Home is home but it's not home

So it's becoming pretty clear what my day patterns are like at the moment. Write/practice. Today I wrote another song. What a productive streak I'm on! I hope I don't come back to these songs next week and go, "Oh they're shit." I think I'll go out tomorrow though so I get out of the house and move about. As good as it has been I don't think it'll be very good being locked away at home for much longer. I was on such a roll today though that I even skipped lunch. I can see how from another's perspective what I'm doing at the moment is so bum/futile. It's the stereotypical story about a 'musician' trying to 'make it.' And it kind of totally is that.... I don't know how I feel about that.

I started playing the iphone game 'Draw Something' yesterday and man I'm hooked! Today wasn't that productive in terms of writing and it wasn't because of Draw Something. So I used the day instead to practice. One of the songs that I've written has a slow, shuffle feel and it's really hard to nail. I recorded myself playing it on the keyboard and I was shocked to listen back to it because I didn't realise how erratic my playing was. So I focused on getting the feel right - playing tighter, more consistent and working on some chops that I've totally lost in the last 4 years of popular music study. Last night before bed I spoke to Bryan on the phone over Viber. It was great talking to him as it's been a while. He's in London at the moment and it was really weird when I got up this morning. He was on facebook and he'd had an action packed day and was winding down. He'd somehow gotten front row seats to the Billy Elliot show. Meanwhile,...

Today was another day of fruitful writing. And I woke up a bit earlier than yesterday too as promised. I'm excited for the possibilities these new batch of songs may bring. I realise the absolute worst may happen and nothing may come of it and I'll end up back at square one. But that's something that I'll strive to avoid and it keeps me working harder. I'm a working musician, and it makes me proud to be able to say that. Tonight I went for a run. It was dark but the temperature was just perfect. It was the first bit of exercise I've had since arriving in Australia. I only went for about 15 minutes but by the end I was totally knackered. Light headedness kicked in and I made the amateur mistake of showering too early after getting back because I was still sweating after the shower. Dang! But I felt so good afterwards. Peak: Run and song Pit: Waking up

Seeing as I'm not gonna go out there to look for a conventional full time job, I'm going to try 'do music' as if it's my job. On days I have nothing planned, I intend to be working on something - whether it's practicing my instrument or writing or arranging or whatever. So today I was going to wake up early to start this thing but that didn't happen as I went to bed too early last night. But when I did get up, I was very productive. I finished a song and I'm very chuffed with it. It's not the song that I was working on last week. I've kinda gone off that one unfortunately but I think it's a good thing. Now I have lots of time and I can work on crafting and perfecting these songs - not necessarily being precious with it but just doing the whole process well... properly. And to my surprise, it was quite a fulfilling and thrilling experience. I thought about how much further along I'd be if I did this during uni. All those days spent doing...

Tonight was my first performance in Australia. What a night to forget it was! I never knew 20 minutes could feel so long. The only thing good about it was that there were only about three people in the audience to witness such a disaster. There was a band that played before us and oh my goodness they were spectacular. I chatted to a couple of them for a bit and they were nice too. The other two were dicks though, unfortunately. But man, when they hit the stage they were incredible! My new favourite band. The crap thing about it was that I had nothing to show. They left during our set and I know it was because it was terrible and rightly so. The songs were shocking, the guy can't sing in tune, the venue's amp I was using was crapping out and so there would be moments of silence randomly in the middle of a song. I felt so uncomfortable and powerless to do anything about it. The guy kept stopping whenever the guitar buffered as well instead of pushing through like a professional...

Not much time for mucking around, it was work, work, work, work, work. Unbox, put it in the right place, flatten box, next box, unbox etc... it was very repetitive but necessary. In amongst that was the furniture placement, appliance setting up like T.V.'s and stuff. It's actually been quite interesting as normally my brother does most of those sorts of things. I'm useless when it comes to DIY stuff, knowing what goes where, how to fix blah etc. But the last couple of days I've had to take on the mantle and get things done myself as my brother is still in New Zealand and won't get here 'til at least the end of the month. From translating for my parents to get all the power, internet, that sort of stuff sorted, to filling out forms so the landlord knows of any damages to the house before we moved in, and more. I don't have the luxury of being the lazy younger child that gets off the hook for not doing much. We managed to get most things sorted today. Downst...

Today we moved into our new place. It's in a suburb called Ashburton, south-east of the CBD. There are shops only a minute walk away from our place so it's in a pretty good location and it's not too shabby around here too. It has a sort of Mt. Eden-esque feel about it but minus the Mt. It was a very stressful day. Lots and lots of unpacking and moving and physical labour stuff. We had a bit of an issue with the movers because they were being dicks. Apparently their policy didn't include moving the boxes into the right rooms. In our time, we've never had this issue before and everything always gets taken to the correct place (and we've moved around quite a lot). Also, it was raining on and off and they didn't have mats and things to lay out on the carpet - surely for a moving company it's something they should all have. So there was lots of phone calls being made to track down the boss, which was a bit of a mission, but in the end we got what we wanted ...

Sunday night is going to be my first gigging experience in Australia. I went over to the guy that I'm playing guitar for's house in the afternoon and we paced through his songs. He'd already given me the songs to learn so it went pretty smoothly. He didn't really have any idea on what he wanted in terms of arrangement so I was free to do what I wanted. We got through everything pretty quickly. I wasn't too keen to stick around for too long. Afterwards I popped Kate a text as I was in the area. She was just chilling at home so I went over to her's for a bit. Her flat is looking a lot more homely now than it did when they had their flatwarming. They've now got couches, tables etc - general furniture stuffs. At night I took Dad's car out to St. Kilda. There's this competition for unsigned artists that's running in a bar called Robarta there every Thursday nights until mid-April. I wanted to go check it out so I dragged Alice B along with me as s...

Yay! We've got a permanent place to live! - For the next 12 months. It's in an area called Ashburton and it's right by the train station so super handy for travel. I'm excited. We move in on Friday. I went out for lunch and other than that spent the majority of the day at home doing tedious stuff. Also, a lot of time was spent on the phone sorting out crap for the new place such as power, water, internet etc. Tedious, but necessary. Peak: Hearing the news of the new house Pit: The formalities that come with that great news

Lygon St. has heaps and heaps of Italian restaurants on it. It's on the border of the CBD and close to where Alice C and Kate are flatting. So, they invited me along to have lunch with them at one of the Italian places. They picked out the cheapest one and we met there. Again, thank goodness for iPhones. Nothing is impossible with them in your possession. The place was really cool. It was quite hot today so we sat outside and it was perfect. The food was good. Parfait! By the way, my confusion with the trains here ended a little while ago. It's not actually laid out that bad - I was just looking for the wrong things in the wrong places. Plus, I could've made things a lot easier on myself the first time I tried to use the trains by doing a bit of research online. Roar! I got home to the news that mum and dad have found a house to rent. They've got to go in again tomorrow morning to finalise the details and sign the papers but it's pretty much locked in and FINA...

I can't really remember what I did exactly on this particular day, but I don't think I went out anywhere exciting. I think I stayed home and continued writing my songs. A pretty 'meh' dayyyyyyayayay. Can't do the peak and & pit for today!

Tonight I started writing again. I haven't really done much of that since arriving in Australia. It feels quite good and I'm also feeling inspired. I'm not stuck and struggling for ideas. In fact, I think I have enough ideas to have to write a few songs at the same time. I think even at uni when we had to write 2 songs for an assignment I always did one and then wrote another so this will be interesting. There's an unsigned artists band competition on at the moment in St. Kilda and it'll run for another month or so. I'm going to check it out next Thursday and see if I want to have a crack at it. I now realise I need to play my own shows. Like actuals. It's not just a realisation and non-act thing - I gotta act! So, these songs I'm starting on will be in a similar mould, I think. I'll aim to make them so that they can work together in a set rather than being of totally differing genres. Excitement! Peak: Write, write, write, write Pit: Saturday n...

Tonight was Kate and Alice Courtenay's flatwarming. They're flatting in a place in Parkville, which is slightly north of North Melbourne. It's pretty close to town and in an ideal location for Kate to go to uni. I met Alice Bresnahan in town beforehand and we trammed together to the place. We were one of the first ones there! Also, when we got there Kate was upstairs and everyone thought she was out somewhere so we had to run the whole introductory process on our own for a little bit. On top of that, they forgot to tell us that it was a 70's themed party (thank goodness not too many people dressed up for it). Most of the people there were in their 2nd year of study but were the age of 3rd years. Lots of small talk here and there. I'm starting to get tired of the small talk but I realise it's totally a necessity. Lots of people seemed to be studying commerce or politics at the party. Snore. I had checked earlier in the day when the last train to get home was....

I headed out to an area called North Melbourne in the afternoon. It's just north of the CBD as you can imagine. I went there to meet this guy. He was advertising online for a guitarist so I hit him up and there I was. He was a pleasant guy, slightly awkward, a little bit older - maybe late 20's. He looked aged - and I mean that in the "experienced" way, as if he'd been through some stuff rather than him looking old. He works ungodly hours at a casino as a blackjack dealer. He saved up and he used that to record an album. That's pretty admirable stuff. DIY. I asked him about his music stuff - ambitions, plans, those sorts of things and he didn't really seem to have too much vigour although it was obvious that he would love to be able to make a living from it. It was an odd situation because I was finding myself having to lead the conversation and probe about things whereas I was thinking he would've been interested to know lots about me - after all, h...

Mum's in Melbourne! I was in a bad mood for a bit though 'cos I really couldn't be bothered going out to the airport. I saw no point in me going with dad. I wanted to play on my keyboard. But I got dragged out anyway. It's frustrating driving around with dad at the wheel because he doesn't drive properly sometimes. It's not that he's a bad driver but sometimes he doesn't feel the need to think quick and drive 'properly', which I guess makes him a bad driver. I felt really tired the whole day, I'm not sure why. I got plenty of sleep. Maybe not having a permanent house sorted still is taking a psychological toll on me. I still haven't heard back from Molina Musique. She's been ignoring my texts and e-mails. Bitch! I was pretty direct with my e-mail too saying that I'd appreciate hearing from her regardless of what she had to say, just so I knew what was happening. Perhaps I should've called her to be ultra direct. Oh well, n...

Alice Bresnahan came over in the morning to inspect and clean the place. She brought along her kids that she babysits. Two spoilt and cute little girls. My Dad came to pick me up and Alice was going to help me take some of my stuff down. Alice decided to leave them in the apartment for 2 minutes while she did that. As I left I turned and said to them, "You'll never see me again," and then both Alice and I left. As we closed the door suddenly we heard an almighty scream and banging on the walls. They had misunderstood me and thought they were getting totally abandoned haha. Definitely not what I had intended although I admit, it was a weird thing to say in the first place. The place we are moving into is a flat owned by the catholic church that my parent's friends go to. Their church building is not theirs - they share it and so they use this flat for their rehearsals and prayers and stuff. There are bedrooms upstairs so we do get our own privacy as they only us...

Tonight is the last night that we will stay at this apartment. It's been quite good to us. We couldn't have asked for a better location as it's in the heart of the city. It was small - especially with having three of us stay there (it has 2 bedrooms) but it did the job. We didn't ever run out of space. Having said that, I'm thoroughly looking forward to sleeping somewhere else. This apartment gets zero natural sunlight. It's designed in a weird way so that all the apartment windows face in towards each other and the rooms are architecturally designed in a box shape - so the building is a box and in the middle, between the rooms is a small, random courtyard that no one uses at the bottom and then nothing all the way up to the top of the building. Yes, this means that when curtains are left open you get wide open views into other people's flats. Apart from feeling gloomy and depressed all day if you stay inside, the worst part was sleeping. I'd wake up...

Over the last few years, I have not spent quality time with my Dad. I hit puberty - I didn't wanna chill with Dad. I was too pre-occupied with going out with friends and being cool. Then at the start of my 7th form year, my parents took over a korean restaurant in town. The result of this was that my mum and dad were having to work almost 12 hour days, 7 days a week for about a year until stability with the internal workings of the restaurant was achieved. After that, they got half and sometimes a full day off per week. Obviously, this meant that I didn't get to see all that much of my parents. On their days off, they'd usually want to actually  want to have a day off, and fair enough. When my parents finally sold the restaurant mid-last year, I was busy with uni, I was flatting, they went on holidays, so we still didn't see each other much. Holidays came and I left for Korea. So today, I set aside everything else to spend a day with Dad. He came to pick me up in hi...

I spent the majority of the day doodling around on my new keyboard. I hooked it up to Ableton Live and I'm having trouble getting my head around the whole thing. I tried to work it with Logic and I'm having a few issues with that too with trying to assign some of the key commands. Ironically, some of it is a little bit illogical. It's been a day of trolling through forums and junk to try find my answer. I'm definitely excited at the prospect of figuring it all out though. Once I do, I think it will open up a whole new world of possibilities, mainly in live performance. My thinking is that to be noticed, I'm going to have to have a point of difference - something that sets me apart (not alienating) that will draw people in. This is a good way to do that, I think. It's also something I've always wanted to be able to do as I see it as a way forward. Also, I want to meet lots of other musicians - but I want to meet 'good' ones. The best way I've th...

I took the train to the location of the 'audition.' I got there ten minutes early! A tick in the girl's book, I'm sure. The girl's name is Molina Musique (I'm pretty sure that's a stage name). She's a singer who's signed to a British label and she's on the lookout for a guitarist. I think I did a good job. She seemed impressed at the fact that I wasn't intimidated by her intenseness and had opinions and ideas to make things 'better.' She even said herself, "I'm hard to work with..." I'd gathered that from the messages we've been trading but I think I'm OK with that just as long as I'm respected and it's not unreasonable. I probably shouldn't say too much on here. Anyway, she mentioned maybe going to the UK sometime in the year all expenses paid for. That sounds pretty good and IF it happened it'd be the precise example of why I don't want to take a contract job. But we'll see - expe...

Marc texted me today saying he was going to a comedy night in town with a few friends and that I should come along. Marc is the French-Canadian musician I met whilst house hunting a couple days ago. So, I took Kate along and the venue turned out to be not too far from where we're staying. They were already there when we arrived. There were new faces to meet. Most of them were also foreigners. There were four Germans, two of them were just visiting the other two who have permanent residence. It was a fun and relaxed atmosphere and we joked around and had good conversation over a few drinks. Flip, the price of alcohol here is very expensive. We didn't even end up going into the comedy night. They had thought it was $5 and it turned out to be $12 and the German visitors thought they'd only be able to understand half of it anyway so they decided they'd rather spend the money on alcohol. We didn't really mind. It was heaps of fun being in the company of new peop...

So yesterday I heard back from one of the people I e-mailed for a job. She's a singer looking for a guitarist to do a few gigs with her and do some studio time. She's requested a video of me doing an original or a cover. It wasn't the sort of response I was expecting as she asked me to add her on facebook and put it on her wall. I was expecting more of a "hey, let's meet up and see" sort of thing but I went with it anyway. This is what I did. It says "good pay" in the job description so fingers crossed aha. I spent the rest of the day trolling through the interwebs. I must've e-mailed about 30 people today. I'll probably only hear back from about five. Peak: Playing an instrument and singing for the first time in a while Pit: Job searching

Today was a day of making some friends. I went to view another flat in Yarraville. I went knowing that I was probably not going to take the place as I had decided to live with my family already. But, the guy in the ad mentioned how he was a musician and he had lots of gear so I pretty much went to meet him. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He's a bit older, French-Canadian called Marc and he's been in Melbourne for a year and a half. He's looking to make a band so we're going to have a jam sometime. He looks like he knows what he's doing too and not just 'one-of-those-people.' He had lots of cool gear and a sweet set up at his house. I would've loved to have taken the place but it's unfurnished and quite difficult to get to via public transport. There happened to be another guy there looking at the place at the same time. His name is Michael and he's an Aussie. I let them know that I probably couldn't take the place and so it wasn...

I met up with Dad this morning at the optus phone store. It turns out he had left his phone at home and he hadn't lost it. So, we went back to ask optus if it was too late to cancel our transfer over from vodafone. It was a painstaking process as we had to make lots of calls and we were on hold most of the time. I totes got sick of the 'on hold' instrumental tune playing. I never want to hear the progression I - II - IV and then in the chorus IV - V - vi on repeat again. I've decided not to go for the house I saw yesterday. Instead, I'll just move in with my parents when I have to move from the apartment I'm in at the moment. It'll save me money and it'll also mean that I can take my time in finding a job I actually want as opposed to having to settle for one just to make rent. Peak: Again, not much! Pit: Optus' shit customer service