Tuesday 20, Day 1: My senior project is an album of music with two (possibly three?) accompanying music videos. Although I officially began project today, I have been drafting material for quite some time. Requirements of the project are: 100 hours of work, a log of hours, and a journal documenting the process. On showcase night, the videos will loop on my laptop alongside the poster board, which will contain these journal entries, photos, and a calendar. I will be writing, recording, mixing, and publishing (online, for free) an album of 7 songs, two of which I will storyboard, shoot, edit, and upload to YouTube as music videos.
Today, I intended to score music from 10 to 2 and to rehearse from 3 to 6. Instead, I designed the album art from 10 to 1, at which point Alex Ramsay came over so we could rehearse other music for Theatre Awards, May 22 at 6 pm. During the process, he gave critique that helped shape my album art to the point where I’m satisfied with it. Riffs we played around with also will likely make it into the album. He makes a good sounding board. We practiced from 1 to 3, whereupon he left and I continued until 4 to practice and reacquaint myself with the guitar and bass guitar, which I’ve had little time to play with previously. After dinner, I had a piano lesson with my long-time teacher Arthur Kane. From 7 to 8 I showed him album art, relayed personal victories and concerns, and practiced some Scott Joplin for performance at Theatre Awards. Any time behind the instrument is work time, and I found ideas popping into my head in the middle of “Bethena” and the popular “Maple Leaf Rag“. Total hours spent today: 7. Cumulative total hours: 7 out of 120 (100 required).
And now an analysis of what I accomplished today and have so far:
I now have an album cover, title, and tracklist.
The image was actually an old one I did in GIMP, although I changed the colors and vector-traced it in Inkscape. The text was done by adding a checkerboard pattern to the stroke, giving it the jagged blocky effect. All of the songs are in various stages. All titles are working titles, but they’ll all probably end up being the final titles anyway.
- Title Track was originally a placeholder. Today, I thought up a rap intro walking to school to turn in my completed sign-out form — I actually stopped 50 feet from the door to take out a pencil and paper so I could jot the bars down. It’s going to be a back-and-forth rap between myself and Alex Ramsay, resident lyricist-turned-prog-freak. The general idea is to gradually acclimate the listener to progressive musical styles, first by introducing complex and irregular rhyme scheme, then by incorporating unusual chord progressions and finally delving into atypical, asymmetrical, and constantly shifting time signatures. Due to its musical journey, it’ll be relatively long for a rap song (think “Bohemian Rhapsody” (haha, rap-sody) or “Stairway to Heaven,” but not quite “Close to the Edge“). In other news, what’s another phrase meaning “the road to royalty?”
- The Wasp and the Spider is currently two verses, a pre-chorus, and a chorus. It is also currently a verse chord progression, multiple pre-chorus chord progressions, and a chorus chord progression. Unfortunately, not one of the pre-chorus progressions resolve anywhere close to the first chord of the chorus. I’m going to have to engineer this one heavily. The lyrics and melody are really nice though. It’ll be a longer song than most.
- Hole in Two is a reference to golf, although the song is completely unrelated except by elaborate pun. In my last days of IB ESS (for the uninitiated, “science class”), we went bird-watching. Because of this, I’ve been paying close attention to bird calls which I previously tried to block out of my sleepy mornings. Expect toy pianos and accordions to mimic a plethora of bird calls, strung together and layered into a cacophony of sound. Progressive, because if birds don’t sing in even time- and/or key-signatures, why should I? Instrumental, though I may contribute my voice as a wordless noisebox. Intended as a lighter counterpoint to the previous song, akin to Bowie’s “Fill Your Heart” following “Quicksand” off the Hunky Dory album.
- Something Else really is a placeholder. Because I like the look of the back of the album, it’ll probably stay that way, which means the contents of this track can be fairly flexible. Isn’t that something else entirely?
- Shut Up doesn’t necessarily command the aggravated imperative usage. It’s more along the lines of “closed” or “locked away” or “sealed.” It’s only eight lines of lyrics I wrote late at night, but its sung slowly so it’ll fill substantial audio-time-space. It’s a breather and a stage-setter for the big second-act show-stopper, surpassing the second track in orders of magnitude…
- Dyschronometria is a word I looked up when I wanted to know what the official term was for someone who felt like time kept getting away from them and that it didn’t flow uniformly. It’s also the only song title that I can never remember how to spell or pronounce (I refer to it as, “it’s like dyslexia but with time”). The song is about losing time and letting time get past you, but also being so on top of time that you crush it beneath your momentum, but also that time isn’t as important as you perceive it, but also other things in addition to time that I feel the need to chronicle, like dropping the ball and picking it up alone so that you learn how to succeed by yourself, and oh look this sentence got away from me and morphed into something strange and fantastical like daffodils in the dawn. In other words, prog. Lots and lots of prog. Today, I discovered a bass riff intro that fits. I have a midsection of 8 4-bar measures, with each measure consisting of 3 bars of 7/8 and a fourth bar that increases by 1/8 with each measure passing, eventually climaxing in a secondary riff that’s counted in 7/8 + 10/8 + 7/8 + 16/8 but the percussion just plays in 4/4. Lyrics for the 7/8+ section as well.
- Found Song will be a couple hours in the studio (read: my room) with a bunch of non-instrument objects to sample and make music out of. A strictly experimental (emphasis on the mental) song that wraps up the album on a savory note — not too bitter, not too sweet, not too sugary nor too salty, nothing bland, nothing spicy, and neither empty nor hearty.
In addition, I have some music video ideas. Not to get ahead of myself, but they’re going to be pretty cool. Extinguishing a candle via an inverted but full glass of water, stop motion animation of LEGO bricks and pencil sketches, me running around a park banging on fenceposts and cars and people’s pet dogs with sticks — who could say no to any of that imagery? Probably PETA, but those guys are weirdos anyway.
I’ve also spent time working on this website. As my main distribution vehicle (short of in-person — lets face it, nobody visits my site that I don’t have real-life contact with on a regular basis), I needed to overhaul the whole thing. I think it suits my needs now nicely.