Studio Log #18

Aug 29, 2017

8/26/17

New Pile Track! Current working title is ‘Mention It To Me’.

This started life as a guitar & voice improvisation, but it’s drifted around in my head for years and lives in the category of “if you finish nothing else in this life, finish THIS.” And no time like the present.

It took me a while to find the original recording. All I knew is it was a date-coded title (like most of my improvs are) and it was marked with 5 stars in iTunes. There’s about 1,500 tracks in iTunes that have date-coded titles, and nearly 600 of them are marked with 5 stars. Whee! Finally found it last night: 022510.

I had a solid idea of how it starts and how it’s supposed to end, with a sort-of fuzzy notion of what I wanted to happen in between. As of this morning, I have solidified that fuzzy notion; it still needs some editing, but the material is there. I think this one’s going to go pretty fast.

Hope I didn’t just jinx myself there.

8/27/17

Editing the whole thing together into a mock-up.

Decided it needed a B section and some melodic variations. Did a little of each, still have some more to work through.

Currently it’s organ and strings. But every time I deal with strings I jump down an orchestration rathole, and this time is no different. Now that I’ve started to rethink the melody, my brain is orchestrating more: HEY! NOW HOW ‘BOUT SOME OBOES! AND TRUMPETS! BIGGER! BIGGER! MAKE IT BIGGER!

8/29/17

Had shower thoughts this morning. A new variation of the melody started bouncing around in my head, and I played through it on guitar this morning. This thing is in danger of accordioning…