https://soundcloud.com/thetryingartist/small-animals

For my next song, an atmospheric instrumental that spirals slowly out of time. The spiralling not deliberate, of course.

For a bit, as the piano chord builds up, I actually like it. But then as it goes on, you ask, why hasn’t he changed it? Is it going to just keep going like this? Has he realised that he’s slowly going out of time?

Well: I don’t know, yes, and I guess not. Not until right at the end, where the ‘I’m fed up’ drum fill signals the end.

This was my first use of piano in a song, which I played by hammering various white keys with my two first fingers, moving them quickly from note to note as if I was playing the drums. It is a percussion instrument after all. I taught myself to play piano and guitar, which is why my technique has always been so bad (although technique has never been my strong point, even in drums and bass guitar where I had a good few years of lessons). I have always been more interested in writing a new song than actually practising certain aspects of my playing.

This song is significant because, I know now, piano would very gradually overtake guitar as my main instrument when writing songs. Small Animals, though, was essentially just a Garageband song- a few instrument parts building up and repeating, except this time I played them myself, quite badly.

Here’s something better with arpeggios