Tunes 92 through 97 - Stuart Cleveland, Flambeau, Tiny Tone, Habi Gabi, Plenty Here For Everyone, and Flubtitle

Catching up on the four, five, no SIX tunes written this week. (updated 2/23/19).


Stuart Cleveland
The A-part comes from a Skatalites melody. For the B-part I was getting sort of a Willie Nelson vibe. I'm calling it Stuart Cleveland - named after a street corner where I once lived. Conceived 2/16/19. Recorded 2/22/19 in a hotel room while playing my Tin Guitar travel mandolin.

Flambeau
This was written between 2/16 and 2/17/19. Recorded 2/22/19 while playing Tin Guitar 4-string travel mandolin. The A-part comes from The Skatalites' Burning Torch. The B-part was lifted from the glockenspiel melody on the Jefferson Airlplane song Come Up the Years. The little riff after the B-part comes from the St. Elsewhere theme song. Maybe so. Maybe not.

Tiny Tone
This was written on 2/19/19. It's a fairly original jazzy melody possibly inspired by listening to the Jethro Burns and Tiny Moore album Back To Back. Recorded 2/22/19 in hotel room with Tin Guitar travel mandolin. The melody is played over a Lydian scale Improvise For Real jazz backing track (The Fourth Harmonic Environment).

Habi Gabi
I wrote (and recorded) this exotic sounding piece just before going to bed on 2/20/19 when it was just forming. Played on xylophone over a meditative Improvise For Real backing track (The 6th Harmonic Environment - tonal center of A in the key of C). I think this is going to be one of my favorites!

Plenty Here For Everyone
After posting this morning, I came up with another melody!  While deep into a random search on Spotify I came across an album called Samba For Sale by Danish guitarist Jorgen Ingmann. This melody here is based on the track That's A Plenty from that album. I hear a little bit of the sound of Phish Vultures in the B-part (as in "My guess is that I'll never name this ghost well"). Unexpectedly conceived and recorded this song on 2/22/19. I'm still in a hotel room playing the Tin Guitar travel mandolin. I have this mandolin pitched a half-step flat. I'm using F fingerings but the sound coming out is in E.

Flubtitle
Figured out and recorded on 2/23/19.  The A-part is pretty close to a copy of the melody to The Little Man From Mars by Perry and Kingsley.  The B-part is a transcription of the celesta solo in the Death Cab For Cutie song Title And Registration. These work well together.  Played on 4-string Tin Guitar travel mandolin.

  

Glad I got this posted.

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Tune Numbers 87.5 through 91 - starting with Clown College

I've been discovering some new music lately and that has been having an influence on these new melodies I am coming up with...and/or copying directly from these influences.  The A Very British Scandal theme music, Better Oblivion Community Center and William Tyler have all been influences.  Without hearing those first some of these tunes wouldn't exist.

Number 87.5 is Clown College.  I'm considering it half a tune because it mainly is just a couple of riffs I was playing on my new xylophone.  I wrote it so quickly and it's so simple that it doesn't seem like it should count as a whole tune.  So it's just half of one!

Number 88 is The Seance Needs.  Week before last I was listening to the audio book version of Jerry On Jerry and in one of the interviews it sounds like Jerry says "Finally, a lady with the seance needs as us!".  He doesn't say that but that's what I heard and so the title of this comes from that misquote.  I heard the theme music to the Netflix show A Very British Scandal and really liked it.  It seemed very easy to transcribe and I really dug the slightly unusual scale it was using so I took that scale and made a different melody out of it.

Number 89 is Swansea.  When the Better Oblivion Community Center album was released on 1/31 Spotify added it to my release radar playlist which caused me to hear it and learn about it.  Luckily I gave it a chance (after recognizing Conor Oberst's voice) and I instantly loved the album, having now listened to it over and over again.  I don't know if Swansea is the melody to their song Dylan Thomas...it sounds like it probably is but hopefully this is different enough to make it worth counting.

Number 90 is Lagom.  I keep a playlist going of songs that I hear which I want to mine melodies from and when an Augustus Pablo/Lee "Scratch" Perry track came up it just had to be added to that playlist.  Then yesterday morning I put some notes together based on that.  It's Lagom.  Just the right amount.

Number 91 is Sun of the Golden West.  Inspirations were coming at me left and right this past week.  I had never heard of the guitarist William Tyler before but I was enticed by the track Our Lady of the Desert enough to view the whole album and it's one of those that really grows on you.  This melody would not exist without having heard of him.

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