Melody of the moment

Let's kick of this blog with thoughts on the band's last practice, two days ago. We practice on Tuesday afternoons, on the one day of the week that the drummer, K, has off. Yesterday was Tuesday, and it was one of those days where I awoke to, or was awakened by, a song playing in my head. The song was not the usual sort of sing-songy thing which, when plucked out on guitar, amounts to a conventional I-IV-V chord structure--so common with me that I am thrilled when what I hear in my head is instead a melody requiring a signature cancellation or unusual chord pattern. This song was unmistakably R＆B. The voice was that of a black woman with a penchant for powerful melisma; the sort of thing I never sing but that, at least at approximately six in the morning, I imagined was not necessarily out of my reach. I felt that, with some courageous back-up singing and variation in the vocal delivery, this was a song I could enjoy. I grabbed my guitar and found that the usual progressions weren't fitting. The chords that fit best were a Cmaj7 followed by a Bmin7--chords a mere half-step from one another. Moreover, the repetition of those two alone seemed to stand up well to a good deal of melodic variation. I sang the first lines into my recording device and struck on the idea of using some lyrics written for me by a former student of mine. Amazingly, they seemed for the most part to fit, and that's the most you can ever ask of lyrics randomly stacked against a melody of the moment. (After further inspection of the lyrics, later in the day, I realized that I could not sing such lyrics for this or any type of music.)

When I got to Banana Studios and plugged my guitar in, I started playing the riff quietly. K, who has a good ear for anything new and noteworthy, asked me what I was playing. This led to a jam which R, entering the studio shortly thereafter, joined in as fluidly as always. Listening to her improvise on bass is always a pleasure. We played this riff and took turns soloing and after a few minutes, K slowed things down, introducing a noticeably different rhythm. To this, R and I responded. I added an Am7 chord, thus making a three-chord pattern on the basis of the original two. After a moment of this, we returned to the faster rhythm of the outset. Then, after a bit of that, R started pounding out a G note on her bass, and I caught up with her by finding the corresponding chord. This was a nice find, as it served as a great way to resolve a song that, though it began in Cmaj7, could actually be heard retrospectively as a song in G major. I doubt I would have imagined these variations had I just played the chords that were in my head as I awoke.

This is it. 6 AM by a@k

This ability to riff away on a few chords is what first impressed me by K and R. In our very first practice, back in December of 2010, I started playing a song I had written long before and after only the first verse, we took off into a jam section that had never existed in the song before. K and R's talent gives me a new way of writing a song, which is always important. It gives the possibility of expanding old ideas and creating something new.