Silent Stream

Episode #156: The Silent Stream (Song starts at 27:16) I was sitting at the piano and found myself starting to compose a song. Then I had the idea to stop, head into my studio and write the song, while recording the process. I’m glad I did. Earlier in the week, I was sitting beside a stream, where I was camping. You’ll get to hear the sound of the stream bubbling along. For this episode, I read a piece of writing which I wrote when I was sitting in the sun. I Describe the process of walking up a stream, trout fishing: ‘Fishing a stretch of river that might take 5 minutes to walk beside can take an hour to fish properly. It’s seemingly timeless time, a meditation for the senses. The quiet music of the river and the bird calls, the dusty green of the bush against a powder blue sky. It’s a great way to start the day…’ The point of sharing this writing with you is to try to show how being out in nature really relaxes me. It gets me into the relaxed meditative state required to write a song. It fills the well. I mention the song ‘Timeless Time’ by Paul Dredge and myself. It’s about this (from the album ‘Walking Through A Dream’ – streaming now on: Spotify, Apple Music, etc. here it is on bandcamp https://petepascoe.bandcamp.com/track/timeless-time ). Back at home, the lyrics came along unexpectedly, as a result of me sitting outside, listening to nature – but there’s no stream in my backyard.. so I thought… sitting by the silent stream… hmm, the creative realm? Watching the clouds drifting by?…so I wrote the lines that came to mind. Then the next day, I sat at the piano and just let a riff happen. It had the peace of a river sort of feeling. So I had a sing. Then I paused the process to setup the studio to record this episode. There’s a line ‘til the minutes have no meaning’. While finding the river audio, I stumbled across some audio of myself talking about this idea, the week before I went camping. That surprised me as a couple of weeks later, the concept came through clearly and ended up in the song. So songs can begin with ideas that sort of just pop into your mind, out of sequence on a timeline. As a creative person, you sense it’s one of those moments, so you record it or write it down somehow. The beginning of this song was a series of moments like that. Then I got into the studio and steered it through to a point of being a good demo. Join me on this podcast …fishing, at a stream; at the table in my backyard; in the piano room where I teach; at the piano in my lounge…. and in the studio as I write a song this week. Eventually, at the end I sing the finished song (and play it on the piano). I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording basically how I write a song from ‘go to whoa’. It’s a relaxed, entertaining 30 minutes of chat, with lots of piano, The lyrics to ‘Silent Stream’, the painting I mention and more writing from the morning spent beside the stream are all on my my blog this week. Here’s the link. Creations in music and art https://petepascoe.wordpress.com/ Enjoy.