Slow, buy steady, progress on my music project. I want to make some songs that are inventive and energetic, with the primary artistic aim of more practice of vocal work and production, and to create. The results so far sound good, but I'm running out of ideas so these next few days must be inventive. This should be the fun part, the joyous part, but it's strange that they often feel unpleasant, like being thirsty and tasting sips of many unsuitable drunk recipes.
I'm trying to listen to new and different music, seeds of inspiration. Last night I listened to Tilt by Scott Walker, one of the strangest albums in my collection - I have 100 CD albums at any one time. There are others that I don't think of as good enough, compilations etc. that I store in the 'wallet of shame', but the 100 are the 'best'. When I get a new CD it enters a trial period and if it is better than the worst of these 100, then it replaces it, thus I evolve the 100 best albums ever (in theory).
Anyway, Tilt is one of the strangest (the others perhaps being The Shaggs album and the Van Def Graaf Generator albums). All of the Tilt songs are long, with amelodic and non-repeating vocal lines over an orchestral backing, which barely seems to follow the vocals. It's an extension, perhaps of Climate of Hunter, but that was far more conventional. Tilt reminds me, in tone, of Beethoven's Late Quartets; strange music from solitude. I've yet to appreciate it fully and keep it in the 100 partly because it is extreme rather than appealing or technically excellent.
One song, Patriot, inspired me to write a song in a very approximate imitation this style:
Cherries
When you're young you like sweets
Tastes of cherries
As you age you explore
And crave nuance
Your mature tastes are bitter
Dark and strange
And my tastes are bitter
And eclectic
But you don't know where it will end
Where it will end
Where it will end
It reads (and sounds, musically) like it is about some sort of perversion, perhaps in a way it is, as it is about liking weird music. Tilt isn't remotely children's music; not catchy, not sweet, barely musical; like bitter chocolate, a Bendick's Mint, a bite of rocket; very much an adult palette, which is what Cherries is about.
One other thing I did today was emulate very closely a Leslie Speaker, an audio gizmo, by using a chorus effect that also used the same triangle oscillator for the effect depth. The Beatles used a Leslie Speaker a lot on Revolver, apparently. Yes, Revolver is one of my 100.
