Two unusually sunny days, glimpses of summer. I felt so tired yesterday that I hardly did anything, this is in part due to the end of March, I'm awaiting my main quarterly backup. I did complete and file some new work, three tracks remastered, on Tree of Keys.
Today I've worked on music. I find this so slow now, far slower than painting, when before I could race through tunes, one in a few hours. Now I'm aiming for more complexity in composition and production. Before I'd choose some chords, almost always the same chords, and make any old melody, add a variation, perhaps change the key, then end. Now I'm thinking more in images and moods, and these esoteric and uncertain concepts take a lot of experimentation and crafting to even appear, never mind finalise.
My song 'Nightfood' started with four descending chords. We all like A-minor to G-major, F-major, E-minor don't we? I thought I'd pick a demonic variation of A-minor, G-minor, F-minor and D#-minor to continue the slide. Then, for a chorus E-Major, D-major, C-major and Bb-major, all good fun. These might be ambitious and interesting but they're all strange keys and the result is/was so atonal that it makes for a tune that nobody would really like. I was reminded, for some reason, of my old music for my (bad) game Antz, which, for me, was different. Nobody liked it, not even me. Its only merit was that it was weird.
My initial A-minor and G-minor part caught on though. The music of Rush came to mind and I could really imagine them playing this, so I changed things to A-min, G-min, A-min, E-min, then moving to an easy F-Maj for the next section. Of course, this all sounds a lot prettier, less different though. This reminded me that Rush were never that unconventional musically, at least in the very few albums of theirs I have. Many songs are some-rotating-chords verse, some-rotating-chords chorus and generally tempos and images etc. staying the same in a song, in contrast to the more epic Genesis or early Queen.
I find realising music ideas so much harder than painting ideas, when both, in the end, have great similarities. I create them in totally different ways. All creation is method; hard, rational, method. I must explore methods.
