New tunes are being crafted this week. I have 80-90% of a leading track and it’s pleasing. There are some things that need to be filled in, but I need some distance from it. I’ll be starting on a new track tonight. The collection is aiming for something that I’ve wanted to do for some time but never got around to starting. It’s more ambient with lots of electric guitar so beaten and abused that it barely sounds like a stringed instrument much less a guitar. Frippertronics gone horribly, horribly wrong. Or right.
The trick I’m using this time is to start with titles for songs and work backward. I’ve always left titling pieces for the end because I hate tacking a name to musical units. Movements, songs, pieces, whatever. Op. 44 would be fine with me to be perfectly honest. But by starting with the titles, I have almost a theme with which to start each session and that provides a certain kind of motivation.
I took a hint from a site I used to read and can’t recall now that mentioned looking to the titles of books, chapters or poems for song ideas. On a lark, I dove into my database of books (yeah, I database my personal library) and dug out some fragments of titles. It’s an ecclectic mix of names and topics but there’s a flow there that I have divined for myself and there is some small excitement in an experiement like this.
So I’m making an album that I have wanted to make and using a technique that is yet another in a long series of new to me mindhacks. That should be enough to see me through.
Unlike previous endeavors I am going to release this as a unit so I won’t be putting up sketches of material for this collection. I want it to be a larger piece with interrelated movements. There’s this sense that once I have shared something it’s done and I don’t want that. It could seriously get in the way of the overall form and I’m just not cool with that. That doens’t mean I won’t be posting music! I still have things that I’m working out that might never make it to the full on production stage. It’s absolutely necessary for anyone to have feedback so there will still be stuff here. And soon!
The process of making a song based on a title works really well for me. I'd say at least half of The Gary's songs were written that way.
As for conjuring music from the works of others, I recently did this with Ezra Pound's “Ancient Music”- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBtzyPSgkQ
I need a muse, even if it's in the form of a song title that's connected to a particular memory or set of memories.
First off, I really dig the tune!
I'm finding that just reading bits and pieces here and there and putting them into different contexts is really inspiring. Most of the titles I picked are simple and when taken out of context open themselves up.
And thanks for reading!
The process of making a song based on a title works really well for me. I'd say at least half of The Gary's songs were written that way.
As for conjuring music from the works of others, I recently did this with Ezra Pound's “Ancient Music”- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBtzyPSgkQ
I need a muse, even if it's in the form of a song title that's connected to a particular memory or set of memories.
First off, I really dig the tune!
I'm finding that just reading bits and pieces here and there and putting them into different contexts is really inspiring. Most of the titles I picked are simple and when taken out of context open themselves up.
And thanks for reading!