› Reflections

‹ Reflections

I made this pretty quickly from 9pm Sunday until 3 seconds to deadline, so it took about 4 hours. I did not touch the guitar much this week. I am pretty amazed this came out. Very happy with the result, altho I'm looking forward to re-record it someday with more harmonies and stuff.

I studied melodies this week, from various songs that I like, and investigated how they approach the rhythm of the notes in the melody - I noticed how it's usually a good idea to syncopate a lot, so you can squeeze through the main beats and create a complementary rhythm to the drums and bass and such. And I was hoping to do something with a nice melody so finally here it is. If I analyze the melody of this song in the same way, I am happy to discover there is a lot of that syncopation I was talking about, and it really works.

I had a beautiful conversation with some friends today about some deep stuff and facing a little bit my inner turmoils and loneliness and how much I am overthinking my emotions. And I think that conversation poured out into the song because I tried to write from the heart, and this wonderful imagery came up with the upside down rainbow and playing around with this negativity/positivity outlook on a rainbow.

Today I also played some piano for a workshop and jam of contemporary dancers, and that was also super nice and inspiring and I improvised a lot of nice little melodies and tunes, and I'm happy I didn't opt to just cut something from that, but make something new for weeklybeats.

› Even more reflections

‹ Even more reflections

I wrote these notes Sunday morning as a little journal over coffee, and then I messed around with some wah clavi grooves that went nowhere.

This week I've been studying and discovering some more details about rhythm. I didn't compose anything all week and today I have a little mini gig playing music for a contemporary dancer workshop. Not sure what I'll get done, just starting to write this to mark down my thoughts while I have my coffee...

One cool rhythmic discovery was just how much syncopation there always is in a good melody. I've been taking various melodies that I like, from pop songs, jazz compositions, whatever, and listening where the notes fall in the rhythmic grid. Most of the time there is some syncopation that makes it so melody notes hit between the drum beats, and that serves as both making it more memorable and interesting rhythmically, making it clear and audible because even if the drums are loud the melody will cut through due to the arrangement (nevermind the mix), as well as it actually gives a hint to what the groove is (when the subdivision is small enough), which you can detect even if the only thing you hear is the melody.

The second thing is just how detailed you can make your groove using the melody and also the ghost notes. I was playing with my drummer and I played a bass line that we didn't agree beforehand about what kind of groove it should have. And simply by doing a little ghost note that's pretty late, he got the hint that the groove is shuffle (triplets on the 16th notes) instead of straight (equal 16ths). I didn't realize this but I ended up following his groove.... cause yea I'm used to just following the general jam rather than sticking to my initial idea, but my intention was to do a straight groove, just messed up that ghost note early on which defined the rest of the piece. It made me hyper aware of how important it is to make the groove you want clear through every little sound, especially in the beginning of the track.

Quick journaling. This was a pretty eventful week. My dad and uncle were on vacation in southeast Asia and their flight got cancelled multiple times due to the war in Iran, so it was pretty dramatic to figure out how they're gonna get back to Europe. Eventually they actually did get back thanks to the airline but we did mess with some pretty terrible scenarios where they would have to take a very convoluted and expensive route to avoid the war area and fly back. I was pretty stressed about it, I realize now that it's over and done with, and I realize just how fragile and disconnected the world really is. A handful of airlines are able to fly people across the world, but if some regional hub gets disrupted like the middle east area, you can get stuck, and the alternatives are pretty bad. There don't seem to be that many alternatives, and when you look at the map, it's clear how the world is not really as connected as you think from the survivorship-bias of the internet - there are swaths of the world pretty inaccessible for travel compared to well connected hubs, and it probably leads to huge inequality when you think about it. Anyway that also played into the inspiration for this song, for sure.

› Lyrics

‹ Lyrics

Why are rainbows upside down?
oh, their colors are not suited for a frown
I imagine how they got this way
cast away by the sun
run away from everyone...

Seems it's always raining here
(but the) clouds are only rainbow stashes in the air
and the rain will surely stop someday
and my dreams will all come true
maybe rainbows made the sky so blue...

and maybe
it's wrong to judge the colors in the sky
when all of them are refracted in my eye
and up and down
feel different when you're floating off the ground...