Meow meow, what is this? Oh no, what if it takes off and sends us to space?

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I’m trying out an exercise of planning out some emotions or moods before composing to get  better at doing some planning and hitting certain emotional moods while I’m writing. In the past I often just wrote whatever.

The pre-composition storyline might end up being total nonsense from a narrative standpoint (expect a lot of video game and cat references) but the point is less about the story itself and more about the moods.

Pre-composition storyline:

Energetic groovy kitten jumps all around and is having a lot of fun and takes off in a rocket to SPACE but and then realizes that they’re stuck in space and in their confusion needs to try to find a way out. After finding their way out FROM SPACE they guide the rocket back down they are happy and jump around with energy and things are celebratory and exciting and glorious.

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Technical notes:

A few technical lessons to practice today. First, I wanted to practice a little more usage of borrowed chords and make better use of off-scale notes. To do this, I looked significantly at using the common bVII and bVI chords as well as mixing the minor and major 4th chord. Specifically, I wanted to do a song that goes between upbeat and then slightly weird and disturbing in a grooving way. The keys I have in mind (before starting) are A major, A minor (parallel minor), and F# minor (relative minor).

For what it's worth, there are actually a bunch of borrowed chords, but most of the song is in A major. The coolest part is probably the jazz chords in the second section (after the beats and bass really come in) and I kind of came up with those pretty accidentally and it's cool enough that I should go back through the song and fix it, but I didn't really have enough time for that so I uploaded as-is. There's a little bit of implied key change (some parts are almost A minor) and oddly enough, the song ends on the non-tonic D (which I haven't really figured out why it sounded right theory-wise, but it's kind of cool).

For my reference:

A major: A B C# D E F# G#
A minor: A B C D E F G
F# minor: F# G# A B C# D E

Some borrowed chords to try:

I (A):         A     C#    E
bVII (G):     G     B    D
bVI (F):        F     A    C
IV (D):        D    F#    A
iv (Dm):        D    F    A
bIII (C):        C    E    G

There’s also an opportunity here to do some mode mixture (switching between major and minor here is an easy opportunity).

I will also continue to better utilize better melodies and better suspensions to maintain or prolong tension.

I started a new Logic Studio Template, so the sounds are probably not as polished as usual. I've been having a lot of performance issues (stuttering/skipping) and I thought it might have been due to using old templates with old plugins and changing the sample rate, so I started over. Doing so gives me the opportunity to re-evaluate some of the sounds I've been using but it also gives me a chance to look at some of Logic's new features like the step sequencer.
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Don't forget - as WeeklyBeats ends, there'll be a subset of us who'll move on to compose songs weekly in the next year at https://streak.club. Look for "WeeklyMusic" and you'll probably see a 2021 come up.

And, of course, for those of you who want to join an excellent community of practicing musicians, join us at One Hour Compo (http://compo.thasauce.net/compos/view/OHC) and create a song every week in an hour and then stay and get REAL-TIME FEEDBACK as everyone listens to all of the music afterwards!

Tags: edm, groove, week 51 2020, View by:Arcana