Simon Fairbairn – Aural Antidotes for a Prescribed Life

Here’s June’s demo.  It’s a work-in-progress, but I think the drums and guitars are pretty much there.

Deferred Living

I’m sure we’ve all felt trapped in a job that we hate at one point or another.

For the record, the job I have at the moment is amazing – I get to design websites all day – so it’s not entirely biographical (or, at least, it’s not an up-to-date biography).  It’s a way of remembering those feelings of helplessness and to remind myself not to waste time doing jobs that I don’t enjoy for people I don’t like…

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Ah, songwriting. That baffling, difficult, inspiring, awkward, beautiful, frustrating, wonderful process – I’m stuck on the lyrics and a mid-section for this new tune and it really needs to be done by Sunday so it can be recorded and released.

It’s the 25th of June already and I haven’t done my New Track of the Month yet and I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get it done.

I guess it could be called writer’s block, but I don’t want to give it a name lest I bestow on it more power.  I guess it’s probably more to do with the infernal internal critic.

Anyway, next Monday should see the release of a brand spanking new song. Nice.

For about three months, I’ve been struggling to get comfortable singing a high E (same note as the open high E string on a guitar).  I was really hammering it every day – doing an hour of warm up exercises, learning songs that had that note and then practicing them for hours – and it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Every time I got up there my voice started to crack or it was strained and just sounded, well, ugly.  I felt like I was going nowhere and had started to consider the fact that this was the top of my head voice (which couldn’t be right, cause my falsetto goes all the way up to the C above middle C)

Then I went on holiday and had two weeks with no music at all.  It was all about the relaxing and enjoying the sun, the sea, the history and the amazing food.

Since I’ve been back I’ve been focusing on getting some paid work to tide me over and, as a result, I haven’t had much time for music.  I finally got around to picking up the guitar again yesterday and, almost immediately, wrote a new song.  The vocal melody had some high notes in it, which were pretty high but nothing that felt particularly uncomfortable or difficult.  In fact, they’re my favourite part of the song.

Yeah, you know where I’m going with this.  They were high E’s – a whole bunch of ‘em.  And they were easy.  Ever since then all them high notes have been flying out without a problem and not just on this new tune, but on all the songs that I was having difficulty with.

(I think they sound better, at least.  I’m in the process of recording this new tune and, when it’s done, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.)

I don’t know what happened in those couple of weeks I had off.  I suspect that, before I left, I was so focused on it that I forgot to let myself relax and enjoy it.  There are also theories kicking around that we continue learning something subconsciously, so perhaps that helped.  From The Fundamentals of Piano Practice, by Chuan C. Chang:

Therefore, as you practice, try to gauge your progress so that you can quit and go to something else as soon as a point of diminishing returns is reached, usually in less than 10 minutes. Like magic, your technique will keep improving by itself for at least several days after a good practice. Therefore, if you had done everything right, then, when you sit at the piano the next day, you should discover that you can now play better. If this happens for just one day, the effect is not that big. However, the cumulative effect of this occurring over months or years can be huge.

So, in future, if things start feeling too hard and they’re getting stressful, the solution seems to be just to stop doing them for a few days (or even a week or more), and they’ll get better by themselves.

Now, about that high F#…

Comments are welcome.

I’ve sworn of booze again. I’m currently on day 6. It would have been day 11 but one of my good friends from Bath came up and we ended up in a pub for a pint. Once upon a time, though, I managed to give up for three years just to see what it was like.

It was incredible – here’s what happened.

The Fog

The Fog is that dulled feeling that I had when I was between drinking sessions. I was using caffeine and other stimulants to try and relieve it, and at the time I thought I was doing OK, but it was only after I quit did I realise how Foggy things had become. I was suffering from kind of a morose listlessness and I struggled through days but, again, I didn’t realise how much of a struggle it was. That’s just how life was, and you got through it as best you could until the next time you could truly unwind.

After about a week, there was a tremendous clarity and brightness to everything. Also, joy. I think I might be more sensitive than most to the depressing effects of alcohol, so the bounce I got after it was all gone was pretty intense. I felt more alive than I had in a long time, more focused and enthusiastic. I actually started going out more after I quit because I had so much new energy.

The other thing about it was the control. I felt like I had more control over my life and my life’s direction. I felt like the world wasn’t just happening to me, that I could actually command it and change direction.

The People

This was the hardest part, to be honest: the constant peer pressure. When I told people, they kind of shifted nervously. I ignored it initially, but it got worse. People started to cajole, make fun, convince, bargain, do anything they could to get me to have a beer. Obviously it wasn’t as transparent as all that, but all those methods were there in one form or another. It’s like they felt I was judging them (I really wasn’t – they were my friends and family and I loved them for precisely who they were, drinks and all) and they couldn’t take it.

What this suggested to me was guilt. As if we all, to some lesser or greater degree, have thought about what the booze is doing to us and wondered if we wouldn’t be better if we stopped. No one does anything about it though cause, well, none of their friends do anything about it, not to mention the constant imagery that surrounds us.

To be honest, I don’t know if that’s what it was. I’m only going on the reactions I got, but that’s the feeling I got the most.

Also, I never knew how many different ways our culture tries to make drinking look glamorous. Sure, there are token attempts to show the dark side, but it was only when I was trying to stay away did I notice exactly how much went in to making booze look awesome.

What Happened Next…

…was that I caved to the constant pressure. Seriously, you’re not normal in the UK if you don’t drink (also, if you don’t have a TV – a Sky salesman came to my door the other day and I left him speechless when I told him I don’t watch any TV) and it’s really hard not to give in now and again. Now and again became more regular until, before I knew it, it was almost every night again. Just like everyone else.

So, finally, I’m here again. Ready to cut it out once more.

Do you think I’m an alcoholic in denial, or a pussy for not drinking any more? Leave a comment and let me know!