Was awake for hours in the night, but used this unique time to work and view the Remembrance music project from afar. I now work with lyrics first. My music is narrative, so the story is crucial and the music, its pace, timbre, and everything, must follow the track and drama of the words. One of my principles is that, for a good song, the listener should know what the song is about even if they don't understand the words.
A second principle is image, that the overall structure conveys a narrative as each component does; so I made a descriptive list of the path for this album. Beethoven worked out this structure first, or perhaps he did. I tend to work out a few musical pieces first as a sort of skeleton, then slightly move them about when in an early phase. I'm now working on the whole album at once, not each track at once, for this reason, to unify the whole.
This makes some activities more complex (and deeper) than they would otherwise be. The titles are changing. The first track I wrote, the one which became the musical thematic root for everything is now called An Empty Service; it was called Adagio. Another thing I did today was add some bells from the quiet synth piece, which sounds like a lost wind-chime in a maze, to The Unremembered. Its not a natural fit; the song sounds more conventional without it. Now, suddenly, after the chorus, the song jumps to silence and gentle bells for 30 seconds. This is hugely beneficial to it because it adds drama. Any contrast is generally good, and here it adds to the image, and reinforces the overall structure and links to other tracks.
All well and good.
The only structural job was to work out what came after that song. I had a hall full of ragged people in Remembrance Service, then the I Don't Get Out bells, which seems to be a jump into the past, or a memory. The Unremembered also has images of those lost or forgotten, but also elements of ghosts, trees in the mist, an ignored populace. This made me think of ghosts; this is a service for the dead, which was cancelled, so I thought that a good track would be one from the perspective of a ghost, like Watching You Without Me by Kate Bush... but most of the songs here were already sad and slow. I wanted something different to add contrast and gamut; I didn't want to change key or even melody, because that is my principle theme. I thought of the band Sparks. One of their features is using sad or disturbing lyrics in musically cheery pop songs, and making use of that contrast. It is very rare for any Sparks song to be sad and slow.
So, I decided to make a song about a ghost who had high hopes of glory and riches in life, but it all went wrong, yet now remains hopeful that, post mortem, he can still find success. To reinforce the message, I plan on a rock intro with all of the promise of musical richness, but the song itself, from the ghost's, perspective will jump into weedy electronic sounds. I wrote out the words in a flash; the song is called Photograph of Heaven.
So, I've spent today sketching out this music.
What is still remaining is the main opening track, the principle image and overture, which will, I plan, be concrète. I also need to add vocals, guitars, and still rather a lot of finishing. It's all so much hard work.
