As you can guess, I’ve been busy.

Today, by the way, is the anniversary of the release of my first album on Jamendo.  It’s hard to believe — I can remember the hopeless feeling of the summer of 2006, thinking that all the music I was making would never find an audience.  It was a leap of faith for me to go public, but I’m glad I did.

I am working on new material.  Last Spring, I gave up on recording completely and focused on practice and learning new skills.  This time, I have incorporated recording into my practice routine.  I spend part of my time developing new skills, part creating new ideas, and part refining existing tunes.

Perhaps early next year, I could be releasing my fourth album.  I had a certain concept in mind, originally, but the music is going in a different direction.  You can tell from the early song titles: Falling into the Dream and Vale Avis Tenebrica.  The last album was jazzy; I have a feeling the next might lean toward blues rock and . . . possibly even darker regions.

Ah, did I mention I’m also learning to play trumpet?  And violin?

Further, last summer I developed a Python module called pcsets.  I have been working quietly on it, in the background, trying to create a module that bridges the gap between traditional chord / scale theory and musical set theory.  Well, my work so far tells me one thing: I need to revise the basics of the pcsets module to make the programming more fluent and intuitive.

Ultimately, I want one single function, pc(), that will take a list of numbers, a string of digits, a string of notes, whatever, and return a pcset.  I want the set to be indexable, iterable, comparable, searchable, and of course transformable.  Also, I am working on a framework for indexing and comparing pcsets — things that make use of the fit_in() and harmonize() functions, in other words.

Certainly that’s a lot of projects.  But unlike last year, I’m free of the sleep apnea — there are many more hours available to me each day.  I’m continuing my series on the songs from La vie sous la mer, but understand — if a few days pass between posts, I’m not dead, I’m just busy

“The Strange Lady I Met on the Shore” is the first track on my new album, La vie sous la mer. Although I’ve already written a short companion book that tells the stories within the songs, this series of articles will tell the stories behind the songs, focusing on the compositional details. This is the fourth article in the series (indexed here).

Evolution of the Groove

About this time, call and response suddenly became the theme for the entire song.

Now, bear with me for a minute here.  I’m about to try to explain something that I can never really explain adequately.  I have no idea why, but sometimes when I hear a sound, see an image, or read a story . . . it just starts “speaking” to me.  No, not literally like voices.  I mean that it somehow carries another thing inside it.  A sound can carry a story.  An image can call up a sound.  An event (a story in the making) can have phrases associated with it that initially make no sense, but turn out to be pretty deep.

This is how I really write music.  My experiments with The Periodic Table of the Groove were only an attempt to get this process started.  Imagine you lived in the wilderness, and needed water.  Creating those structures was parallel to you putting out barrels to catch the rain.  The barrels do not cause the rain, but you have a place for the rain when it arrives.

Examples:

When I was little, my parents used to laugh because I would create names of my own for everything.  To this day, they still remember my word for dragonfly, hohexexegosper.  They never could understand that, when I see a dragonfly darting about, that word somehow describes, to me, its appearance and its jagged, staggering flight.

The day I saw Kat’s Mermaid, I heard the first four notes of the title track on the album, “La Vie Sous la Mer (or, The Mermaid Wife).” My eyes went off to the right of the picture, and I thought tentacles, symbiote, parallel evolution.  In my mind, it was as if there were a movie playing.  Those four notes you hear, to this day, I call the “Rain intro”:  I saw closeup view of rain falling onto some watery surface.  The camera pulls back, and the water is actually a puddle; further back, and it’s actually tears.  She has been sitting outside, on a stormy day, watching the sea, but her memories have become too much for her, and she hangs her head and just lets go.

At the time, I had no idea who she was.  But I knew she belonged out there, in the waves, and had given it up for some reason.

OK, now back to “Strange Lady.”  By this time, the story was taking shape in my mind.  The song had two parts, lower and upper, that seemed to be talking with each other.  Over time, I began to see this was a conversation between two people.  (I have told the actual story in the companion book, so I’ll leave out the details here).

Once the story fit into place, the song changed shape:

• The rhythm provided one pair of voices, two worlds meeting.  The guitar and organ parts were the man and the strange lady he met on the shore, respectively.
• Spontaneously, it grew that middle section, the voyage into the undersea world.  The rhythm was recognizable, but vastly different.  The conversation is more intense, however.
• The ending . . . well, the ending is frantic, then tragic.  It reaches a frenzied crescendo, a terrible, empty search that leaves the man staring down a long, empty beach . . . then evaporates back to that lonely bass solo.

Surely a bit of this story comes from La Belle Dame sans Merci . . . “And I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side.”

However, it’s also something more.  Maybe you’ve experienced it, or maybe you haven’t.  Sometimes you find home, you find connection.  If you lose it, and spend the rest of your life searching for it again.  If you have it, you can’t get enough, and spend all your time thinking about it.

Each of us has our own Strange Lady.

Mine happens to be music.

“The Strange Lady I Met on the Shore” is the first track on my new album, La vie sous la mer. Although I’ve already written a short companion book that tells the stories within the songs, this series of articles will tell the stories behind the songs, focusing on the compositional details. This is the third article in the series (indexed here).

In the last article, I mentioned I felt the original beat for Set 7 needed to be changed slightly. There is a disadvantage to working with drum tracks (as I did here, in the early, experimental phase): although they can help generate new ideas, they can actually conflict with those very same ideas when they start developing and becoming something new.

To solve this, I took the bass pattern I’d created and played it by itself, no accompaniment, until it felt “right.” I kept on and kept on, until it felt automatic. Then I recorded it and analyzed the beat pattern in some detail.

What I found was that Set 7 had become something new and funky — yet was still in 7/4. I’d never seen anything like this, so I called the basic beat “7 funk.” Then, on further analysis, I discovered there was another structure hidden within the groove — it was almost a “call and response” situation.

So here they are. On the percussion staff below, the lower beats are the “call” part, and the upper beats are the “response”:

(click the thumbnail to see the staff)

The two eighth notes that begin the call are the funky part. The bass drum hits hard, and the bass always slams those two notes. The other two are optional; they appear in the tumba part in the conga drum section.

The response part is interesting. I practiced using this beat a lot. If you listen to the organ responses to the bass, and the guitar scratching pattern, you’ll hear different parts of it being emphasized. In a way, it was sort of like my own personal 7-clave pattern — a lot of the structure of the song revolves around it. Because of it’s shape, I came to call it the “crown” pattern.

Call and response came to be the theme for this song. I’ll finish this story in the next article.

“The Strange Lady I Met on the Shore” is the first track on my new album, La vie sous la mer. Although I’ve already written a short companion book that tells the stories within the songs, this series of articles will tell the stories behind the songs, focusing on the compositional details. This is the second article in the series (indexed here).

Originally known as “Set 7″, this structure eventually became known as “Project 3.” I held off on giving each song a name, until it came together and started telling a story. Eventually, of course, this song became “The Strange Lady I Met on the Shore.”

By eventually, I mean 49 days later!

I didn’t want to rush this. I wanted to create a perfect album. Not perfect in terms of technical details, but music I could look at and say: I did my best, and I have no regrets.

So here we are at the second stage. I’ve gone beyond the abstract level of a set, and finalized the chord progression. At this point, Song 3 had two main sections, A and B:

Something wasn’t quite right with the original beat. It seemed draggy. I changed the tempo from 139 to one that felt more natural — 151 bpm. Also, I arranged the beats into a new shape, something I called “7 funk ++” (that story will be told in the next article).

In the meantime, check out that chorus. There’s something special about those 13th chords. They are not in a traditional progression at all. Over the years, I’ve actually grown weary of the traditional ii-V-I progression, so I have been making up my own.

If you notice the root motion, it actually spells out something from musical set theory, the group (4,5,7,9) or prime group 0235. When I discuss the solos, you’ll find a related set that appears in the improvisation, 015, as well as a similar group, 016.  How they’re related is a story in itself.

Irrlicht - Sambraxas

Depuis ce matin, je pratique ma musique — quelques nouveaux morceaux. J’ai devenu fatigué, alors j’ai fait une pause. Trouvant cet album ce soir, je suis rechargé: cet album est plein de couleurs de ton et de la texture des sons. Toutefois, il est lié par les mélodies, et aussi par la percussion qui correspond bien à chaque chanson. Mes favoris:

Sweet Rock — D’accord! Le titre dit tout.

Sambraxas — À 2:04-2:10, le contraste entre les deux rythmes est parfait.

Mais dans un autre sens, les deux morceaux qui partagent le même rythme (#4 et #9) semblent comme des frères. Ils sont comme des parenthèses de musique, et ils offrent une dernière connexion.

J’adore aussi “Jingo Star” et “Eto Vlke”

En bref, super!

[English Translation -- just in case I made more than a few mistakes above! I had to look up a lot of phrases in the dictionary, so in case I've accidentally crashed and burned, here's the intended meaning.]

Since early this morning, I’ve been practicing my music — a few new tunes. But I got tired, and so I took a break. Finding this album this evening, I feel recharged: this album is full of tone colors and sound textures, yet is held together by the melodies, as well as the carefully chosen percussion. My favorites:

Sweet Rock — Yep, the title says it all.

Sambraxas — at 2:04-2:10, the contrasting rhythms are perfect.

But in another sense, the two songs which share the same rhythm (#4 and #9) seem like brothers. They are like musical parentheses, and provide a final connection.

I also like “Jingo Star” and “Eto Vlke”

In short, great!

“The Strange Lady I Met on the Shore” is the first track on my new album, La vie sous la mer.  Although I’ve already written a short companion book that tells the stories within the songs, this series of articles will tell the stories behind the songs, focusing on the compositional details.

“Strange Lady” began during a series of experiments I called the Periodic Table of the Groove.  Back then, it was just a pattern: it had no deeper meaning.  If you want to hear the original, the seed that eventually grew into a song, have a listen to set07_070723 (follow the link and click either “LoFi” or “HiFi” to stream the music).

That bass line was created spontaneously over a drum pattern I called “7/4 4:3 str 8 T139″, meaning:

• The tune is in 7/4;
• The “beat ratio” is similar to a 4/4 unit followed by a 3/4 unit;
• The 8th notes are even (straight), as opposed to swing; and
• The tempo was 139 quarter notes per minute.

Notice the differences and similarities between the two tunes, this seed and the eventual final track.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss the chord structures in the song, including the first “non-chord” you will meet, and possibly even tie this in to musical set theory.

OK, here’s the first real article on the making of La vie sous la mer, my latest Jamendo album.

It took me months to record this album.  However, most of the songs on this album started in a single experiment, which I called “The Periodic Table of the Groove.”

My first Jamendo album, evolution, featured a lot of music with odd time signatures.  This time, I wanted to create an album without any 4/4 tunes at all.  However, one of the challenges I gave to myself was to make the odd meter songs sound completely smooth — I wanted the meter to surprise people when they figured it out, not demand attention through some lopsided set of riffs.  I wanted the sound to glide along — not stagger, not stumble.

With that in mind, I began a series of musical experiments.  I took a variety of beats, recorded a basic drum machine track, then found all the possible bass grooves that occurred to me.  For the bass beats that worked, I then recorded some sort of accompaniment — generally, organ, because a keyboard affords a lot of opportunity to build unusual, jazzy chords.

The results are listed below.  If you want to find them, have a look at my “Inyuk Chuk” page on DMusic.  The experiments are only about 90 seconds long each (except for set00).

Notice these ideas were mostly completed in a single, short period of four days, from July 21 to July 24, 2007.  Some of them led to final songs; others, well . . . were interesting, but never “clicked.”  I had no idea what these songs meant at the time.  I had some ideas.  But there is a process I follow: I play with the tune, become familiar with it, and eventually hear it sort of “speaking” to me, telling me which direction it should go to next, filling in with new ideas and new structures.

So this is our starting point.  From here, I’ll follow each of the songs from beginning to end.

Stay tuned.

In November of 2007, when I began this series of articles, I already had a lot of material posted to DMusic. My full albums were available on Jamendo. However, I had no place to store partially completed materials. In telling the story of La vie sous la mer, I had to create a new space. However, it needed a name.

I chose Inyuk Chuk. Long story, there. If you saw an old cartoon series called “SuperFriends” back in the day, you might have an idea what this phrase means (I had no idea how to spell it, at first, but finally found some references in Wikipedia — I thought it was something like enook-chok.)

This may be the final journey for DMusic. I’ve met some good friends there, but I have a deep seated feeling that the site is dying. Whatever energy I put into the site, I seldom get back. When my subscription expires on Dec. 19th, I’m going to reduce my presence there to a bare minimum.

Based on my previous discussion, I don’t think anyone will really notice that I’m gone. Traffic at the site seems to be at some sort of all time low. Many of the people I connected with are only on sporadically.

I have tried to contact the site administrators over various issues. To date, I have never been taken seriously, nor even granted the simple courtesy of an answer to many of my inquiries. That’s no way to run any business. In fact, it’s insulting.

So, what I’m saying is this: if you’re going to have a listen to some of my older, non-album material on DMusic, now is the time.  Things change in 43 days.

In the past few weeks, since La vie sous la mer was released, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the music.  For my three previous albums, I wrote music guides for each song, and posted them to this blog (see the pages for evolution, apocrypha, and handmade).

I didn’t do it this time.  For one thing, I had already written a companion book to go with the album.  I thought there’d be a sort of saturation effect, and so kept the technical details to myself.

Oops.  I didn’t consider how many friends I have who are musicians.

So, starting tomorrow, I’m going to give a little bit of history for each of the songs, and also take a look into the chord structures, time signatures, and recording process.

Unlike last time, though . . . I’m going to be brief!  (After all, I’ve got new music to work on.)