2014 Piano Shorts
22 piano instrumentals under 30 seconds shamelessly composed for social media
Once upon a time in 2014, in the ever shifting world of social media, I tried to start a little series with the hashtag #songsjustforinstagram. The idea was that it wouldn’t just be little chunks of bigger pieces, that the entirety of it would be contained in the time (I think it was 30 seconds back then) that Instagram allotted. I wanted it to have a beginning and an end. I dipped back into making a few more here and there as the years went on but the bulk of them were made in 2014. Some of them became full Dawes songs - Roll with the Punches and eventually Interest of Time being among them. After the first 22 were made, and people seemed remotely interested, we pressed some 7 inches. The cover art is pictured above. I thought it would be fun to share the digital files of all 22 pieces with you here, along with titles and my reactions hearing them again for the first time after so long.
1 - “7:45 AM” - The first one that kicked off the whole idea
2 - “Laser Dance” - An exercise to help me work on my pocket and underdeveloped left hand
3 - “Squirrel” - I had been playing this on the piano for years before this little project. It’s probably the only one that existed beforehand. As displayed here, I am obviously a big fan of the Punch Drunk Love soundtrack
4 - “Boob Tube” - Listening to a lot of Leon Russell and how he would do these clusters in his descending runs
5 - “Waverly” - I haven’t listened to Copeland, but I’ve listened to a lot of Zevon inspired by Copeland. This is me inspired by the Zevon inspired by Copeland.
6 - “Grizzly” - An amateur faking Dr. John after getting fairly obsessed with the Dr. John’s Gumbo album.
7 - “Infinity Pool” - This feels like one of the late night ones
8 - “Spotlights” - I don’t know what I was thinking here. Maybe I thought it was funny?
9 - “Planets Don’t Tinkle” - A friend said that to me once while a group of us were looking up at the stars in Big Sur. And this one tinkles a little, so it got the best name of the batch.
10 - “Right On El Paso” - Some of these feel like potential future Dawes songs more than others. This one in particular. The title would have to go though.
11 - “Oscar” - This was actually shown to me by my dad when I was a teenager as a little exercise. I definitely didn’t know I’d name my kid Oscar someday when I named it but the tune suits him well. Another fun dimension to the name Oscar - my dad’s family called him Oscar when he was a little boy and I didn’t know that until we had already named our Ozzie.
12 - “Hands” - A little dramatic. A little sentimental. I could have danced all night type stuff.
13 - “Rooftops” - Another exercise I had to play over and over to get it right. Definitely couldn’t play that now.
14 - “In Your Corner” - I THINK this is kind of the beginning of Roll with the Punches. The top line hints at it a little.
15 - “Corolla” - I want to write songs with these kinds of chords for Dawes.
16 - “Do you Need a Bookmark?” - From listening to a lot of Milton Nascimento. Particularly that Clube Da Esquina album.
17 - “Liver and Onions” - Another exercise to help me with pocket.
18 - “Lonely Neighbor” - Sad and pretty.
19 - “No Straw, please” - You know that Chilly Gonzales record Solo Piano? I guess all these little pieces are just my trying to live out my Chilly Gonzales Solo Piano dreams. This tune seems to be the most obvious example.
20 - “Stale Coffee” - This one would sound cool with a full band
21 - “Metal Detector” - This is the birth of Mandy’s song “When I Wasn’t Watching”! I had completely forgotten this is what it came from. I thought it was just a musical idea in my voice memos.
22 - “Sweet Dreams” - Appropriately titled for the last one of these.
All together it’s around 12 minutes of music. Came out for Record Store Day I think. I forget which year. I just unarchived a bunch of them on our Instagram page so you could go find a lot of them down at the bottom over there. There’s also a few that were made after this 7” was recorded that are fun to listen to. That batch includes the initial idea for Interest of Time. There’s a few more that would be fun to write some words too. Would definitely make for a unique Dawes album. Anyway, thanks for reading.
Below are all 22 tracks for our paid subscribers