So, as promised, new music. This piece is a collaboration with my summer intern, Kyle Vis. It is a sort of compositional etude – the sort of thing more likely to appeal to my friends in the halls of academe etc than the everyday listener (not trying to be a snob here – just trying to keep it real, frankly). It’s not a groover, in fact it’s not a commercial piece at all – it’s meant to be a tad more serious musically. It’s basically a minimal percussion piece/harmonic exploration (with a tad of electronica thrown in to keep people off balance) designed to show Kyle’s professors that he can write (and produce) in odd time signatures and with unusual harmonies. Its form is extremely free – very little holds the whole thing together (which is going against type for me as I tend to be an overly systematic guy in that area), but I do like the way various elements recombine during the course of things – I wanted it to be a very linear piece. Also, this is a true collaborative work in that Kyle and I split this pretty much right down the middle – I really enjoyed Kyle’s contributions which I considered first rate stuff and look forward to doing work with him in the near future (of a more commercial nature). The piece clocks in at just over 8 minutes – 8 minutes of fairly advanced stuff finished in three weeks? I feel pretty good about it. If you’re a drummer and you dig the odd time signature thing (although we don’t go very crazy at all – just dipping our toe in this area) there are some things to dig - it basically has a repeating pattern of three bars of 6 and two bars of 4. After a bit we briefly shift into three bars of 7 and two bars of four before returning to the original pattern. Still, it can be fun to count at various points as there is some deceptive stuff going on. Harmonically, we stay fairly diatonic until we hit the section in 7 – at that point we stray into a whole tone thing for a bit (before I couldn’t take it anymore and broke out of that). When we return to 6 there is a fairly subtle shift as we find ourselves dealing with harmonic minor and some cool, dark chords. The chords in question are a D sus b9, the rarely attempted C minor-major over G and an A minor 7 b5 (Locrian 2). Yes, I know these are diatonic to each other within harmonic minor harmony but that was on purpose – I was trying to get a little crazy without getting too crazy, if you know what I mean. I wanted it to be very obvious to Kyle’s professors after we hit ‘em with the D sus b9 that it wasn’t an accident, but it can be argued that I played that hand too strongly. Yes, I do a bit of playing (trumpet and mello) and even contributed a vocal during the section in 7. The title of the piece (“Underground River”) was inspired by Philip Glass’s description of creativity as being an underground river that’s always right there under your feet and constantly flowing although you may not be aware that it is there. Kyle and I loved the way Glass put it (in his characteristically spooky way). At any rate, enjoy (or don’t! That’s okay too as this is a tougher listen than what’s normal from me and I get that). Also - full disclaimer - this is best heard with a half decent pair of headphones, otherwise youll miss things in the mix.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:59:32 +0000
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