I've spent the last two or three days working on The Trees, the longest track on The Modern Game and the track that made me pull the album in its first incarnation because I was unhappy with it. It had great parts and parts that really needed to match or pull up to that. I'm most inspired when I see great sparks of art hidden in a dusty darkness.
The Trees is a strange and complex song that originally began as a drone with an atmosphere of fear and strangeness, that builds to a loud climax. I like climax-type music and there are a few options for this, the key part is the contrast between the slow build and the instant climax. I began The Trees with a melody in one chord and of one or two notes, inspired by Under Ice by Kate Bush, but the result was too simplistic. I needed more melodic drama, not just timbre or volume. My music is always very melodic and I'm interested more and more with melody and basic tune rather than special effects. Everything; words, tune, and timbre, are separate elements and each must be good. Just one being good is not enough!
My single-chord drone was too simplistic for this so I explored some options. One option is a cyclic, hypnotic chord sequence, like In Every Dream Home a Heartache by Roxy Music. The chords go up and down in a zig-zag to create a hypnotic looping effect before the break. This can be an effective way to lull the listener into a trance, down a pathway that can be subverted. I toyed with this but went for something yet more complex. My song is about trees of people; that is a crowd. Desmond Morris once said that in a crowded situation we treat others like trees, and this song is about the trees of society trapping us, moulding us, modifying our behaviour, so I wanted music that felt like it was in the way, blocking the vocals of the protagonist.
Perhaps the most musically accomplished type of climax is that used by Handel in Zadok the Priest, the baroque strings that play during a British coronation. This is a simple cycle of chords that comfortably, expectantly, and gloriously arrives at the target chord. Karl Jenkins has done this a few times too, in his Palladio music, and some of the Adiemus music (music so tragically uncool that it probably appears in lifts and spas for old people). To enact this we need out target chord; in my case G-minor, then simply work backwards towards it. We can pick almost any sequence really. D-major to G-minor works prettily, so I simply stepped back through all of the chords in that step to make a sequence, from D#-minor, G-major, C-minor, and so on, building towards D-major, then into our glorious G-minor.
To made things more interesting I added some subversive atonal elements. First, a cycle of bells, always in G-minor like a demonic music box. This was in the original mix and worked well here to add sort of fear feeling, and to keep a sense of regular time (which is oh so slowly sped up). Then I added two lead instruments: a strange, faux-viola that sounds like a Celtic instrument of some sort, and a Japanese flute. These both sound very foresty. The melody for both of these was generated at random from a series of optional notes and timings. It would be a bit of a stretch to call it artificially intelligent composition, it was more like pseudo-randomness, and this adds an odd feeling, like a vista of random audio-trees or branches obscuring the main chord arrangement. These notes were generally in a G-minor scale too, and the effect of the strange discord enhances the drama of the big G-minor when it comes in.
The last element was the vocal. This took a long time because there are many options and I tried several options from spoken or whispered to sang in various keys and styles. In the end, the vocal was largely monotone and relatively tuneful, perhaps like Scott Walker's in his avant-garde period. The post-climax vocals are louder and follow more of a standard melody. I really need a booth or studio for this sort of screaming!
The climax in a song is normally near the end, but here it's in the middle, and after it the song quietens down for a melancholic piano solo, as though the inner thoughts of the protagonist are being explored, an introspective part to clash with the outer world of the trees and the forest. The trees come back for the final ending which features doubled vocals.
It will take many listens to check this. As for the rest of the album, I'm a bit happier with the vocals in the other songs, but not entirely. Everything is taking a long time. I still need a band/artist name for all of this, too. Music, in this century, is something that van-Gogh style artists can now also create, and that's what I feel like at times. I'm creating this for the same reason as I paint; to challenge myself, and because I can and must. I have new musical ideas that simply must be enacted, and I'm enjoying the learning process. This is a bit backwards, almost all musicians now make music because they need to for some commercial or performance reason, rather than an inner desire to create something, but everything is a symbiosis. I have local opportunities to perform, so this music can lead to that rather than vice versa. I don't need external deadlines or offers of cash for motivation. I've never lacked motivation. I've probably worked every single day since childhood on my various projects. It's simply my nature to keep busy.
In other news, my new piano music inspired by poetry, Music of Poetic Objects, is now live on digital channels. Search for it on Amazon or iTunes or TIDAL to have a listen to that. You can still order the lush and beautiful CD version from my website.
