I have found the perfect way (at least for me) to motivate myself creatively during quarantine. As I mentioned in my previous post, the first month was very hard for me, as I believe it was for a lot of other people. Perhaps it’s still hard. And I’m not saying I don’t still have moments of frustration with being stuck at home most of the time and not being able to see my friends or PERFORM in venues with actual audiences… But I have begun to be creatively productive in a way that I haven’t been in a long time (maybe since grad school at CalArts?) because of this new project I’ve started.
It’s called - Musical Trades! I was at first calling it “Musical Trades with Molly”, but that sounded a bit silly to me, so I took that last part out. Basically, this is what it entails: I reach out to a musician friend (or just someone I admire musically even if I don’t know them) and ask if they are willing to do a musical trade with me. They usually say “what does that mean?” and I explain that we’ll each record a new musical idea - it can be as composed or improvised as we want - and send the recording to each other. Then, we’ll record on top of each other’s recording, adding to the song. The songs can be done at this point, OR we can keep passing them back and forth, adding more ideas and adjusting the piece as we see fit. The end result is two brand new pieces that we wrote together. I also ask each of my collaborators to make a video of them recording the song, and I do the same, and my husband Pete helps me edit them into a music video! Sometimes we get carried away and the video turns into something more involved than that… In fact here’s one from my first release of this project that is an example of that:
This one was a collaboration with guitarist Alkis Nicolaides, and the video ended up being a really fun performance art piece that I performed in my living room - I listened to the recording of the piece Alkis and I made together on repeat for FOUR hours while collaging. The music informed the collage, and the end result was an ekphrasis of the music itself. To view the final collages, go to my Instagram @mollybutterfly.
I just finished a collaboration with a Hello Forever band member of mine, Joey Briggs, and I’m really excited about it! We just released the first of the two tracks today, on SoundCloud and YouTube. It’s called “summer dream”, and I’m hoping it will give people some happy feelings right now. This track was a result of Joey making a bed of lovely guitar sounds and claps and such, and then me writing a melody and lyrics to go on top of it. The lyrics were inspired by my favorite part of my morning routine - sitting outside and basking in the sun on my new chaise lounge chair. I have been really appreciating the outdoors lately. Pete and I did a little photo shoot to go with this video, which was also fun. Here’s a few photos from that:
I have three other people I’m working on collaborations with right now - that sounds overwhelming, but it’s weirdly not! I have spaced them out a bit with only a little overlap. And it keeps me making music with people every day, even though it’s remotely. I realized I was really missing making music with others during that first month of quarantine… I had gone from doing that pretty much every day to not at all. This project doesn’t give me the same feeling as making music in a physical space with others, but it does help me cope with this strange situation.
How are you finding ways to cope? Would love to hear what others are doing (even if you’re not a musician) below in the comments.
Thanks for reading :)
Molly