30 Days of Songtaneous
Last month (September), I revisited my 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project.
It’s becoming an annual tradition to use this improv practice to find musical flow, generate new ideas, and explore/enjoy my instrument.
I did my first 30 Days right here on the Songtaneous blog while I was taking a year-long vocal improv course. I was looking for a way to work on my improvising skills so I created the following practice: Each day for a month, I record an improvised 3-minute solo with no edits and share it. When I started that meant recording and writing a daily blog post here; these days it means posting to social media (and then sharing here on the blog 😉).
I get to record as many 3-minute songs in a day as I want and I allow myself two takes of any idea — in case something really is trying to come through, and I can’t quite find it or there’s an interruption of some kind (car alarms, planes, people, etc.). The last step is to choose an improvisation I like and post online.
This is the third year I’ve shared this project via social media, but, as some of you know, I usually do it in November. However, I did 30 Days in September this year because I have been writing and developing a solo show as part of a theater/performance fellowship called Naked Stages alongside three other artists at Pillsbury House + Theater in South Minneapolis.
Over a 7-month period of mentorship, workshops, and one-on-one work with our chosen directors, I and my fellow artists (see what I did there? 😉) are creating 30- to 40-minute solo works that we’ll perform on stage over two weekends in November.
I’ll share more about the work I’ve been doing to find and create my show, but I can tell you that I used the September 30 Days project to help inspire some new songs for it.🙂🎶
For now, please SAVE THE DATES! Our shows run six nights – November 14-16 and 21-23. You can learn more about all of the shows on the Pillsbury House + Theater web site. It’s also where you can buy tickets and Pillsbury is again offering, pay what you can pricing.
