songblog

Oops, I did it again or 120 different ways to say the same thing, Take 1

Once again last night I was struck with an inspiration to write a new song. This blog is of course an attempt to analyze these times, to see if I can determine a pattern.

Pattern, maybe pattern is the key. Here is what happened: its Friday night, 10 pm, warm night and had just come in from our really nice and peaceful garden. I came downstairs and I was set to do some more work on "Passion". I start by just straight listening to what I have so far, which is the intro, verse and chorus and then in time honored tradition verse/chorus again. I tinker with the drums a bit, adding some fills and cymbal crashes in the right places.
One thing about this song unlike most of them is that I am not using my ER1 drum machine (has to be the all time best, cheap drum machine ever!) so I think that maybe I will drop it in after the second chorus, to give a little bridge section so that I can just hammer in the chorus again and finish the structure of the song.
I leave Sonar running and just hit play on the ER1, and spin the dial. Well, of course its the wrong tempo, I mess with it a bit and then stop the sequencer. What I have found is the basis of a really cool pattern on the ER1. Now, I will admit that I use the patterns that are in the machine, but I do mess with them, which is what I proceed to do with this. I am always amazed on how much variety you can get out of this box, and twenty minutes later I realize that this is something I should record, at least for later.
My setup is complicated, so it takes a few minutes to reroute the cables, but soon enough I am recording this one pattern, and just twisting knobs like there is no tomorrow. Its a low groove with a kind of melodic pattern in it. I just keep improvising until I have about five minutes of shifting timbres.
This is so good I decide to mess with the EA1. I will say, this is not quite as good as the ER1, not enough control over the synthesis, which is why I lust after the later model EMX1. Still, it has some nice sounds, and dead thick basses. So I start messing with presets on there, and find one that, once its slowed down to 120 BPM from 168 or whatever it was, fits really nicely (as a starting point) with the five minutes of groove I already have down. I record a bar of it, then copy it to the rest of the song, again as a place to start.
Then I broke out my trumpet, dialed in some long ass delay and started playing over this groove, just to try it out. I realize after a bit that this is starting to sound serious, a low electro-jazz groove, and I am all about that. I decide to do some recording. Again, I have to stop and get out the one good large condenser mic I own, but soon I am up and running, and just start improvising over what I have. I come up with a little motif, and some stuff that grows out of that. I make mistakes, cause I don't have great chops, but its OK, I can edit it.
That is pretty much where I stopped, since it was pretty late. One thing I did discover is that the ER1 has somewhat shit timing, as it started to drift relative to the EA1. I spent a lot of time shifting drums parts over so they would line up correctly with the bass. Weird that the drum machine has less accurate timing than the synth.
The main thing I am trying to do here is understand what happens when I am able to write some music. I don't know if I am any closer to understanding that at all. Basically I got entranced with a repetitive pattern of notes, entranced with the subtle and not so subtle manipulation of the timbre, and the rest just flowed from there. I have no idea whatsoever where I got the idea for the trumpet motiv.
Of course I can't split my brain up and analyze why all these sounds made sense to me last night - but I certainly wish I could. I will continue to write about this song, like all the others, as it progresses.
And here I thought I wouldn't have anything to write about here, since I have been too busy and too tired to write any music this week!
Oh yeah, I decided on the title, 120 different ways to say the same thing, for this piece since its at 120BPM and at least right now, the drum patterns, the notes themselves, don't change at all, but sound different due to manipulating the synth parameters. Its also a good idea for lyrics, if this song goes this way.