I think the title nearly says it all. I had stumbled upon this chord while tooling around with my guitar and it was so “out there” I had to jot it down before I forgot it.
Not a song really, just a reference for the chord and a standard blues progression, but I can’t help picturing a scene with swarming rats, all bouncing around on springs as if that is their normal mode of transportation.
This recording starts with the last couple of bars from another song that somehow got on the head of the tape. Then it follows an improv based on the chording from yet another song of mine. It’s just a pleasant little session with no higher aspirations.
This one struck me as having an “imperative” edge – kind of a positive (though serious) drive toward something. I jotted down that part of it, but it really had nowhere to go so about halfway through it degrades into some rather unmemorable improvisation.
Just an isolated riff I lifted out of the previous track and re-performed , just because I liked it.
I have no idea what this one means. I can’t even make out most of the words on this old cassette recording from the 1970s. Still, I can hear the words “dream” and “submarine” and figure it’s just as well we can’t really understand the rest of it. Thank God for small favors.
In any event, the melody and chording are pretty good though and, as usual, the performance sucks. I never said I was an adequate musician nor a tolerable singer – just a good composer. Try imagining this one will full orchestration and some words that make sense. On the other hand, don’t bother.
I like discord. That is to say, I enjoy composing music in which truly discordant harmonies are included in such a way that, in context, they are completely acceptable and perhaps even necessary.
This composition is one of my first experiments in discord, and I think it works pretty well. It’s called “Jangle” not only because it is a kinetic kind of music but because it is also intended to jangle the nerves.
I like writing themes. I remember recording this one some forty years ago. I was laying down this great melodrama villain theme I’d composed and then I got tired of playing it. In fact, I wanted to change the mood. So, rather than doing another separate recording, I just extemporized a completely contrasting melody to work against the first part.
Never revisited it, but decades later I began to wonder that if the first part was the villain, who did the second part represent. Having recently seen the animated cartoon “Despicable Me” with its not so evil villain who ends up being a foster dad, I originally thought it might be the villain’s kid.
But then I remembered the Simpson’s episode in which Home goes off chasing “dog with a fluffy tail”, completely ignoring the fact he’s just seen his own double for the first time! Those two animations made it pretty obvious this composition was about “The Villain and His Dog.”
An upbeat little ditty, this piece is designed to go on forever by simply connecting the end to the beginning again. I’ve written quite a few circular songs over the years, but this was the first (and simplest) of the series. There’s something comforting about a positive spin that will go on forever, just like movies that finish up the story and then show the characters starting a new identical quest all over again, giving us the sense that the adventure is “Endless”.
| This composition struck me as the start of a quest, when the entire journey lies ahead and one begins with eager anticipation of adventures to come. Again, one of my innocent optimistic tunes from the 1970s when I was in my late teens. You know, I always hear full orchestration when I write these things, then just jot down the basic sketch and leave it at that. But try to hear the the timpani and the French horn and the string section. If you can, I’ll never have to bother multi-tracking it! |
| I was pretty proud of this song back in the 1970s. It was one of the more adult pieces I wrote during that time. But years later, I listened to it again and realized it was exactly the same chording as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by George Harrison. Now, I never intentionally ripped him off, and there’s no melody line so it isn’t plagiarism exactly, and I don’t know if my subconscious was mimicking his song or creating a whole new one of my own. But, ol’ George himself did the same thing with “Isn’t it a Pity” on his “All Things Must Past” album, since it has the exact same chord progression as in the long fading chorus of “Hey Jude.” All in all, what the hell…. |