Doppelganger Duet
By Devieus on September 2, 2018 10:24 am
This week in Devieus' melodica adventures, bass. Now my melodica doesn't actually go this deep so I did some trickery with it to make it a bass.
As for the more obvious things going on, this is the first time ever I've serious used Plogue's Alter/ego VST to make lyrics. It's also the first time ever I wrote lyrics, and it turns out lyrics don't really matter all that much, it can just be random nonsense (see also KPop in the western world). But I went the distance on this one and made it a duet. More on that in a bit.
I also wanted to experiment with a diaphonic scale after stumbling upon an interesting Wikipedia article concerning the Istrian scale. The Istrian scale itself is honestly kind of garbage, but the notion of a diaphonic scale is interesting. A scale doesn't consist of 7 notes on their own, but of 7 pairs of notes, and every melody you play has every note paired with another note.
This works best with a parallel scale, where every step by one note is mirrored by the other. But that would just be too easy, so instead I took the C Mixolydian (C-D-E-F-G-A-Bb) and E Dorian (E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D) and used that instead since it's mostly made of major thirds except on E and is surprisingly dissonant. Try it out for yourself, it's fascinating.
Back to the vocal section, this inherent dissonance isn't going anywhere so I decided to capitalize on that by making it about one of the creepiest myths: doppelgangers. The kind that's a demon and imitates you near perfectly and with sinister intent, except in this case the doppelganger sings in a different mode and key to bring home the extra creep (just imagine that everything you ever said sounded dissonant harmonized because of a hellspawn assassin).
Though the name of the voice is Marie Ork, the dramatis personae is Doria and Myxia. The final single note (totally off-key considering it's a diaphonic scale) is a C. Go figure that one out with a comment.
One more thing, starting 3 September I begin work as a test engineer full-time, so I probably won't have as much time for music. Due to the nature of the project, the results won't necessarily be worse, but they'll likely be less involved.
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especially the laugh at the end. The melodica sounds great and reminded me a lil of Sufjan Stevens.