The Evolution of a New Musical Work

On the second day, I added more layers to the drums of my new musical work, some strings to represent the infinite potential of my infant self, and a dirty electric guitar to represent the impact of my mother. I also extended the B section to 64 bars with the thought of using flex tempo later to increase the tempo in that section in order to express my increasing infantile panic.

Here’s what the result looks like in Logic Pro:

On The Second Day

To elaborate, I added a quarter note ride on the hit-hat and a syncopated snare drum part.

I created the drums using the 8 velocity sensitive pads on my Alesis V49 MIDI keyboard, which I reprogrammed to map to the Kick, Snare Rimshot, Snare, Clap, Splash Cymbal, Floor Tom, Closed Hit-Hat and Open Hi-Hat. I prefer playing drums on these pads rather than the keys of the keyboard since they feel a little more drum-like, although I’m new at it and had quite a few pad bounces to edit out. Also, my timing was pretty bad so I applied 50% quantisation and edited the most egregious errors manually. I didn’t want to quantise it completely because I want to retain a rough feel to the rhythm to help express the instability I felt as an infant; but I also didn’t want obvious errors distracting the listener.

In hindsight I probably could have saved time by only playing a few bars of the drum pattern and then looping it, but I want to apply layer cake orchestration™ to the drum part meaning it won’t end up simply being the same rhythm repeated throughout the piece like it is now. However, it is possible to trim and modify looped MIDI sections in Logic Pro, so I could have used this approached regardless. Nevertheless, I played each layer of the drum rhythm continually for 4 minutes or so, so I’ve ended up with one long MIDI region.

In order to represent the discombobulated feeling of being a new born with an emotionally unreliable caregiver, I chose a quite irregular drum rhythm with:

• Kick on 1 and 2&
• Toms on 2, 3 and 3&
• Snare on 2 and 3&

This is unconventional for me because I generally write contemporary pop/rock where the kick is on 1 and 3, and the back beat snare on 2 and 4. During the editing to fix my bad rhythm on the pads, I noticed that I was often playing the snare almost a full eighth note early. After correcting many instances of this “error”, I started to wonder if it was actually my body’s natural rhythm trying to override my conscious mind’s tendency to want to control the fuck out of everything. I tried moving all the snare notes forward from the 2 onto the 1a, and decided I liked this even more syncopated version better. So now I have:

• Snare on 1a and 3&

One of my favourite riffs in all of rock music is the synthesiser part from Jump by Van Halen. To represent my infant self, I added a Vintage Synth Strings part which approximates this sound, and then played with a simple 1-4-5 chord progression. The A section begins with this ear-pleasing sequence representing all the wonder and potential I had as an infant. While trying a few variations I found that a ♭3-2-1 progression gives a nice descent back to the tonic, unencumbered by the harmonic progression rules of western art music. I love breaking archaic rules, especially when it sounds good to my ear. Shortly after this stroke of genius, I watched a video by Rick Beato on Borrowed Chords, and realised that I’d simply borrowed the major ♭3 chord from the parallel minor scale. Thanks, Rick.

The B section of my part represents the struggle for control, sustenance and nurture between my mother and my infant self. On the one hand I was reliant on her for survival, but on the other she most likely didn’t feel safe to be around, so I wanted to escape. I added a dirty electric guitar to this part to represent her, using tritones similar to an emergency siren to represent danger in an ascending series to escalate tension. It’s meant to sound uncomfortable, and it does.

I also added occasional incursions of strings to represent my attempts to assert myself and wrestle control of my life away from her. I used volume automation to get the strings to fade more slowly than their normal release time, although in hindsight this may sound better if I actually automate the release time. Ideally I’d like the strings to fade gradually like a piano note does when it’s held down, but I haven’t found a better way of doing this yet.

In the end, the strings win and return full-force in the A’ section at the end. This isn’t how it actually panned out for me in real life since my mother scared the shit out of me and it’s taken me many, many years of therapy to heal the resulting trauma. I’ve spent much of my adult life attempting to undo the damage I experienced in my childhood and regain control of my life, and part of the process involves reprocessing memories from the past, so I figure I’m entitled to a little artistic license here. I’d rather be happy than right.

Here’s what the piece sounds like at present:

I still have more work to do and a few other ideas yet, including:

• Layer cake orchestration™.
• Introducing each instrument gradually, ala Tubular Bells.
• Adding a bass riff.
• Using flex tempo to increase the tempo during the escalating panic of the B section.
• Equalisation.
• Mixing.
• Mastering.
• Any other ideas that come to me in the creative process.