Worked until nearly midnight on the Infinity song last night. The problem was the overall structure. The intro, verse and chorus worked well, then led into a moment of doubt, a third section which uses melodic elements from another song. The second verse followed, but if this led into a chorus again things started to sounded a bit repetitive, an ABCAB sort of structure, but the third section ideally needs exploring too and ABCABC is a bit simple.
My first draft used ABCAC which worked in an interesting way, but the B (the chorus) is worth hearing twice, and is an important part of the glorious, heavenly feeling. The problem is that it doesn't follow naturally from the third part, so the solution was to add a third verse, which then changed into a half-verse. The song is rather long at nearly seven minutes, and I'm concerned that there isn't enough variety of volume and power, or variety of tempo, it all feels rather uniform, but we are at the early stages. There is a lot more to do. Music takes me a lot longer to write these days because of these extra, final sculptural changes; these tweaks to contrast and to every note and piece of emphasis.
Overall, the song is the most Genesis-like song I've written, perhaps because of the synth leads and the guitars. It has elements of something from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway; The Grand Display of Lifeless Packaging, or Counting Out Time, something like a trawl or walk, a conveyor belt, and indeed the title is now The Great Conveyor. My tune has more melody than those Genesis tracks. I like the overall conceptual idea of The Lamb, but prefer the music of other general Genesis albums like Foxtrot or Selling England by the Pound.
Have spent much of today filming and editing an interview with Alice Smith for Ink Pantry. Have also received the foreword to my future poetry book, The Burning Circus, from John Lindley. I feel honoured to include such words from such a great poet. John is one of few poets who can master forms and structure as well as language, meaning, feeling, imagery. His poems are like crafted cakes or miniature sculptures built from words; many contemporary poems now are very unstructured and loose, which is often an easy option.
