Falling Into the Dream (part 2)

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is the second article, about the first song.

For years, I’ve been keeping a music notebook. Not online: old school, the kind with actual pages.

I’m up to Notebook #18. Over the years, I’ve written down my ideas, planned my practice routines, composed songs, developed exercises to boost this or that skill.

Therefore, I can look back and trace the exact steps that led to “Falling Into the Dream.”

The song was born on 12-November-2007 (Notebook #17, page 24). I started with a drum pattern, and developed that synth line you hear on the album. It’s simple, but it’s the theme that ties the whole thing together. From the theme, I built the chords; from the chords, I developed the melody.

The key elements are the notes Eb, G, and Gb, which belong to the prime pitch class set 014. One of these three notes always provides resolution. Sometimes, they resolve without moving!

Example: if you look on the sheet music, the first verse takes place over the chords Cm7 and B9#11.

The synth part goes Bb – A – G – F – D#. However, D# is enharmonic to Eb. Therefore, the resolution note is from the 4th of Cm7 to the major 3rd of B9#11.

But the human mind is an odd thing. I’ve found, over the years, the mind tends to remember the last note that was played before the resolution, and to ‘carry over’ the previous chord a bit into the next one. There’s a little bit of a feeling about the 4th of Cm7 resolving to the minor 3rd of Cm7.

Something happens when a note resolves to a consonant tone in the current AND previous chord. There seems to be an extra bit of movement. It reminds me of the Alfred Hitchcock ‘Dolly Zoom‘ — movement without movement, a static foreground against a changing background.

Here, that D# (major 3rd of B9#11) vs. Eb (minor 3rd of the previous chord, Cm7) works in the classic jazz tritone substitution of the V chord. The sequence also works as Cm7 – F7alt.

Now look at the melody. There are four notes around the transition: “in – to the dream” (G – F – F# – F#). This is a stronger resolution, with a bit of suspense. G of course is the 5th of Cm7. The target, F#, is the 5th of B9#11. Normally, that’d be pretty boring! But the F brings it all to life.

First, F is the #11 of B9#11 — a bright, vibrant color against an already tense chord. It’s pretty, but a relief to land back on F#.

Second, the memory of the Cm7 is there. F is the 4th of Cm7 — we heard it in the previous bar, played by the synth. But here it is, in the next bar, paving the way to F#.

Finally, the entire sequence G – F – F# is an enclosure (as defined by David Baker) — two notes that approach the final note chromatically, from above and below.

Putting it this way, it all sounds pretty sophisticated. It’d be even better if I’d planned it However, the actual melody was improvised in the car over the course of about two weeks, during my morning drive in to work.

So where did it come from, really?

Remember I said I was on Music Notebook #18? Most of the early ones were nothing but practice routines. The patterns I use, the music I construct, is all built from past experience. I remember back in 2005 I put in about 3 solid months of focusing on ornamenting melodies using a variety of techniques. Enclosure was one of them. Over time, it just became part of who I am as a musician.

Theory is good. But practice is better