Columbus, OH
Keep me cooped up too long, and something weird is likely to come out.
It’s just in my nature.
It probably has something to do with the fact that I get bored easily.
So I’m often looking for something different to get my hands dirty with.
And if nothing comes along, I’m likely to create something.
Which is what I’ve done.
As could be expected.
To go back to how this started, I was watching one of Rick Beato’s videos.
Most of which I wish had been around when I was young.
I like how he explains music theory…
How he breaks things down to their musical elements…
Shows how they go together to create what we’re familiar with.
But, since we’re basically the same age…
And I don’t have a time machine to go back and bring my younger self to today…
Of course, I have no way of knowing how easily I would have picked up what he tries to teach without my already knowing and understanding it.
My experience could have been no different than it was with the instructors I did have back when.
Who knows?
But anyway, I was watching one of his videos where he was talking about some musicians that he had signed to a record deal with his own company
And he was playing this descending chord pattern on his guitar…
Where the chord would basically stay the same, but one or two notes would move down, changing the chord, often modulating from a major to a minor chord…
Before moving down again, repeating the same pattern.
And I remembered something I wrote many decades ago that used a remotely similar pattern.
At the time, I considered it one of the better things I had written.
Which got me thinking, what if I tried something similar again?
And things evolved from there.
And when I say evolved, I mean it.
My usual work flow is to start with some form of lead sheet.
Just a melody with a set of chords.
And once I’m happy with it, then I start thinking about how I want to arrange it.
Not this time.
This time I was writing the arrangement as I went.
Before starting a section, I had no idea where it was going to go.
And then the melody was the last thing to be written.
My approach may have been influenced by Isildurs Bane.
The Swedish band, not the one ring from Tolkien’s books.
They’ve spent most of their existence creating and playing complex instrumental music.
There is no singer in the band.
But for the past few years…
More like the past decade…
They’ve started working with guest singers.
Or at least a couple of singers.
The first was a singer from another band I like.
Steve Hogarth, from the band Marillion.
And more recently, Peter Hammill.
And the way they’ve been working is to record pieces of instrumental music, send them to the singer, and see what he comes up with to sing over it.
To say the least, I’ve enjoyed what they’ve come out with using this approach.
So I took a similar path.
Wrote this initially as a instrumental piece.
Then, once that was complete, wrote a melody to be sung over it.
Of course, then I had the challenge of lyrics that fit the melody.
As is often the case, I used what was in the news as my lyrical theme.
The very thing keeping me in place at home.
Oh, and if you want a fun mental exercise, imagine the opening section of “Band On The Run” being sung as a background, countermelody during the pauses in the third verse.
“Stuck inside these four walls,
Sent inside forever”
I do have a version with that in place.
I decided to leave it off, to avoid the hassle of trying to get proper permissions to include it.
I wasn’t able to find a definitive source on what is legally required for including a musical quotation in an otherwise original work.
And since I was trying to get this complete and released reasonably quickly, I decided it best to avoid the question altogether.
Maybe someday, if I ever get figured out what legal hoops I need to jump through, I’ll release that version.
So, without further ado, some musical weirdness to enjoy.
Or not…
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