Following the previous installment, let me tell you about a second music-making project I’m involved in.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve « met » other like-minded composers over the Internet. One of them, Matt Love, suggested collaborating on some music. I agreed in principle, and Matt recently sent me a 7 minute unfinished piece that he asked me to « complete » preferably using saxophones.
I instantly liked « Crossword » which is really haunting and strangely beautiful. So to get a feel for the piece, I started noodling on the guitar over it (I haven’t unpacked my saxophones in over 10 years, and they were barely usable then. Besides, I have been working on the guitar for the past couple of years in order to be able to play my stuff without electronic crutches). Anyway, it quickly became apparent that the chord changes in Crossword were semi-random, which made it quite difficult to « follow ». So instead of trying to learn the semi-random chord changes, I decided to play a repetitive line that mostly « fit » over the different chords, and to add a little spice, I played a 3/4 guitar line over his 4/4 keyboards. I then layered a second guitar, and spiced up the two guitars with some digital delays. Finally, I layered 4 (fake) saxophones on top of the rest, using the same approach that I had used for the guitar.
I should add that in recent years, I’ve concentrated on writing songs, just because the format was more compatible with my schedule. But working on crossword captured the feeling I used to get years ago when I routinely worked on more or less experimental instrumental music (as can be heard on Vintage Vince).
I sent the results back to Matt, and then…didn’t hear from him for several days. I obviously thought that he had been at best perplexed, or at worst, disappointed by my contribution, but it turns out he simply had missed the attachment in the long threaded email I used to send it.
He was in fact quite thrilled with the result, and asked me to send my tracks separate from his, so his friend Mark Simmons might add some percussion and otherwise mix the result.
Thanks to Mark, I experienced for the first time in my musical life what it feels like to be thoroughly and creatively remixed. Twice in fact (once with and once without Matt’s original tracks).
If and when Matt decides one or more of the mixes are « final » and if and when he posts them somewhere, I will point you to them.
(By the way, at this point, Matt informed me that the chord changes were in fact somehow based on the black squares of a crossword puzzle.)
Since then, he has sent me two more unfinished pieces, and is working on creating a wider and more organised community for collaborative music-making. I haven’t done anything with the pieces yet because I’m in the midst of finishing yet another music-making project! (And I’m swamped with « feed-the-kids » projects…)
But you’ll have to wait until the next installment to find out what that other music-making project might be…