Thursday, 11 April 2013
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Coming home (the making of)
This is an idea I had for a while but could not find time to work further on it. The melodic line is complete but I struggle with finding the right sound.
For the curious, some of the older attempts:
Apr 2012: 1st version - for reasons I do not remember this version is haunted - most probably by my frustration of not being able to get the song out of my head. When I first started - I thought this will be a walk in the park, well, maybe a long walk but still something where I will be able to progress. A few days later after recording this, I found myself without any ideas that could get me closer to what I wanted. Where next? When this happens, I stop and move to something else. Then days, sometimes weeks later, while doing things unrelated, out of nowhere I get a spark followed right away by an idea starting to form. A lot of these times the spark proves to lead nowhere but other times it turns out to start an avalanche of ideas.
The 2nd version adds at 1:05 a first attempt to use the voice of Vaska Jankovska singing a fragment from one of the greatest songs I've heard - Pjesma from the album The time of Gypsies(Dom za vesanje)/Kuduz by Goran Bregovic.
What I love about this song, other than Vaska's beautiful voice is the undefined sound of the words, getting you to feel them, rather than hearing them. These is one of those rare cases where the previous version (Dona Dumitru Siminica : Cine are fata mare) is transformed way beyond its expected potential (yes, I know. Personal preference).
The 3rd version adds an intro and an ending and some more in the middle, and at this point the melodic line is more or less completed. I cleaned up the use of the vocals (starting at 4:00). Note: I've added the voice to give an idea about how I want it to sound, this is not the actual part planned for the final format (for which I have the lyrics but nothing else).
However, as I start to extend my experiment I'm starting to sense the difficulty of dealing with changing the instruments and the rhythm and finding some that work here and this is where being a trained musician, which I am not, would help.
How do you change afterwards a song's orchestration to something different? No idea at this point.
Now, after a hiatus of almost a year, for health reasons and others, I'm coming back to this. One idea is to take some of the themes and experiment from the ground up, again.
First try (the first minute is not much by any standards, introducing the first two themes and basic variations and then the re-introduction to the second theme and its treatment at 4:50):
Next, I am trying yet another, more modern approach for the themes that appear in the middle of the song:
This is still nowhere closer to where I want it. The guitars, mainly, and the doubling synths make most of the song sound rather raucous, void of any warmth, real emotion.. Blocked again, for the moment.
As for the lyrics I don't have much. Only, instead of going with a traditional format I'm experimenting with end words that are being assumed at the beginning of the next line:
For the curious, some of the older attempts:
Apr 2012: 1st version - for reasons I do not remember this version is haunted - most probably by my frustration of not being able to get the song out of my head. When I first started - I thought this will be a walk in the park, well, maybe a long walk but still something where I will be able to progress. A few days later after recording this, I found myself without any ideas that could get me closer to what I wanted. Where next? When this happens, I stop and move to something else. Then days, sometimes weeks later, while doing things unrelated, out of nowhere I get a spark followed right away by an idea starting to form. A lot of these times the spark proves to lead nowhere but other times it turns out to start an avalanche of ideas.
The 2nd version adds at 1:05 a first attempt to use the voice of Vaska Jankovska singing a fragment from one of the greatest songs I've heard - Pjesma from the album The time of Gypsies(Dom za vesanje)/Kuduz by Goran Bregovic.
What I love about this song, other than Vaska's beautiful voice is the undefined sound of the words, getting you to feel them, rather than hearing them. These is one of those rare cases where the previous version (Dona Dumitru Siminica : Cine are fata mare) is transformed way beyond its expected potential (yes, I know. Personal preference).
The 3rd version adds an intro and an ending and some more in the middle, and at this point the melodic line is more or less completed. I cleaned up the use of the vocals (starting at 4:00). Note: I've added the voice to give an idea about how I want it to sound, this is not the actual part planned for the final format (for which I have the lyrics but nothing else).
However, as I start to extend my experiment I'm starting to sense the difficulty of dealing with changing the instruments and the rhythm and finding some that work here and this is where being a trained musician, which I am not, would help.
How do you change afterwards a song's orchestration to something different? No idea at this point.
Now, after a hiatus of almost a year, for health reasons and others, I'm coming back to this. One idea is to take some of the themes and experiment from the ground up, again.
First try (the first minute is not much by any standards, introducing the first two themes and basic variations and then the re-introduction to the second theme and its treatment at 4:50):
Next, I am trying yet another, more modern approach for the themes that appear in the middle of the song:
This is still nowhere closer to where I want it. The guitars, mainly, and the doubling synths make most of the song sound rather raucous, void of any warmth, real emotion.. Blocked again, for the moment.
As for the lyrics I don't have much. Only, instead of going with a traditional format I'm experimenting with end words that are being assumed at the beginning of the next line:
Into the night,Anyways, I'm halfway there. Will see what happens :)
The light is dancing in circles around me,
I see ..
Saturday, 12 January 2013
The Girl and the Orange Dragon (bedtime story)
I wrote the basic themes for this song 20 years ago and the way I play it keeps changing. Now working on it again and hope to finish it ;)
This is not a live recording - I wrote the score in MuseScore and render it in Reaper. My playing skills are not too great but I hope to do a live recording as well.
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
What if?
Why do we want to create new things?
From boredom to fulfilling real needs the reasons vary a lot. Here, however I'm interesting in the process of creating something new without having a clear plan in mind. Whether you sit in front of an empty sheet of paper, or with your favourite instrument, or most probably staring above a computer keyboard - there are times when armed with a few faint thoughts you're ready. Ready to play with ideas.
Mathematics, music, writing. This is not something you need to have completed by a certain time or need to stay in a budget. It is rather a challenge you set for yourself to discover something new. It is not a competition or even if it is, it is with the best opponent out there you care about - yourself.
You try and fail many times and sometimes it is exciting and you learn what works and what it doesn't and at other times you are simply out of energy and you waste time with nothing to show for it other than frustration. But you come back. Because in the end you have the time of your life.
I plan to write here about my journey of discovering music, writing, mathematics and other things unnamed that involve playing, with sounds, words, number, forms, and colours and about the question that often follows:
"What if?"
Lets start.
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