I’ve been working on a tune.  It’s not a brand new one, in fact it’s one I recorded a demo of a few years ago, but I’ve decided to start from scratch with it, record a completely new version, and add a new section.  some lyrics are on the cards too.

It has some fun time signatures in it.  The main theme is in 7/8, then it moves into a heavier section that has an alternating thing going on which is quite challenging, it basically breaks down into groups of 3 bars of 3/4 followed by a bar of 4/4 … and then repeat. Finally it moves into a 4/4 section that has the same bar length as the 7/8 section, so the tempo goes up to compensate.

The main 7/8 synth riff sounds quite simple, and although on the demo I had originally sequenced it in MIDI, I was keen to actually play it for real rather than just program into the computer. However it has turned out infuriatingly difficult to play, resulting in me getting quite cross with myself.  If only I’d kept up those music lessons. Oh well. Practice, as they say, makes perfect.

Or at least something not completely horrible.

So here we are.  It’s time to start on album number 2.

I am currently in writing mode. It’s an exciting time, there are so many possible ways the project could go from here.  For me ‘writing mode’ is something that doesn’t often involve any actual writing with a pen per-se.  I should probably call it ‘noodling with riffs, sounds and patterns waiting for something cool to happen’ mode. Generally, I have a couple of techniques that seem to bear fruit and I thought it might be interesting to talk about them.

One is to switch on the Fusion and load up a grand piano, and just improvise.  (When my good friend Paul Travers lived locally, I used to love sitting at his fabulous Bechstein grand and noodling, because that was even more immediate and raw) Anyway, hopefully something cool will catch my ear, a chord sequence or a melody, or something, and then I’ll work around that and build on it until something vaguely song like emerges. The trick then is to capture it, because so often I’ve done this, come up with something really nice, left it alone and then completely forgotten how it went.  The audio recorder in the iPhone has turned out to be a great way of doing that – and it imports right into iTunes ready to be reviewed at a later date!

Another technique I’ve been successful with is to choose a synth or keyboard and spin through stock sounds until I find something that I think is interesting, then load up Logic and use that as a basis to play around with the sounds manipulate them into something new add some other textures or very occasionally loops, and pulling inspiration from the sounds themselves to start developing some coherent themes.

Very rarely I’ll actually come up with a lyric that I think is cool and come at the song writing the melody for that lyric.

Unlike Fantasy Bridge, where all but one track was music that I had already well developed as demos, this new album is only going to feature about 50% existing material.  In fact it might be quite a bit less than that.  Take ‘The Big Song’ for example.  This was going to be one I had written years ago, but when I started working on it I threw away all of it except one opening stanza and one big instrumental break.  So, as I start to re-develop the other tunes there is the distinct possibility of more older stuff being consigned to the archive to be replaced by re-written material. It’s all a bit of an adventure into the unknown.

I will also probably end up in a bit of a grasshopper work mode.  Working on a bit of this, and a bit of that as the mood takes me, with the basic aim being to end up with a bunch of workable demos in Logic, complete with guide vocals that I can start so use to actually record the final versions of the songs. How much of that demo ends up in the final recording will very much depend. With Fantasy Bridge that varied from absolutely nothing to almost everything. At this stage in the game there are no rules.

When I started this blog, it was for the express purpose of chronicling the making of Fantasy Bridge, from sorting out the material, through recording, to it’s final release. Since then I’ve posted a few other entries regarding the post launch activities, up to the release on iTunes last week. So really, apart from sharing reviews with you and letting you know when the album appears in other retail channels, the story of the making of Fantasy Bridge is at an end.

But as I have hinted in the past, there is lots more music to come. Things I already have written, things I want to write, and things that want to be written! So with that in mind this post forms a new start. It’s the day I start talking about ALBUM NUMBER 2.

It doesn’t have an official name yet… I think I know what I want to call it, I have a huge, part written 20 minute prog epic, that will form the backbone of the project, and a couple of other songs that are quite well developed, but I want to leave it a while so I can develop some of the other musical ideas before making the final decision.

So once again we’re back into making-of-mode. There will, I’m sure, be more news on Fantasy Bridge to share with you as time goes on, and I’ll post about those as they happen, but in the meantime…

… Here we go again!