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Wednesday, 20 April 2005
From emulation to creation ::
Justin wrote the other day—a production company was looking for a TV theme, along the lines of another show whose theme music I liked. Did I have anything in the can that might fit? No. But I got inspired that evening. There’s nothing like a low-pressure short-term project to distract from an important long-term project with a big deadline looming!
I figured it only needed to be around a minute long, not long enough for more than a couple of basic ideas. I spent some time making a couple of new sounds in Logic’s Sculpture and then the piece seemed to almost write itself (with the help of a clear goal and some chord changes from a piece I did in 1989). I worked out every part before recording it, which was different; more usually I improvise the first part and some of the additional layers.
After finishing, I remembered that I have the CD of the show-to-be-emulated’s theme, so I checked it out and was surprised to be reminded, it goes on for another 3 minutes beyond what one hears under the opening. Last night I found a new key center that followed my main theme well, then a tempo shift, a sketch of a series of modulations, and a piano part that nicely danced around the chords instead of just beating on them. A few hours later I had another 2 minutes recorded. (The piano part was hard; I could play it at tempo—except when trying to record it to a click.)
Tonight I added another couple of chords that led back to the beginning, and fleshed out the new section with a melody, a countering line and a big swirly pad.
And I have may or may not have succeeded in disguising the theme being emulated. In any case, it’s a potential album track, which is a good excuse for having worked on this instead of the procrastinated task of refining other album tracks.
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