Acceptance - Music to Grieve to

I’ve been writing music since I can remember.  My first memories are not of scales and baby Mozart, they’re of the piano in Singapore where Angels and Demons lived at opposite ends of the keyboard and played battles through my fingers.

I was three when I met my first piano teacher, eight when I wrote my first song, thirteen when I played my first rock show and sixteen when I wrote my first Hymn.  Yes – this track was the Hymn.

Written for a school music competition the task was to take the the Hymn “These Things Shall Be!” from the poem “A Vista” by John Addington Symonds 1840 – 1893 and create new music.

I think I came second!

My Father

The reason this track makes it onto the album is that my Father fell in love with it.   Out of all the things I had done it was this track that resonated with him and he asked for it to be played at his funeral.

When the time came – I couldn’t.  The piece wasn’t finished and it would have felt – just odd – weird and ultimately - wrong.

This version is solo piano – which is what he was familiar with – but I hear this with full orchestra and a bloody great church organ delivering a final crescendo - I think he would've dug that.

Acceptance & The Five Stages

This track was always going to be the last one on the album - and when I was still working with the idea of a track for each stage of the Kubler_Ross model, it was fitting that this was going to be called acceptance.

There is a hopefulness to the track - particularly in the coda where it’s all about imperfect and perfect cadences all resolving positively around the G major root.  The reality of grief is that life does go on, and while the grief may never fully subside, it does fade and we do get to feel good again.

Acceptance is about reaching the point where it’s OK to feel good again.  The final notes of the album are the opposite of the beginning, they are still the major triads but this time they are major and instead of descending, they are uplifting, ascending the keyboard to finish on a high, hopeful note.

FIND US ON SPOTIFY

We're going to be focusing a lot on Spotify over the coming year - it is by far the biggest revenue source for Musicto and music2work2 and the best way for you to support us is to listen to and share our playlists.

We will be developing the Music to Grieve to playlist by adding new tracks so make sure you choose to follow.

Aside from following Musicto and music2work2 on Spotify you can of course sign up for the email list.  We only ever contact you when we have new music available.

Loss - Music to Grieve to

I stopped playing after my father died.

It didn’t feel right.

While I was eventually able to transmute grief into music, those first few months - I had nothing.  

The word most prevalent in my journals at the time was “discombobulated” - and I was.  Weird, confused, unsure, unsteady - yes the world continued - jobs, families, lives - but everything seemed under a blanket - kinda like those allergy commercials where there’s a fog over the screen.

But there’s no pill for grief.  

There’s just time.  

It took me 3 months to play again and this was the first theme that came out.

Sad Music

This was written long before the idea of Music to Grieve to came about and the subsequent insight into how sad music can make you feel better.  It was written with my Dad firmly in the forefront of my mind.

I was thinking about his love of music - of his insatiable curiosity into how and where the music came from.  His library covered the lives of the great composers and dived deep into the (often times to me,) impenetrable world of Opera.  And while he appreciated all kinds of music and could dance to ELO or Alesha Dixon as well as anyone, it was Beethoven that remained his first love.

I remember the story of him as a medical student, volunteering on the ambulances in Edinburgh, riding down Princes Street singing snatches of the Eroica, whistling the opening themes of the Pastoral and yes - belting out the final movement of the great 9th Symphony.

They are joyous memories.

But this isn’t a joyous track.

This is a sad track.

It takes the uplifting triad of the Moonlight Sonata and flips it around, it takes the simple time signature and complicates and confuses it.

It’s descending, it’s in a minor key, it’s soft and delicate and it tears my heart out.

The end of the track, well - that’s wishful thinking.

The idea that I can take this melancholic feeling and turn into something hopeful - it almost works.  The last quarter of the track is indeed in a major key and while the piece is striving to finish hopefully - the final resolution at the end - the final notes of the track - resolve into a descending walk towards the bottom of the keyboard - and that's where they leave you - feeling down...

The Bench

This is Scotland. This is my Father’s bench.  My Mother had a local artisan create it from the managed forests and here it sits - looking down the 6th hole of Milnathort Golf Club - right where he was hit by a golf ball in 2014 and indeed where he had his fatal heart attack in March 2016.

“The Bench” had been the working title of the track but I knew that it wouldn’t make sense to people outside our family.  I was struggling to get the track names to fit neatly into the Kubler-Ross model and had initially thought this could fit “Denial” but once again it didn’t ring true.  When I finally abandoned the idea and thought what this track represented - what it meant to me - where it came from and how it was manifest - it was clear that this track is about loss.

Loss - when it’s still visceral - when you still think you can call them - when you’re still discombobulated and not sure when it will end.  

Loss - when it colors your every move and burns hot in your heart.

So yes - this is about loss, the loss of a loved one, my loved one, my Dad.

Find Us On Spotify

We're going to be focusing a lot on Spotify over the coming year - it is by far the biggest revenue source for Musicto and music2work2 and the best way for you to support us is to listen to and share our playlists.

We will be developing the Music to Grieve to playlist by adding new tracks so make sure you choose to follow.

Aside from following Musicto and music2work2 on Spotify you can of course sign up for the email list.  We only ever contact you when we have new music available.

Frustration - Death Of A Startup

Have you ever put your heart and soul into something for years and yet it didn’t work out?

If so, this track’s for you.

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I was on my dream job - working for a small independent record label, writing songs with the talent, arranging the music for and playing in the band, designing and executing on the marketing strategy - I was living my dream.

I still love and miss everyone on the gig and don’t regret a second of my time, but when it became apparent that I had to move on - this is the track that came out of me.

Death of a Startup

Grief is intensely personal - sure, you can experience it in tandem with family & friends but ultimately how it affects you is unique.  I always thought that grief was special, that it was something reserved for tragic events like the death of a loved one or the loss of a limb, that there was some kind of "grief threshold" that you had to pass before it was OK to feel bad.

But that's not true.

Nobody died on the gig but man did I weep when I thought of what should have been, of how things could have been different, of how much energy & time was spent to pursue what turned out to ultimately be, unreachable. 

When your venture fails - not only is there the loss of status, of position, of income - there is the horrendous guilt, the vicious inner voices that strip you naked and blame you for everything.

Depression

I wrote this track just before it got really bad, before the depression kicked in and I spent months barely keeping my shit together.  

They tell you that when you “go for” something you shouldn’t leave anything on the table - that you need to be all in.  Well - the only problem with that is when it ends, and you have nothing left, it’s practically impossible to stay out of “the hole.”

Sure you function, you maintain family relationships, you move forward, you - to quote my Father “screw it up another notch” but inside you’re falling deeper and deeper with no rope, no ariadne thread and no flashlight.

So yeah - that’s fun isn’t it!?

Grief isn’t special

I grieved for the loss of the gig - for the loss of my dream and my time and for everybody else.  It took me a while - a good 6 months at least - but I did come out the other end and yes - thankfully, was all the stronger for it.

Grief can hit you whenever

Don’t let anyone belittle your grief - getting that shit out of your system is what it’s all about.

Why Frustration?

The frustration I’m referring to is not the angry, cheated emotion – it is the sad one.  The frustration of not getting what you want - to be frustrated in one’s efforts.

It's the emotion that quietly grows inside of you, ignoring your pleas of mitigation and requests for more time.  It's the emotion that leads you through the awful decision process which results in you having to share with people you have lived and loved with for years that you can no longer see the future.

It's the emotion that ultimately leads to loss - and that's why it is on this playlist.

Music to Grieve to Playlist on Spotify

CODA: ______________________________

As for the gig…

It was a Country gig - I love Kelli like a sister and no matter how you cut it - we write well together.  We wrote over a hundred songs and worked up over 50 with a live band.  I reckoned we had a killer album and possibly two great ones.

Kelli was always clear she wanted to sing in front of a great band.  The quality of the players that came through was astonishing, cats that played for Diana Ross, Eddie Money, Ben Harper, Stirling Brig, The Clash, Serj Tankian, A Perfect Circle, Eagles of Death Metal and more, for me it was an amazing education.

Unlike founders of tech startups my product is still kicking around the internet.  If I want to remember how we looked and played I can go here - but my favorite memory is a loose rehearsal right at the beginning of the project - two microphones in the room - nothing fancy - just a song and a band beginning to come together:

And now - although I still reflect on what could have been - now I remember the good times and remember what was.

And smile.