Continuing my review of improv sessions from days come and gone, I wanted to highlight this little diamond in the rough — yep, has some rough edges and moments in there, but it’s improv and you can’t expect perfection unless your paygrade, notoriety or record company wants it to be that way. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of “perfect” music anyhow — all of the music we’re spoon-fed on commercial radio stations is so overly-polished that you lose the humanity behind it and it ends up becoming white noise on the elevator or your portable radio at work while you type up that TPS report.
Did you get the memo? I didn’t.
Alright, download this little ditty, song 3 from my session on March 19, 2005.
0:00 - immediately starting off with a rhythmic reference, in this case some light basting brush action followed by a drone type tone, layering two different tones using my ebow. Some of the coolest stuff has a drone-like tone to it, that I can just get lost in. In this case, I’m revolving between two suspenseful tones and it allows a lot of possibilities for movement in the song.
0:54 - the cool thing, at least in my mind, is that it starts out leading you to think it’s going to be this Indian-esque kind of drone type song, and then starts to flip into this semi-spaghetti western, swung type tune.
1:20 - by this point, the rhythm track is set for my foundation and I start to play around in that environment a bit, and by 1:50 I have a good idea of where I want to go with it.
2:15 - I take a break from the melody line to build up the percussion track a bit and put more intensity into the loop track. I can’t recall what I’m using, but it’s most likely a tennis ball or my rubber mallet for the kick and finger for snare.
3:27 - Throwing in a bit of a change, I’ve got more direction for where I want to go and combine additional chords and melodies to build a solid “story” in the song, and by 3:54 I throw a nice change in there with the minor chord to build desire for resolution.
5:20 - The momentum is being built up at this point with taking the melody and chords up higher and bringing in delayed tension at 6:06, which kinda cues the listener that things are coming to an end. And with such a deeper tapestry of a loop, you have to fade that out slowly to make it work. So while that fades I layer in some ebow, but it got out of hand there and started distorting on me! Bah!!
This is a really simplistic tune — nothing elaborate and is another example of how music can be something simple as just a means of drifting away in your thoughts, meditations, and in prayer. It’s a nice way to escape or to connect and draw near, a great means of relaxing or engaging in what you’re doing. And for me, that’s what these improv sessions were — they were my way of relaxing, of engaging with my emotions, and creating in an evolutionary process and just seeing what comes of it.
They’re not perfect, and it’s really not that big of a deal to me. It’s the creation process and doesn’t have to be refined like the big boys in Nashville, LA, or NYC would like to produce. No, instead it’s raw, organic, and from the heart of the moment.
Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a few more tracks from my improv session on March 19, 2005.