I walk around with tunes in my head all the time and I’ve got really good at remembering the little snatches of tune that appear out of nowhere – they’re almost like the essence of a feeling expressed as a sound. I’ve had dreams where I’ve experienced an event as a piece of music – as if the music contains meaning, like words, only more direct. I know I’m really lucky to have this gift.

I can also play tunes back in my head, and often I can finish part of a tune just by working on it in my thoughts (the dream tunes, though, I can never recall).

These tunelets hang around for a long time and often they get mixed up with others of their kind and grow up into proper Tunes.
I always find the lyrics much more difficult – but I also get little rhyming couplets in a similar way. They always need more work and usually change a few times during the process. Getting the tunelets and the couplets together is, of course, easier said than done and just for the removal of any doubt – it’s a lot of very hard work.

But getting a good title is always a real advantage because, obviously, the title is going to be the hook for the song. I’ve had my fair share of difficulties getting hooks and titles but just now I’m on a rich seam of appropriate phrases.

I’ve just finished ‘As Long As I can Stand It’. it’s a Dm slow thing with some classical overtones. Also nearly done are ‘Unbreakable’, a sweet little tune about Fate and ‘Hands Up for the Revolution’ – FunkAcousticA! And then there’s My Funny Little Life – which is about my (genuine) amazement at some of the things people do that you hear about.

We tried all of these at rehearsal earlier this week and all worked OK except for a little bit of surgery required on Unbreakable. When I say surgery, it’s more like bashing a couple of dents out of a car – doesn’t usually pay to be too gentle I find.
And that reminds me that many years ago, in my first life as a musician, I spent a while driving a van to pay the rent. And one day talking to the mechanics I discovered that the tools used to fix dents in bodywork are called a ‘pusher’ and a ‘puller’. If only everything was as simple as that.

Ok this will take some explaining but bear with me…
Mostly I hear noise at a pretty even volume. One of the characteristics of the H-Aids is that they suppress the really loud sounds – so a noise is never loud enough to make me jump, for example. Also, as you know, when I’m experiencing a racket of one kind or another I tend to turn them off anyway.
But some noises come through at an unnatural level. I have this in what’s left of my normal hearing too – usually without the H-Aids I can hear almost nothing but once in a while something will come through surprisingly clearly.
One of the things that penetrates the racket is footsteps – not just any footsteps but heels in particular – so walking on the street for example I can hear a lot of traffic, aeroplanes, people on the phone and the odd snatch of unintelligible conversation, but above all that the clack clacking of a pair of heels. Doubly confusing is that there’s something about the way I hear them that means I can’t tell where they’re coming from so I always find myself looking at feet trying to match the visual with the audio so to speak. It’s just occurred to me that anyone seeing this would think I was some kind of shoe fetishist…
So the main point is this. A couple for weeks ago I was walking to get a train at London Bridge, from Tower Bridge. In with the previously described racket and quite a few moderately loud footfalls was a very noisy pair of heels. And she was playing a pattern. Remember when you were a kid and your shoes made that noise as you walked and you deliberately dragged your heel so that it made an interesting off-beat to the steady 1-2-3-4 of your normal walk?
Well she was doing that…
click clack clickety clack kerclick kerclack kerclickety clack
…only better, the girl had some talent.
I looked for her feet…but couldn’t find her in the crowd before we were separated.
And I realised that to her, and to you if you’d been there, her performance was just another noise among the many noises and no-one would even notice her playing that private beat. Except for someone who could hear her footsteps above everything else…what a privilege to hear that.
My own private Heel-and-Toe.

..thanks and thanks again to all of you who came down to the ninebar a couple of weeks ago for our first showcase spot.
I can’t tell you how good it was to see all those familiar faces – sorry I didn’t get round to all of you.

Now there’s a brief pause while I work out what to do next. Richard’s busy through August and Paul is always busy. Jeff’s in another band which is rehearsing this month. Which means nothing much for the Band of Others until September.

But it’s a good opportunity to catch up on the writing and knock some of the tunelets’ and couplets’ heads together in the hope that a song or two will come out.

Currently I’ve got a couple on the go :
‘As Long As I Can Stand It’ – ballad type thing around Dm with some classical overtones
‘Hands up for the Revolution’ – this is the first of my new FunkAcousticA genre which will soon shake the world.