I think the recording has been wrapped up. More of Jon’s bass tracks arrived via the cloud. The next step will be mixing and more mixing. Perhaps several singles… I enjoy creating covers for individual pieces of music and the concept of singles will let me present different versions of a track.
I am so happy with this album! Really, I am thrilled. I put together a new studio in a backpack and figured out how to record high quality sound outside of a traditional studio. I learned a lot. This will open all sorts of new possibilities for the future. I enjoyed the the playful place I was able to occupy. So many cool guitar sounds, using a sponge and pieces of paper and cloth to prepare the guitar. My head is already humming with ideas for the next album…
I will have a little under two weeks to concentrate on mixing after returning from my retreat and before leaving to play duets with Jon. Then another week before playing in Seattle and Denver with the trio, and more than three weeks from the end of that run until the east coast tour starts on 11 October. During all of that time new singles will appear on Backstage.
In November I will be in Japan for several weeks. I will walk around a mountain on an ancient trail and will experience a few places I never visited but always wanted to. Then a little time off in December before we start it all up again with a run in Texas in January, followed by our traditional three week tour in California in February.
I had this idea for a guitar rhythm the other night, a swinging arpeggio played with the sponge under the strings, and recorded it right away. The next morning I listened and came up with a guitar melody I liked. As I listened to the piece, I wondered where that melody came from. I played the melody with my thumb and I think playing that way made it feel more like something I might play on an electric guitar. The first guitar rhythm was played with a lot of swing so this morning I played a second line that didn’t swing at all. The combination of those two rhythms created a beautiful forward movement. But what is this, I wondered (out of habit?)… It doesn’t matter WHAT it is, I told myself. I love the feel of it, my head keeps nodding to it, and I keep playing it on repeat. What more do I want?! I am out of the streaming music game and don’t need to fit into a genre. Now less than ever. LOL. Next came some chords, plucked softly and only on the two and four, like a backbeat. Then I found a bit of rain that fit the tempo and feel… How can rain drops be so funky? LoFi Flamenco guitar? Does it fit? Yes, it does. Hm, and what will Jon do with this one???
My guitar with a piece of sponge underneath the strings. The sponge shortens the sound and renders it almost oud-like. Hence the title of this post, the name a friend gave a track I recorded with it. (is the Oud masculine in Spanish??)
This last phase of recording Rain Poems has been about altering the guitar sound a little bit. Prepared guitar. Making the sound a little less pristine, less clear, less of that singing quality, and with more fuzz, a more percussive sound. Home-made wine. Moonshine. Kitchen food, not restaurant food. I used a cloth, woven through the strings and this sponge. I used a piece of paper, woven through the strings, on an album a few years ago. I bet nobody recognized it as a guitar sound. 😁
I often like limiting my palette because I have found that a small palette can inspire new ideas within those borders. There is so much one can discover through working with only a pencil. I suppose this is akin to having a tradition that limits what one is allowed to do. I don’t follow a tradition but perhaps I am creating my own for each album? There is an enormous difference between being told what we can and can’t do and choosing to draw our own lines within which we choose to work.
I have arrived at a point where I no longer want to use an electric guitar, or even a steel string guitar. I also haven’t used a synthesizer in a long time. I may use other instruments at some future time but right now I am loving everything about the Flamenco guitar. And, to be clear, by that I mean the instrument, not the tradition.
My black back of guitar stuff always contains glue and acrylic powder, nail silks, strings and a wire cutter, an assortment of files, an extra saddle, IEMs, and a green piece of foam that was cut to a little longer than the width of the strings and about an inch wide. I have used the foam, shoved under the guitar strings, to practice in hotel rooms late at night as it dampens the strings nicely.
Yesterday I put the foam under the strings and right up against the bridge. This created a short, slightly percussive and mellow sound. Rest strokes didn’t sound great but free strokes sounded quite evocative of an oud. And so another piece was born. Now up to 16 tracks and about 55 minutes of music. A lot of great guitar sounds.
I am happy to report that my ears have been fine although I have been using IEMs, with foam tips, every day for more than an hour at a time. I am wondering whether the silicone tips I was using for a while were the cause of my allergy/infection.
That is the sketch I began yesterday evening. Something sounded wrong last night and I couldn’t figure it out right away. Then I watched the excellent movie Tár (LINK – wikipedia), which I started the night before… And then it came to me, my melody contained an A over the F minor chord and that created the awfulness, of course. I knew the note had to be an A flat and then I couldn’t go to sleep because I wanted to hear this change. I didn’t want to start up everything in the middle of the night but as a result I couldn’t fall asleep until after 0300.
This section will become the chorus and the piece still needs some kind of verse… but the bones are there. Doesn’t feel at all sad to me. Uplifting actually.
Backstage is almost ready and you will be able to continue to witness the process there…. soon.
Oh, and the movie Tár is most excellent. A comment on excellence but also on power and the effects of cultural prejudices. There is much to say about the film. The performances are excellent. The film is gorgeous. The writing, however, is what’s amazing. Much is brought up but little judgement is made, leaving it to us, the viewer, to figure it out for ourselves.
Yesterday afternoon I decided that the arpeggio felt too fast and re-performed it at half the speed. Much more languid now. I love how little things can entirely change the feel of a pice of music.
The progression begins with Am, the relative minor chord in C. The next chord is D, which is outside the key of C. It’s a secondary dominant, the V chord in the key of G. In European classical music, this chord would typically lead to G, which would then resolve to C. However, this is not what Kalinnikov does. Instead, he follows D with Fm. This is another chord from outside the key; it’s borrowed from parallel C minor. Kalinnikov set you up to expect a move toward the sharp side of the circle of fifths, but instead he goes several steps over toward the flat side. The last chord is the tonic C. Kalinnikov gives the chords some extra flavor by repeating the notes E and C over all four of them. These notes are chord tones in Am and C, but they create colorful extensions on D and Fm, turning them into D9 and Fm(maj7) respectively.
I naturally found the title very intriguing and started arranging something, using that chord sequence, earlier today. Will record my ideas tonight. Didn’t listen to the samples and will wait to hear them until I am done with my recording using the same chords. I don’t even know the tempo or how quickly the chords change.
If you didn’t know, melodies are copyrighted but not chord changes. Thousands (millions?) of songs use the same chord changes.
Oh, and by themselves the chords don’t sound very sad to me. But I may have a high tolerance for sad music. 😄
