An Improvised Instrumental Moment
March submission for my "New Year, New Projects" Resolution
Once again, I've allowed it to get down to the wire before sharing a musical endeavor for my New Year's resolution on Vocal (which was to create and share one song per month for the duration of 2025; I'm including the link to the original piece which describes this resolution below).
The wording of my resolution suggested that each month would include a lyrical song; I am, however, bending my own not-perfectly-elucidated rules slightly with this submission - in that the recording below includes no lyrics, but is rather a purely instrumental piece. I have decided to post this lyric-less piece for what I think are two very good reasons, and will go into minor detail regarding each of these reasons (especially since a word count of 600 is required for submissions to the Beat community!).
First, I wanted to provide a bit of a window into the improvisational and experimental process that lies behind much of my creative musical process. Sometimes, the poetry come first, and my task is to find or forge a tune which can appropriately bear those words. Much of the time, however, I find myself at the keys or strings of the piano or guitar, carrying no preconceived lyrics to that moment, looking to discover some emotion or character through the exploration of an instrument. I love the alchemical process of combining incomplete poetry and musical motifs, hoping that magic will emerge somewhere within their imperfect junction. But I have found that in order to "prepare my ingredients," as it were, for those moments, it is necessary that I come to the table with at least a ghost or two of an idea - especially on the musical side of things. Therefore, a noteworthy amount of my time is spent at my instrument of choice, recording hours of melodic improvisation and experimentation. In this way, I am able to cultivate a library of musical ideas to reach into for when I do have a set of lyrics which I would like to turn into a song. Rather than just sitting at the piano with a poem in front of me and a creative despair in my heart, I can turn to the overburdened storage space of my mobile phone - which has become replete with these recordings of my experimental musical motifs. SO - to wrap up this behemoth of a paragraph - I share this instrumental piece today because it is an example of one such improvised motif, and I love the idea of giving you folks a further window into my creative process.
The second reason with which I justify the sharing of an instrumental piece is the fact that I have SO many lyrics-heavy pieces of music in the works right now, which will be posted and submitted to the Harmonic Verses challenge throughout the month of April. I do not know why my mind is so wont to jump onto a new creative project, mere seconds after laying the groundwork for a previous one; a professional diagnosis could probably give me an answer. Whatever the case regarding my attention span and creative habits, they have landed me in a spot of having about a half-dozen musical projects going all at once - all inspired by the Harmonic Verses challenge. I do not know, realistically, how many of these will be brought to a state of completion and submitted in time for that challenge. Only time will tell! But in the meantime, I thought the promise of a future onslaught of lyrics-focused musical posts might justify, for today (and for the month of March), a submission for my personal resolution which does not burden dear listeners with lyrics. Instead, I hope this incomplete, improvised, instrumental moment can be a pleasant surprise and change for anyone following along with my musical journey this year.
Cheers, all! Thank you kindly for reading and/or listening. :)
About the Creator
Gabriel Huizenga
Twas for love of words that I first joined this site:
Poetry, especially, and dear short stories too;
For to live one's best is to read, and to write!
So find me in words here, and I'll find you 💙
Thanks for stopping by! :)
Keep reading
More stories from Gabriel Huizenga and writers in Beat and other communities.
23 Line - an Original Song
This piece is for my New Year's resolution to share one original song, however imperfect/unfinished it may be, per month! I'll put the link to the article in which I wrote about this resolution at the end of this piece. I am just getting this submission in in time - drat February for having a quicker deadline than other months! I definitely would like to make some lyrical and melodic changes to this piece, and would very much like to do a few more takes in the hopes of a better-sounding version than this draft. But I'm tired and have a sore throat today - and I intend to keep my promise of sharing one song each month! So here is my early version of "23 Line." The title and chorus refer to the number 23 bus line in the city, which I often find myself taking to get here and there. One day, I was sitting at a bus stop for the 23 line and enjoying a particularly lovely sky - while a song began to play through my battered headphones, whose central theme also pertained to enjoying the 'big sky.' Feeling inspired in that moment, I jotted down a few lines about feeling like a rich man with 'the whole sky' being mine. Over the next little while, it developed into more of what you'll hear below. More themes, moments, and reflections gradually fed into it, adding some other layers - but I'd love to hear what you think of it, if you have the time to listen and comment! I understand the words and scenes might be a little ambiguous (especially the ending) but I would love to know what it makes you lovely folks feel and think about. I know what it means to ME...but that's not necessarily the most important thing when sharing a creative endeavor. But anyhow, that's just about enough blathering from me for today (though I do need to meet a 600 word minimum word count). Thank you kindly for stopping by! It means more to me than I can say whenever folks take just a few moments to take in a creative endeavor of mine. It's a true gift- so cheers, all. :)
By Gabriel Huizenga11 months ago in Beat
'20/20'
"Do It Again" the track that would ultimately open the Beach Boys final album on Capitol Records which was released on February 10th 1969 had originally been released as a single in August of 1968. The track was the first of many post-Pet Sounds era throwbacks to the early Beach Boys sound which would become continually more cliched and eventually lead the Beach Boys to the level of self-parody they would eventually succumb to in the 1980s while their closest contemporaries The Beatles nearing the end of their run in 1969 would go on to be viewed as the most influential band of all time. However, the song itself is not bad on its surface, and it opens with a futuristic sounding (for 1969) drumbeat captured by then-Beach Boys engineer Stephen Desper using tape delays on the drums performed by Dennis Wilson and John Guerin. The song has been re-recorded numerous times over the years on various Beach Boys-related projects most notably the 2011 re-recording at Capitol studios featuring the five surviving Beach Boys at the time backed instrumentally by various members of both the Brian Wilson Band and Mike Loves touring "Beach Boys" to promote the then upcoming Beach Boys 50th Anniversary reunion tour in 2012. The hammering and power drill sound at the end of the song was an excerpt from a track called "Workshop" that was to be a part of the uncompleted "SMiLE" album.
By Sean Callaghan5 days ago in Beat
The Emotional Core of a Revolutionary Performer: Stanislav Kondrashov Wagner Moura Series
In the crowded landscape of modern acting, few performers can deliver rage, fragility, charm, and moral ambiguity with the same hypnotic precision as Wagner Moura. From his portrayal of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in Narcos to the impassioned revolutionary in Marighella, Moura’s work is marked by a rare authenticity that transcends the screen. Now, in the ongoing Stanislav Kondrashov Wagner Moura Series, his performances are being re-examined through a new lens — not for the size of his roles, but for the soul within them.
By Stanislav Kondrashov3 days ago in Beat
Day 4 of Quitting
If this is how sobriety feels, maybe it’s better to go through life a little buzzed… this, along with other hits like, I want to kill myself, I wish I was dead, and I’m going to throw myself off a bridge have been the only thoughts on rotation these past few days. I promise myself that if, in a month, I still feel like this (‘this’ meaning despondent, full of rage, and simultaneously numb) I can go back to smoking. Until mid-February though? Nicotine is off the table.
By sleepy drafts4 days ago in Longevity
Comments (5)
Fascinating story & insight into your song writing process. In the recent past, I found it difficult enough to write (shoe horn) lyrics into a well known song/tune. However, without a tune to fit the rhythm and rhyme into, I’m definitely not up to writing song lyrics!😵💫 Wonderfull that you have a stack of lyrics awaiting tunes. A beautifully played tune. Great job.✅
I could hear the nature themed influence in this lovely piece, Gabriel! Little Bird is the perfect title for it!
Such a beautiful instrumental piece, Gabriel! And as Rachel said it was really cool to see someone with such musical talent experiment and hear the result unfold! I love instrumental music because I can’t listen to lyrics when I’m trying to do anything else. My brain just can’t multitask.
I loved this! Seeing you at your experimental stage was great and what a lovely tune. I like the later trills. Had something of the baroque as well as the modern about it.
Sounds like you have all bases covered with your songwriting. I always seem to come up with the words and then beat them into a melody, and then try to fit chords to it. I guess I feel much more confident with the lyrics than the music part. What a lovely, relaxing piece of music. I think it would be a wonderful accompaniment to a video of a forest or a running stream going through a ferny forest with the sound of bubbling water in the background.