A somewhat busy day, thankfully just a tiny bit warmer, though there was still ice on the inside of my window when I awoke. How slow the work seems and how poor my levels of production! I remind myself that, in the field of recorded music, many albums have taken months historically, and that I've recorded and released four or five this year. I'm making great progress technically, and my singing is better with each release and each month, as I focus on this, and on music engineering and composition (as well as sight reading, piano playing and the other activities of the year). The joy of sequencing, this era, is that it creates a furtive ground for composition. The sheer lack of expression in the written form, as with Bach, forces creative use of the writing instead.
I've worked today on The Girl With the Pearl Earring (knowing that the painting is correctly titled "The Girl with a Pearl Earring"). The song, in my head, has a samba rhythm, a mood like the Brazil song by Geoff Muldaur, and Dedicated Follower of Fashion by The Kinks. It starts in a minor key and I had to avoid making it too much like my old tune Office Life (obscure and unheard as that is anyway). It was great fun to make. There are lots of layers, all with their own dancing rhythm, and very electronic; the main instruments bounce like a Commodore 64 tune, which seems to add to the fun due to the sheer contrast of styles.
This is also one song where I've not changed the words (since the original writing back in Feb 2008), they're great as they are, full of comedic rhymes, summing up the exuberance of the song itself:
And so I sit
in the dark for a bit.
I give a glance,
you see my face, not my stance.
My head's a whirl
but soon enough it's clearing.
I am the girl
with the pearl earring.
I look ahead
clad in my blue and yellow,
and not in red,
so specified that fellow.
And with a curl, of his brush
he makes my face endearing.
I am the girl
with the pearl earring.
The men may gaze
like staring is in fashion,
but I'm not fazed
I will dispel their passion.
I'll give a twirl,
and laugh away their leering.
I am the girl
with the pearl earring.
The rhythm is also regular, 120 B.P.M. - all rarities for me these days, but variety is good. In a day, it's almost all done, but it's a tad boring structurally, and will need a solo or something after the second verse. The first builds layer by layer, introducing instruments to match to words a little; starting 'in the dark' with a single bass, then adding a layer for the 'glance', then another for the 'whirl'. The second verse has almost everything playing, with a few more proverbial and actual bells and whistles for the third.
This album is much better than expected, though it's primary aim is fun, training, exercise.
As an artist I feel increasingly obscure, ignored, eccentric. None of these things are bad if I can struggle along a living, but more importantly, produce good work, work I'm pleased with that shows progress in some area; technical, imaginative. I think this is happening. Being good at art is, in many ways, mastery over a very long period, and perhaps even ideally in obscurity and eccentricity, providing the sufficient grounding is left to be objective and critical to the correct degree, rather than a reliance on third party 'feedback', 'market forces' etcetera. Not everyone has this facility, I appear to be among a few, but some artists have, did, and do.
My dreams are full of visual art, new paintings, me as a painter and among others.
