Influences
The spirit of seas, rivers and stars
The coastline, coves and windswept cliffs of Cornwall are inspiration for many of my early songs including ‘Laburnum Trees’ and ‘The Tide’. ‘Heading for the Shore’ was my first ever song about the ocean and how life is enjoying the journey rather than reaching the destination.
The tide creates an ever-changing marine landscape, and the sea is a metaphor for life in all its movements and changes. Life is fluid and never stays the same. One moment rough and stormy, then calm and serene. Always vibrant and alive. The ‘spirit of the sea’ is a central influence and inspiration in all my songs and music.
Musical Influences
Early heroes were The Beatles, Paul Simon and Elton John. I was strongly influenced by the singular, syncopated movement of Elton’s piano and his rhythmic arpeggios. Later on I listened to Ludovico Einaudi: I loved his melodic phrasing. I then discovered Jazz and Bill Evans. However, it was the touch and lyrical expression of Keith Jarrett that had the profoundest influence on me as a pianist.
Peter Gabriel has had one of the greatest influences on me for his diverse musical creativity and passion, and his experimental vision. He expresses such a breadth of emotion with the resonance of the piano when it is at the heart of his songs.
Maybe my greatest inspiration of all was Nick Drake, whose subtle and laconic songs combine intensity and attention to detail with a carefree touch and spontaneity. There is an ‘otherworld’ quality to this music that seems to come from a lost age. His lyrical ballads are timeless and unfettered by any musical ‘style’.
Vision
What is music?
The composer Phillip Glass was asked the same question on two occasions: ‘so what is music to you Mr Glass?’ The first time he responded with the words: ‘of all the languages that humans speak, music is the most eloquent’. However, he felt that his answer was incomplete.
When asked the same question a few years later, he instinctively replied: ‘music is a place. It’s a place which is as real as Chicago, or Sydney or any place you’ve been to. It’s an absolute, actual place’. He went on to say that ‘music is a real place and once you know where that place is, you can go there’.
Music for me is this place where thoughts reside and emotions dwell. Songwriters, musicians, and listeners all have a unique chance to enter this magical kingdom whenever they choose. However, sometimes we need to find the way to calm our overactive minds and hearts to get there.
Music accompanies us on our path through life in all its moments of happiness, joy, pain and uncertainty. It is a priceless gift and companion that gives us courage. Songs and music are journeys of emotion, and voyages ‘through the halls of your mind’.
There are some songwriters who really touch the soul, and for me one of them is Nick Drake. He seems to lead the listener effortlessly to a magical place or kingdom. I have been inspired by all three of his albums but particularly ‘Five Leaves left’.
I wrote a tribute song for him called ‘A Golden Thread’ about how music is the golden thread that leads us to another world. We are led there with chords of hope and feel its comfort: ‘Do not despair / music’s everywhere / For those who dwell on the magic of the evening air / Do not despair / music’s everywhere’.
Suspended In Time
It’s wonderful when we lose our ego in music. We find freedom. To do this, we have to focus clearly on the notes and yet relax enough to let the music touch and flow through us. We make mistakes when we are too tense, but also when we are too casual or ‘full of ourselves’ when we play. Respect is all. We need to lose our ‘self’ to enter the physical realm of music and become one with a higher force.
There is a simple way of knowing if we have reached this place. It is when at the end of a piece, we have a feeling of being ‘suspended in time’. The present moment becomes ‘physically extended’ and ‘drawn out’, as we reside in a sense of heightened awareness. Touched by a spirit. When both performer and audience experience this sensation together, it is a magical moment of unfathomable calm that takes us beyond understanding. We reach the sacred space where we find ourselves ‘in another world’.
A Language Without Words
We need songs, stories and music that reach deep into their hearts. Music is a language that lays all bare. Emotions, soul and experience. It is hard not be moved by inspired music. We feel the common spirit and emotion even if we do not understand the exact circumstances in which it was written.
Music touches our soul. A unique language without words that reaches deep within all of us – right down to our innermost being. Whatever our background, this language has no barriers and communicates to all ages and nationalities without the need for any words. We are never alone as long as we have music with us.
Music from Afar
The ancient Greeks believed that the planets revolved around the earth, creating a ‘divine music’ inaudible to mortals. I loved this image and found a metaphor for inspiration in songwriting. I saw this as the moment a ‘mortal’ songwriter hears a melody that comes ‘from afar’ for a second – then it’s gone! We need to catch this spontaneous, divine inspiration and hold it close to our hearts. This music that falls effortlessly to us is inspiration. We mustn’t let it escape into thin air but use it immediately to create our song. I wrote about this experience in a song called ‘From Afar’. A new version of this song recorded with SoundZanobi will be released in April 2024 by the co-writer of this new version – Martina Magionami (‘La Marti’)
Mining for diamonds
A song may take time to finish though. And this is the craft and graft of the song writing process. This comes after the inspiration. I often feel I am working on something that already exists and is just waiting to be found. It feels like I’m mining for a hidden stone – like a buried diamond that needs to be unearthed. I‘m digging it out. The song gradually takes its shape and form under the digging and exploration work on the keys. The grafting and polishing work can be time consuming.
A Wider Audience
I remember reading how frustrated Nick Drake felt in trying to connect with his music. His album didn’t sell in large numbers in his lifetime, and he felt a failure. He told his mother: ‘if only I could feel that my music had helped anyone at all …’ He is of course was rare gift who subsequently influenced thousands of people following his premature death in 1974.
It’s a two way relationship between musician and listeners. I’ve always felt that if one person has been touched by one of my songs, then all the effort and sweat gone into writing the melodies and lyrics and recording has made it all worthwhile.
A song without an audience is like a tree without branches. Songs need to stretch out and blossom in the hearts of those who listen to them and communicate meaning, feelings and passions. This lies at the root of the vision for the website. A sharing that can bloom at any time or in any place in the listener.
I see the listeners as ‘branches of the tree’ through which the joy and sap of the song can spread and blossom. It’s not just expressing my own emotions and inner world or reminiscences that really matters but trying to connect to the audience and throw them a message. Sharing common feelings through a lifeline or ‘golden thread’. This hopefully leads them for a moment into another world.
Songs and music encourage and give us energy to challenge limitations and go beyond our comfort zones. We have the fuel and the energy that can lead to action and personal change. With the power of music and songs we can blossom. As expressed in the lyrics of one of my songs:
‘It’s time for you to blossom
Feel stronger everytime
Explore the world around you
And stretch your branches high”
In the end it is humbling to think that something you have written may touch the soul of another human in a way that supports and nourishes them and helps them face a moment with more courage. If I think of all the songs that have inspired me, I know that what we do as songwriters is a gift that really matters. With the power of social media and music streaming, songs can touch other people all over the world at any moment of the day or night in whatever place or state or mind. And this is the reason for writing and producing and holding on to a vision where dreams and feelings can be cherished and shared – ‘don’t let them fade’.
Responding with the heart - and a tribute.
‘It’s only with the heart that we can see truly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery ‘The Little Prince’)
Finally, it was my father who taught me the importance of responding to music with the heart. Though not a musician himself, he felt music both as a physical and emotional experience.
Listening to a piece of music he just couldn’t stand still! When I was young, I remember him in our kitchen on a Sunday morning furiously conducting the frenzied last movement of a Beethoven piano concerto or symphony with his hands, or a cooking spoon or whatever utensil he could find to hand as he was peeling the potatoes. ‘You have to move, son!’ he cried out. Pacing up and down. To this day I have this wonderful vision of a man in a red and black striped cooking apron conducting Beethoven with a ladle.
And sometimes he would do something which was very un-British. Something rather strange for a traditional ‘old school’ man. When moved by the particular beauty of a slow movement, tears would well up in his eyes. I’ve never forgotten that. How music can make us happy and laugh but can also be so beautiful that we it can sometimes make us cry. And that may be a good thing. Because it makes us realise what beauty is, and what being human is.
Shakespeare knew this all those years ago and of the need to be wary of those with no music inside themselves:
‘The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music’.
(The Merchant of Venice)
William John Dulborough (1927– 2011)