whether or not this is borne out.
My favourite at the moment among these tunes is probably no. 8, where I haven’t regularised the changes for improvisation but hope to leave them falling as they do in the head. Of course, favourites can change…
10/i/2018