I Hate Mornings

Darbucka is a venue like no other. It’s not the great food, the funky cushions and low tables or the fact that Steve Lawson plays his crazy and wonderful solo bass looping magic down there. It’s the silence. The silence of the room whose curtains and sofas eat every sound and the silence of the crowd who are there to listen, barely breathing. If it wasn’t so comforting it would be disconcerting.

Singers of what, now?

Let’s face it. Nobody’s going to turn up to a gig called Singers Of Twitter II at random. Everyone in the audience knew one of the performers. Which always makes for a friendly and fun gig. But not everyone knew us in real life. There were people there who only knew us from the ‘tubes.

I met @postdocal at the bar after my set. “You must know Steve, right?”, I said. “Nope, but I know some of your stuff and some of Steve’s from the net.”, she said.

People connect.

And that’s what it’s all about. People connect. The music has context. Three acts that would confuse the hell out of an average pub crowd suddenly seem normal, familiar. Lloyd Davis‘ ukulele songs are joyful and then breathtakingly melancholy. My musical tweets and quirky songs are surprising and funny. Steve’s bass playing is phenomenal and engrossing. Lobelia’s singing is stunning and sweet. We (and I mean the audience as much as the performers) are like a musical family enjoying an get-together around the piano. Except we’re only related by Twitter and the piano has morphed into a ukulele, two guitars, a six-string bass and a rack full of magical looping gizmos.

If only Lily Allen could have been there. She’d have loved it.

UPDATE: Quality video

@edent took a few videos at the gig. Here’s the Twitter song live!:

You should also check out Lloyd Davis and Steve Lawson playing All Of Me with uke and bass and Steve and Lobelia doing a wicked country version of You Spin Me Round with crowd singalong!

UPDATE: Beautiful feedback

I got some great messages after the show (Twitter can be such a happy place…):

_Jo_: Great eve at Darbucka listening to @ihatemornings performing songs to tweets, v amusing. Plus wine , nice grub and good company.

catstress: Home from fab night at darbucka – much fun & great to finally get to see @ihatemornings live…

guitartim: In more +ve news, loved the Darbucka gig tonight. @solobasssteve & @lobelia awesome as always, @lloyddavis uke-tastic, @ihatemornings genius

lobelia: @ihatemornings So lovely to finally see you play. You and @lloyddavis were on top form tonight! Such a fun night! x

solobasssteve: it must be said, @ihatemornings & @LloydDavis make for a top quality double bill. Glad to have them both on board for @officegigs :)

Louforyou: @guitartim @lobelia @solobasssteve @ihatemornings @_jo_ @j_ane @catstress THANK YOU for a special evening :-) #darbucka

There was an awful fuss last week about a company that analyzed Twitter and decided that 40% of it was ‘babble’. As it turns out, their client Philtro is a piece of software that filters Twitter, and their methods of analysis were laughable. To make matters worse they behaved like idiots in the aftermath, with wonderful comments like “If nothing else comes of our research, at least I know that Twitter is really full of self important people who have way too mcuh [sic] time on their hands.”

The fiasco prompted some interesting, thoughtful and occasionally inspirational blog posts from Twitter sympathisers, the best of which was a post by @glinner called The Conversation. It is in fact a direct response to yet another badly-researched Twitter piece in the broadsheets, but it presents a good answer to the ‘babble’ accusation:

…we are communicating with each other on a platform that encourages good manners, that rewards us when we’re interesting and lightly smacks our hand when we’re not. For the first time in history, the human race is having a global conversation, and despite all our differences, we actually seem to be getting on quite well.

Twitter is all about context, and that’s what you can’t see from the outside. Let’s take the classic ‘what I had for breakfast’ tweet:

Avocado on toast. Breakfast of champions. @aliteralgirl

This tweet is not:

• newsworthy;
• literary genius;
• life-changing;
• hilarious;
• sponsored by the Avocado Board with support from the Olympic Committee;
• inciting hatred;
• illegal.

Neither is it:

• boring;
• pointless;
• narcissistic;
• laughable;
• ridiculous;
• a sign that society is doomed.

But it is:

• cute;
• positive;
• polite;
• pithy.

I know @aliteralgirl.

If I didn’t know @aliteralgirl, and I were browsing the Twitter public timeline trying to classify tweets for some shonky PR research assignment, and one of the categories available was ‘Babble’, I would probably class this tweet as ‘Babble’.

But I happen to know @aliteralgirl. And she knows me. We talk in real life once or twice a week, and the rest of the time we’re part of The Conversation on Twitter. So when I saw this tweet I read it as shorthand for something like this:

I’m eating avocado. It’s after 11, so I probably overslept and might be late for my teaching job. I’ll probably have to cycle like a demon to get there, but once I’m there nobody will really care that I was late and I’ll sit staring out of the window as usual. So for now I’m quite amused that I’ve made myself a slightly quirky breakfast, and I’m glad to be able to share it with a handful of people who might be reading Twitter at the moment.

Rather than just reporting my breakfast, which is acceptable but mediocre I’m adding a comment. Staking a claim. Not only am I eating avocado on toast, I’m telling you, the world, that it’s a great thing. Breakfast of champions. If you want to be a champion, you should really be eating this. If I were publishing this in a newspaper, or standing on a street corner shouting it, I would probably choose different words. Something more straightforward, maybe. ‘I love avocado on toast’ or ‘Eat avocado on toast’. But given that my boyfriend (who will definitely read this) and most of the other people who regularly spot my tweets generally have a certain quirky, British sense of humour, I’ve written it as a deadpan advertising slogan knowing full well that everyone will understand the spirit in which it was written. Except maybe the girl who’s watching the public timeline and classifying tweets. She’ll probably put it in the ‘Babble’ box.

You see, this tiny bit of babble is part of a huge conversation. My interpretation is only one of many, and the conversation carries over seamlessly into real life. You might even say that, in this case, the online part of the conversation is an extension of the real life part.

A justimanifestification for the Tweet Suite

I get a bit antsy and embarrassed when artists start to justify and explain their work, or produce manifestos, or make claims about the effects their work has on the world. But sometimes art does have a relevance beyond the aesthetic. Feel free to slap me round the face with a trout if I’m disappearing up my own arse, but I think the Tweet Suite has a message, albeit a simple one:

Babble is valuable in context.

In the context of a conversation, babble has value. With the Tweet Suite I’m setting babble to music, and that gives it context and therefore value. By making the avocado on toast tweet into an annoyingly catchy jingle, I’ve given it an unexpected life beyond its fleeting appearance on a handful of screens.

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m writing the Tweet Suite (50 movements in 90 days) because it’s fun, it’s something interesting to talk about, and I work better to a deadline. But whenever Twitter gets accused of being babble, I’m going to jump on a chair and give an impromptu performance of Movement 7 of the Tweet Suite. So if you see a 9-foot fop singing about avocado on toast, you’ll know what’s going on. And I’d appreciate it if you could join in with the harmonies at the end.

The 50/90 Challenge started a couple of days ago. The Challenge is to write 50 songs in 90 days.

I took part last year, and wrote loads of great songs (and a few silly ones). But the ones that really caught my imagination were the 12-second songs I wrote right at the end. So this year I’m writing short songs. Not 12 seconds, but definitely under a minute.

I’m going to find 50 brilliant tweets and set them to music. I’m calling it Tweet Suite:

Help me find the best tweets

So far I’ve found a few sites that claim to list the “best tweets”, but none of them have really delivered what I’m looking for. Maybe you can help. I’m not after funny tweets – setting them to music would be weird and horrible. I’m looking for the kind of tweets that make Twitter seem worthwhile. The tweets that inspire you. The tweets that restore your faith in humanity without being humourless. You know what I’m talking about.

You can submit tweets (or tweeters) to me in a few different ways:

• Tag them 5090tweetsuite on Delicious.
• Retweet and tag them 5090tweetsuite on Twitter.
• Send me a link on Twitter, email or Facebook
• Post a comment on this article.

I’ll put up a page with the candidates and the songs as I write them once I’m a couple of weeks into the challenge. Wish me luck, and keep your eyes open for brilliant tweets…

It’s been a busy week in Benville. I’ve been selling tickets, plastering posters and organising video, wireless, poetry, comedy, pianos and shrubs for Ben’s Big Gig.

Ben’s Big Gig posters

The highlight has been the beautiful new gig posters. Nick Gill printed them by hand (on a proper old-school letterpress), and blogged about it. Xander and I then spent a pleasant afternoon pottering around North Oxford and charming our way into the most bizarre shop windows.

Still rehearsing

We’re still hammering out the details of the set and coming up with quirky and amusing vocal harmonies to lift the arrangements to a new level of pop genius. Here’s a little treat from the phone camera archives:

http://www.vimeo.com/4069996

I was in a quandary. I had less than two weeks left in the 50/90 Song Challenge, and 30 songs left to write. Times were tough. I needed a short cut, but I couldn’t bring myself to cheat. So I did something in between…

Limitations are your friend

Creative people often talk about the benefits of boundaries and limitations to your creativity. No designer will start a project without a well defined brief. A blank sheet of paper is a useless way to start writing. That’s one of the reasons why I took on the 50/90 Challenge in the first place.

I really enjoyed writing the 12seconds.tv song, and it got a good reception when I played it at the Oxford Geek Night. A 12-second song has to rely on humour, simplicity, clarity and great words. And when you need to write loads of songs quickly it’s a godsend!

A micro-songwriting process

I only had about 4 hours to write, film and upload 12 songs, so I had to be brutally pragmatic. Armed with a 10×10″ sketch pad, a Moleskine full of title ideas and a 2B pencil, I set to work.

I have had a title suggestion form on my website for a few weeks, so I had about 30 potential titles copied into the notebook along with ideas I have captured in the wild. It’s always useful to have starting points on hand when you’re pressed for time.

Because my mind works best with systems and structures I divided a page of the sketchbook neatly into 16 equal squares, room for 12 tiny songs and 4 bad ideas. That way I could afford to spew out ideas quickly safe in the knowledge that the crap ones wouldn’t make the cut. It’s never good to be worrying about the final quality when you’re trying to create. Nothing’s good until you make it good.

It didn’t take long to fill the grid with lyrics. Some came from the title book, some were picked out of the air. 4 of them were crap. ;o)

12seconds.tv

I recorded a song in iMovie, exported it as a MOV, uploaded it to 12seconds.tv, and recorded the next one. The music was made up on the spot – I would work out a good setting for a particular line, record it and move on. The whole recording process took about 90 minutes, by which time I had an entire 144-second album online. A couple of people were even watching the videos go up as they were recorded!

YouTube

That was almost a week ago, and although they have been online for a while (and viewable in the 12seconds.tv widget on my website) I know more people will see them if they are on YouTube (especially after the Twitter song shenanigans;o). So today I edited them all together into a 2″54′ video and uploaded it to YouTube.

And here it is – the shortest album I’ve ever made!

Thanks for the titles!

• Kenneth Okumura for “Zipper flies make me cry” (via Facebook)
• Lloyd Davis for inspiring “Mr Ukelele”
• Greg Lucas for cowriting “Walking down the middle of the road” in the late 90s
• Nick Gill for inspiring “Saw”
• Laurie Nevay for “Oranges or Carrots”
• Anna Speddy for “Not My Forte”
• Ellie’s boyfriend Steve for “Virgin Trains”