Dandelion Puff: Constructing and Deconstructing a Melody

The A-Part (similar to Venus In Furs)

On Monday morning I sung a melody into my phone's voice recorder that in hindsight bears some resemblance to the Velvet Underground song Venus In Furs. I didn't give myself a chance to work on this melody until Wednesday morning when I had about ten minutes to review it before leaving for work. During those ten minutes I was able to locate and transcribe the musical notes on a keyboard based on the intervals I had sung.

The musical notes I happened to choose were: G G G C D C D Bb G.

I don't think in terms of chords or harmony, but I do think in terms of scales - the major scale specifically. So as soon as I transcribe notes like this I like to find out which major scale(s) they might conform to.

By analyzing the notes in this little melody I came to the conclusion that these notes could fit into either the Bb major sale (Bb C D Eb F G A) or the F major scale (F G A Bb C D E). Using numeric scale notes, my G G G C D C D Bb G melody was either 6 6 6 2 3 2 3 1 6 or 2 2 2 5 6 5 6 4 2. (It wasn't until I started writing this post that I realized it could also be Eb major as well: Eb F G Ab Bb C D.

The B-Part (loosely based on the 12/29/19 Bathtub Gin jam)

I like for my tunes to have at least two alternating sections. So after transcribing this melody I tried out a sequence of notes based on something that Trey Anastasio played during Bathtub Gin on 12/29/19 that I had already been messing around with by ear. 

In recent years Trey has developed a knack for landing on simple, fleeting melodies during "Type II" improvs. Phish songs like Light, Ghost, Tweezer and Carini are prime places for these. Just beyond eleven minutes into this version of Bathtub Gin, Trey - prompted by Page - comes up with an interesting melody of this sort. It only goes around for a few bars but it was enough for me to make note of it and by New Year's Eve I was playing my own thing based on that sound.

The musical notes I used for this melody were: G Bb C D, G Bb C F D, F D C D C Bb C G.  

Note that all of the notes from my first melody (G C D and Bb) are found in this B-part melody. That was a happy coincidence. The only additional note in the B-part melody was F, but that note is found in both the Bb major scale and the F major scale that I spoke about above. So just like in the A-part, my scale here is ambiguous (to me at least). It could still be either B-flat or F. (or, as I realize now, E-flat).

The thing about these little melodies that Trey happens upon during Phish jams is that they sound great in the context of the jam, but after being isolated it is sometimes difficult to find something to pair them with. They almost paint themselves into a corner. That had been the case with this Bathtub Gin melody. I had been sitting on it for a week without successfully coming up with something to go with it. But as soon as I matched it up with my "Venus In Furs" style A-part it seemed to jive.

Transposing the A-Part

I started playing these A and B parts together and instantly knew that I had a new tune. The parts fit well together. The only thing that nagged at me was how both melodies were using a lot of the same notes, and/or were living under the same piano keys or banjo frets. I wanted a bit more flavor there. Then I remembered how I had analyzed my A-part melody to discover that the first note of the melody (G) could either be note 6 of the Bb scale or note 2 of the F scale. 

So what if I assume for a moment that the scale I'm in is Bb, but move my A-part melody from starting on note 6 of that scale (G) to note 2 of that scale (C)? Now the notes in my A-part melody switch from G G G C D C D Bb G to C C C F G F G Eb C. Boom! I'm definitely not in the key of F anymore but all of these notes still fit into the key of Bb! Remember that B-flat major scale is Bb C D Eb F G A. The only note I'm not using is the 7th one: A.

My tune was basically done and ready to be recorded at this point. I had an A-part and a B-part, and each conformed to the same major scale: the B-flat major scale in this case. But, even cooler, I wasn't really even hovering around the note Bb as the tonal center for much of the tune. It's got more of a minor feel, meaning that in music theory it's probably more like the G aeolian or C dorian scale. That's getting a little heavy for me though. I only think in terms of the major scale.

About Those (Mississippi) Half-Steps

This is basically the process I go through almost any time I write a tune. My A-parts and B-parts (or C-parts) often come from different, unrelated sources. In order to pair them I try to put them into the same universe. Unless I am purposefully trying to write something "out", "blue" or exotic, I otherwise like for my A-parts and B-parts to each utilize notes from the same major scale. The same universe, if you will. In this case that universe was the notes of the Bb major scale: Bb C D Eb F G A. It's all relative though, man.

A neat thing to know about the major scale is that it's mostly whole steps. There are only two places in the whole scale where notes are going to be directly adjacent on your fretboard. These are called semi-tones or half-steps. These half-steps are always between notes 3 and 4 of the scale, and between notes 7 and 1 of the scale (or 7 and 8 of the scale in music theory, if I'm not mistaken, but I don't think about it that way). In the Bb major scale the half-steps are found from A to Bb (7 to 1) and from D to Eb (3 to 4). Anywhere else in the scale is a whole step.

Me, I'm A Part of Your Circle of Friends

I like to think of a scale as being continuous. 

Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb..... and so on.

You can also start on any note of the major scale. That is when a scale is called a mode.

G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G A B C D Eb F G..... and so on.

Once you get going both of the above sequences start to look pretty darn similar. In fact, they quickly become exactly that same. If you start getting too loopy you might get lost. That's OK because the half-steps can bring you back whenever you want. The half steps in your melody are the guideposts, the major clues helping to provide direction. (My tunes don't have definitive chords as far as I'm concerned. I only hear and think in terms of melody, so my scale knowledge and where this melody falls within the major scale is all I have to go on. For example I know that an Eb chord in this scale contains the notes Eb, G and Bb. No duh, right? I just have no idea if or when that or any chord should be used under the melody, nor do I care. If I really had to think about it I would conclude that any number of scalar notes could be used to harmonize with the melody note, each with their own peculiar coloring. Who can say which one sounds better than the other? I don't have a preference.)

Name That Tune

I already expected my next tune title to be either Fungie (after the Dingle dolphin) or Dandelion (after the bard character in the Witcher). I went with Dandelion, which became Dandelion Puff.

To re-cap, Monday I hummed a melody that is similar to Venus In Furs. Wednesday morning I transcribed that melody. Wednesday evening I paired it with a stray melody I had played by ear the prior week based on something I heard during the Phish 12/29/19 Bathtub Gin. Once paired together I realized that the intervals being used allowed for one of the parts to be shifted to different notes within the same universe, or scale. After that, done!

Here's a recording made last night over a quick drum machine "beat" that I spent mere seconds assembling. I used a baritone ukulele because I like the way it sounds on that instrument.

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Tunes 106 through 113: We've Got Some Catching Up To Do

I went down a few dead ends - or caught and released some melodies - before ending up here.  Are you doing your best or just having fun?

Radishology (106)
I used the opening notes of Béla Fleck's Flight of the Cosmic Hippo as a jumping off point for this "composition". This whole thing doesn't sound that unique to me - maybe I'm copying some other song or maybe I wrote something similar earlier along the way - but this sequence of notes naturally came out and feels good to play. It's the act of creation that counts the most, not whether it's original or inspired or even good.

Last Chance to Row (107)
Recorded 4/20/19.  It was still coming together as I was recording it. The melody has similarities to the track Let Us Dance from Beverly Glenn-Copeland's Keyboard Fantasies album.

Head in the Clouds (108)
Recorded 4/20/19 with xylophone. Written late on the night before. This melody has similarities to the track Jag Ville Va Kvar from the Dungen / Woods album Myths 003.

Drying Rack (109)
This came to be after listening a little bit to The Young Marble Giants (the A-part) and then thinking up an Off to Sea Once More / Spancil Hill type melody (the B-part). Melody played on xylophone.

Dish Rag (110)
This tune arrived unexpectedly after a week of listening to Motown, Booker T., The Meters, et cetera. I heard this melody in my head earlier today and then quickly found the notes on the xylophone. I was able to play the sound in my head! After quickly composing I made note of the notes. Later in the day I finally had a chance to play it on banjo and that is what you hear here.

Scallions (111)
This tune has a melody similar to a well known Temptations song. I came up with it after listening to Booker T. and the M.G.'s. The recording was made on Saturday 5/11/2019. Played it on banjo first and then played along with that on xylophone. This would be tune 111 by my count.

Under Lock and Key (112)
This tune is kind of a combo of Lochs of Dread and Hang 'Em High. I've been playing around with it for a while and finally recorded a version on 5/10/19 with my Ome tenor banjo.

High-Flite 90 (113)
This melody almost wrote itself after I first listened to Jake Xerxes Fussell for the first time. I like the sound of it.

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Post One-Hundred: Tunes 101 Through 105

Tune 101 - I Don't Believe In Monsters
For this tune I was going for a springtime feel. Kind of a Brown Eyed Women / Eyes of the World hybrid for the first part, paired with a melody inspired by Gillian Welch's Winter's Come and Gone for the B-part. It's a pretty loose tune with room for improvisation. It didn't take long to write...just a few minutes on the evening of 3/9/19. Recorded on 3/12/19 playing xylophone over a C# Aeolian backing track.

Tune 102 - Pineapple Bang Bang
I wrote and recorded Pineapple Bang Bang on the morning of Saturday, March 16, 2019. It is the unique result of trying to be creative on that particularly day. The melody in the A-part was derived from the long forgotten but fondly remembered String Cheese Incident instrumental called Lester Had A Coconut which I just happened to hear that morning. The B-part sounds like it comes from the vocal melody line to the song Alright by the band Supergrass which I heard while watching Derry Girls earlier in the week and had to look up to find out what it was. For good measure I tacked on a bridge-like 3rd part reminiscent of the bridge to the song Sea of Heartbreak which I gained familiarity with because it is covered on the new Meat Puppets album Dusty Notes. That's me playing my Ome tenor banjo over a sped up Improvise For Real backing track.

Tune 103 - The Sixth Noon of Midnight
You could call this a tribute to the band IE (album Pome) from Minneapolis that I saw play in Knoxville on 3/22/19. This melody incorporates a motif from their song Moon Shot along with a B-part drawn somewhat from the vocal line of that song. Pieced together 3/26/19. Recorded 3/30/19.

Tune 104 - Rapture of the Deep
This melody came to be after seeing the Canadian band The Sadies live. It is borrowed from sounds they make. I messed around with it for a few days, then finished it up 4/4/19. Recorded last night 4/5/19 on the K-board. A one take and done kind of thing.

Tune 105 - Catch That Hare 'Fore It Jump O'er the Fence
A couple days ago I sung a melody similar to this into my phone. At the time I just called it "bluegrass song". Then later that day when I tried to play it on an instrument the notes seemed too simple or unoriginal. The next day I tried to add nuance to it but just made it more boring. So I went back to the original idea. Written 4/4/19. Recorded late in the evening 4/5/19 on K-Board because why not?

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Tunes 98, 99 and 100 - I made it to one-hundred.

This is a painting my mom did

In June of 2017 when I gave myself a goal to write 50 melodies in a year I didn't think I would actually write 100 melodies in less than two years.  But that's what happened.

 #98 - Swedish Walking Tunes
Here are a pair of what I hope are fairly original variations on what could pass for traditional Scandinavian melodies. I don't know what a Swedish walking tune is but I went for a walk immediately after composing these. The first tune is called Happily Äver Efter. The second tune is called Merrily Efter Äver. Each is played two times through. Written 3/2/19. Recorded 3/9/19 with Romero tenor banjo.

#99 - Strange Whip-poor-will

I believe it was Leonard Cohen who said that each day you get a gift. It might be something a waitress says or it might be a road sign. Two days ago my gift was learning about the theme song to the 1986 Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason movie Nothing In Common. The song is called Loving Strangers by Christopher Cross and the sound of its chorus was the inspiration I needed to help create tune number 99. To add more to this piece I included the musical notes of a whip-woor-will's call (F, C, higher C) as transcribed in the Field Guide of Wild Birds and Their Music. I made this recording as I was writing the melody. I'm playing it on a McMillen K-Board via the SampleTank app - a wind instrument sound - over a mixiolydian backing track.

#100 - Buffalo Bullfinch

Now that I have 100 tunes is that a complete body of work? I was hesitant to count this as number 100 but I kept playing it and liking its pensive nature. It's basically the head melody to the song Buffalo Bird Woman from a Scott Amendola CD. Hopefully it's different enough. If it's not then hey I successfully transcribed something by ear. But if I got it wrong then that's even better because in that case I have something even more original. Recorded 3/9/19 with Romero tenor banjo.

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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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Tunes 86 and 87 - The High-C Roll and Don't Forget the Well

Last week I was listening to the Mongolian band AnDa Union and thought that I would try and write a melody like one of theirs.  Out comes The High Sea Roll or The High-C Roll.  That was my intent when this was written on January 18, 2019 but it came out sounding more like a sea shanty.  So it's a sea shanty.  Here's a phone recording I had made while playing it on banjo.  It's as good as any.

Then this week I was messing around with a minor sounding folk melody that I was calling Don't Forget the Well.  (I often add my  own nonsense words to serve as "lyrics" to the instrumental tunes I write.  The syllables in these words correspond to the notes in the melody and help me remember how it sounds).  Independent from that folk melody I happened upon a little new-classical sounding sequence of notes using just the black keys of a piano.  I didn't give that much thought at first, but when I realized that this little modal sounding folk melody could be shifted over a few semitones so that it lined up with the black key scale of that other little melody, then voila I had something complete enough to be considered a new tune. 

The scale being used here in Don't Forget the Well contains the notes in D-flat major:  Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db.  Also known as Bb minor.  Note the use of all five "black key" notes on a keyboard.  I wrote it that way on purpose so that it would focus on those notes.  When I got my new Sound Percussion Labs xylophone yesterday, this was the first thing I played on it.  Here's a recording of this tune in Db on my new xylophone, recorded the same day that I got it after taking it out of the box and getting it onto the stand.

I feel like I have more ideas brewing, steeping, simmering inside so hopefully there's more to come soon.

The Melody Creating Continues Into 2019

Since reading Jeff Tweedy's memoir I've been more inspired than ever to try and create something new (almost every day).  It doesn't have to be good or that different than what came before.  The act of creating is the goal not the end product.

With that in mind, the tunes have continued into 2019.  I found an old Guatemalan Marimba Chapinlandia LP at a thrift store and this one called Liquid Yepocapa is inspired by the music on that album.  Guatemalan marimba music often has a ragtime or foxtrot feel.  This was written from January 4 to 5.  I recorded this on 1/5/19 using my Ome tenor banjo.  The tune is a little tricky to play and I was still getting the feel of it when this was recorded.

Fortunately I've never really gotten into too much of a rut, but when I am feeling that way one option is to scan through this book of scales I have called Musical Scales of the World by Michael Hewitt.  It's one of the best music books I own.  On January 9 I was looking through the section of this book on Japanese pentatonic scales and happened upon this melody while playing the Minyõ scale (page 157).  With C as the starting note, the Minyõ scale is C, Eb, F, G, Bb, C.  This is a super simple melody that is fun to play.  Here I am today playing it on glockenspiel.  Hopefully this year I'll get a better mallet instrument.

On January 10 I came up with this melody called Walls and Ceiling while playing my Keith McMillen K-Board.  I'll spare you the placeholder words I used to flesh out the melody, but this was an example where by syncing the syllables of words to the sound of the melody helped solidify it in my mind.  This is just a one part tune.  It's rare that something feels complete without at least a 2nd part but this one feels good as it is.  I hadn't played guitar in a few weeks so I was figuring out where the guitar notes were for this melody as I was recording it.  This is one of the first takes where I got through with no major note flubs.

Last night I picked up the banjo at about 10pm with no intention of playing for a long time or doing anything in particular.  Three hours later it was 1am and I had been playing that whole time, with a bunch of musical notes written out on tab paper.  Some of those notes come from here.  No Hamsters Allowed.

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Quote From Jeff Tweedy's Memoir Let's Go (So We Can Get Back)

At the bottom of page 168 in his memoir Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) Jeff Tweedy writes:

I try to make something new, something that wasn't there when I woke up, by the end of every day.  It doesn't have to be long or perfect or good.  It just has to be something.

Those words really resonated with me.  For my own purposes, I would re-phrase that statement to read something like: "Try to create something new, something that didn't exist before, every week.  It doesn't have to be exceptional, or original, or vastly different than what came before.  It just has to be something."

I also like on page 158, when Jeff describes going through Woody Guthrie's writings for the Mermaid Avenue project and found a note by Woody that read "Write a song every day."  Jeff says That's the best advice I've ever gotten as a songwriter, and it wasn't directed at me. It was written by a man who died two months after I was born, as a reminder to himself.

For the last year and a half I've been trying to write about one tune a week (by "tune" I mean an instrumental melody).  I'm up to about 80 now so that's right on pace.  So far I've really enjoyed this process.  There is a high that comes from creating something new that wasn't there before but now is.  However, I've also given myself permission to let go of this goal if it ever becomes too demanding or no longer fun.

***

I ordered Chinese take out on Christmas night and drove by myself to pick it up.  On the way back from the restaurant a melody came to me along a dark stretch of road which I then hummed into my phone and didn't think about again for the rest of the night.  Then yesterday, December 26th, I had a bug or some kind of mild illness all day.  Even though I wasn't feeling one-hundred percent I decided to transcribe the melody I had sung into my phone the night before.

In my sickened state it didn't make me feel better to realize that my sung melody was not very original and pretty scalar, something I've been wanting to avoid.  So I cast it aside and then tried to gain inspiration from an obscure LP of Guatemalan marimba music that I had found in a thrift store on December 22nd.  That didn't work out so well either and I think might have inhaled some dust mites which made me feel even worse.

This morning I slept in late, to like 10am, which has pretty much shaken off whatever malady had me down.  The first thing I did after getting up was to revisit that melody I had hummed on 12/25 and transcribed on 12/26.  As is usually the case, something I wrote a day or two earlier that didn't seem to be any good at the time becomes a little more likable after sleeping on it.  This made me think of that Jeff Tweedy quote, "It doesn't have to be long or perfect or good. It just has to be something."

Here's what I wrote today.  If it survives, which I think it might, it'll be tune number 81 and will carry me through to 2019.

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Tunes 78, 79 and 80! Inspired by John Kadlecik, Dorothy Ashby, Steve Kimock and Hailu Mergia

I've got a little catching up to do because I've neglected to share tunes 78 and 79, and just this morning I wrote number 80. So here goes.

John Kadlecik has an excellent new CD called ON THE ROAD.  My favorite track on that album is the song Seen Love.  It's very well recorded and there are some jammy composed bits that really stand out.  So I came up with my own melody (hopefully my own melody) called Shooby Doo Weep based on parts of that song Seen Love.  A third part got added to Shooby Doo Weep and for that third part I pulled from the Dorothy Ashby composition Action Line.  (Dorothy Ashby was a jazz harpist.  Look her up, especially her album AFRO HARPING).  It would be best if the similarities between what I wrote and the source material is only in my head only not straight up plagiarism, but I don't have a good enough ear to tell.

Shooby Doo Weep



In early December I was reading Joel Selvin's book Fare Thee Well on the "Grateful Dead's" post-Jerry years, which made me want to re-listen to those April 1999 Phil and Phriends shows featuring Phil Lesh, Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell, Steve Kimock and John Molo.  I remember those shows being a huge deal when they happened almost 20 years ago and the music made across those three nights has stood the test of time.  On the first night 4/15/99 before going fully into Uncle John's Band the group plays around with a really cool sounding Caribbean melody, which I just learned for the first time is the Steve Kimock tune A New Africa.  I searched for another version of A New Africa and the first thing that came up was a Steve Kimock show from 2/22/2002.  I had never really listened to any of Steve Kimock's original music, but I was really taken in by this 2002 recording from the Gothic Theater in Colorado.  In addition to A New Africa, I found myself loving the tunes Cowboy and Cole's Law.  Long story short, Sudden Lee was brought to life by listening to that Kimock music.

I had an initial part that I recorded on glockenspiel which I'll share below.  But I had actually been adding more to this when playing it on banjo.  So here's the main theme on glockenspiel, and then the full version on banjo.

Suddenly glockenspiel


Sudden Lee tenor banjo


Saturday mornings have recently proven to be a very productive time.  If I get up early, around 7AM, and get straight to work, usually by noon I will have created something new that didn't exist before.  That happened again today, thankfully.  Today's tune was inspired by sounds heard on Hailu Mergia's WEDE HARER GUZO album.  (Hailu Mergia is another musician you should look up).  I'm calling this tune Za'atar after the middle eastern spice I used last night in an out of this world vegan-keto fattoush salad with baked ground flax seed in place of the bread.  I really like this one!  But of course the most recently written piece is always going to be a favorite.

Za'atar


OK - that catches it all up to now.

Five Tunes Written on Guitar (Numbers 75 to 71)

I've had my Vagabond Travel Guitar for about five weeks, and as of today I've written five new tunes on it.  These tunes are all fairly simple in structure and a lot of fun to play.  I don't think these would have come into existence if I hadn't gotten that guitar.  They feel like guitar melodies.  Here they are.

Love Awaits
I wasn't planning on writing a tune this morning but a hint of a lyric came to me while plucking the guitar around 9am today. It had sort of a bluegrass, mountain-music type feel to it so I jotted down the notes in this melody based on the sounds of the lyrics I was hearing in my head. Written and recorded on 10/27/18.

Daylight Graveyard
I was listening to the Manu Dibango album "B Sides" on Spotify when the track Fleur De Marigot caught my ear. This melody called Daylight Graveyard is partially influenced by that tune. It was written on 10/1618. Recorded 10/24/18.

Armadillo Babirusa
I came up with Armadillo Babirusa while having the sound of the Bill Frisell composition Amarillo Barbados in my head. Hence the similarity in titles. Written 10/12/18. Recorded 10/24/18.

Double Ruler
I wrote this tune on 10/10/18 - a day when I had been listening to the new Bacao Rhythm and Steel album as well as Bill Frisell's The Willies. I picked up my Vagabond guitar and these notes immediately poured out of it. This recording was made on 10/24/18.

Polecat
This is the first tune I wrote on the Vagabond guitar.  It was written on 9/29/18 and recorded 10/1/18.  The idea for this melody came to me while listening to Joe Craven's Camptown album on Spotify. I hummed a skeleton of this melody the voice recorder and then later worked it out on guitar.

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Tunes 62 Through 70

Back on June 10th I posted about a year of writing tunes.  In the three months since then I've added 8 more pieces to my catalog, bringing the total to 70.  That matches the number of compositions published by Thelonious Monk.  Just sayin'.

Time for a rundown I suppose.

Number 62: Emily Redoux, written on 6/24/18
For the A-part of this one I believe I took some of the notes from the written vocal melody to portions of Phish's album version of the title track to Story of the Ghost and re-arranged the rhythm and pacing to match a sound I had in my head.  Then the B-part seemed to just play itself.  There might be a tag at the end that was totally stolen from a melody that came up on Spotify.

Number 63: Show Ponies, written 6/28/18

I had the name Show Ponies before I had the tune.  So I had to write a melody to fit.  I gained inspiration by listening to Gitkin's 5 Star Motel.  However, one part of this tune may actually be completely original that I came up with on my own!

Number 64: Beach Breeze Motel, written 7/5/18

This piece was written to commemorate a vacation to Nova Scotia.  Played here on K-Board using the SampleTank app "Alto Sax" sound.  Ideas in this have been borrowed from or at least galvanized by Eamon O'Leary's song The Second Bottle.

Number 65: Yam Cakes and Ackee, written 7/23/18
Beginning with Yam Cakes and Ackee, I got on a little three-tune Caribbean kick.  I came up with this tune after listening to some St. Croix Quelbe music and the reggae group Black Uhuru. It was fairly effortless.

Number 66: Bye Bye Sol, written 8/9/18
I had a head full of ideas after seeing Phish for three nights in Alpharetta, Georgia in early August 2018. Bye Bye Sol and its sister tune La Luz are both composed almost entirely of sounds I heard (or thought I heard) in the music played during those three nights.  I couldn't wait to get home and get these ideas onto paper.

Number 67: La Luz, written 8/9/18
As mentioned above, tunes 66 and 67 were both distilled from music played by Phish on their stunning Summer 2018 tour.  With a name like La Luz, it's likely this tune owes its existence to the version of the song Light played by Phish on 8/7/18 in Camden, NJ.  Hot off the press.


Number 68: The September March, written 9/3/18
Sometimes for a song written by someone else, if I really want to know what the notes are, I'll request a transcription from Built to Last Music Notes.  I did that a few weeks back for a ragtime sounding number from the year 1916 called Guatemala-Panama March by the Hurtado Brothers Royal Marimba Band.  However, soon after sending that for transcription I decided to come up with my own melody based on the sound of that Hurtado Brothers composition.  Four days later this had become The September March.  I'm curious to see what the actual notes are when I get the transcription.  That'll help me know how "original" this one is.


Number 69: Not a Care in the World, written 9/12/18
For some reason this week I thought of and then felt like listening to the album of O'Carolan music released by mandolinist Butch Baldassari back in 2007.  The very first track - a set of two tunes for Young William Plunkett - caught my ear and made me want to write a melody just like it.  So I did.  Maybe this is too much like it!  What I ended up with was a notey, three-part, repetitive tune.  It's called Not a Care in the World because I was writing it on the Wednesday before Tropical Storm Florence was supposed to arrive.  I like that major to minor transition which happens between the two tunes in Baldassari's setting. Something similar happens here but it is between parts A and B.

Number 70: Little Cat Nicholas, written 9/12/18
On the occasion that a melody comes to me out of the blue, I'll usually try and hum it into my phone's voice recorder for later use.  Forget about that for a moment.  Earlier this week, late in the evening just before bed, I was putting away my banjo when I pulled it back out and began improvising a quiet, pretty, waltzy melody on the instrument for a few minutes. I didn't record it. I put the banjo away and went to sleep.  A day or two later - this would have been 9/12 - I decided to recall that melody.  I'm pretty sure this is that. I called it Little Cat Nicholas:  our temperamental cat Nicholas is approaching 20 years of age and is not long for this world, so this tune is dedicated to him.  Anyway, after all that I noticed a recording on my phone titled generically as "hummed melody" and it's pretty much this same tune.  So this was floating around for a little while and needed documenting.

Biting Cat Nicholas having a typically lazy day.  September 15, 2018.

Seventy.  Whew.  These are so much fun to play!

A Year of Writing Tunes

One year ago, on or about the 14th of June 2017, I wrote my first tune - Toca Paseo.  That broke the ice and within two months I had ten tunes to play.  By that point I had already set a goal to write fifty tunes in one year.  I got there early, reaching the 50th tune in February, 2018.  Then I gave myself a stretch goal to make it sixty tunes in one year.  Here it is June 10, 2018 and I'm at 60 tunes.  (As I write this number 61 is forming).

There were times throughout the past year where I was really focused on this project, which can be both unnecessarily stressful and satisfying.  The process writing and thinking about a melody would get my mind racing and then it would be hard to turn that off and go to sleep, especially if something felt unfinished.  

My 60 tunes now exist and I like all of them, but I think my favorites are the very easy ones, so simple they could be nursery rhymes, where due to their simplicity the act of playing them becomes like a meditation...the melody a mantra.  Hopefully more on this later as I develop a better sense of where this is going.  For now, back to the tunes at hand.  

Number 60 is called Blind Eel.  It was written on 5/23/18 just before I went to Nova Scotia and then solidified while there.  The A-part, which I play on tenor banjo in this recording, is inspired by Phish's improvised jam during It's Ice from 7/23/17.  The B-part, which I play on K-board using a vibraphone sound, is influenced by the Korean folk song Doragi.

As a bonus, here's number 61 called Rhubarb.  It didn't exist yesterday and now it does!  I hummed the sound of the melody into my phone before going to sleep last night and immediately played the notes on an instrument as I was waking up this morning.  Rhubarb is dedicated to my recent trip to Nova Scotia.

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Tunes 51 Through 56 (The Hits Keep Coming)

I was recently listening to Terry Gross' interview with John Oliver on Fresh Air.  During the conversation, John Oliver mentioned that he played viola as a teen.  He said, "The better I got at it, the more frustrating I found playing it because I realized that I could not make the music sound the way I wanted to make it sound. And it was so infuriating because you just feel so impotent.  There were girls that I played with - when they played the violin could make it sound just spectacular. And I knew if I practiced for the rest of my life I would never be able to make it sound like that. So it was that weird situation of as I got kind of good at it the more and more I wanted to smash it into a wall.  When you start being able to technically play the notes of like an incredible piece like the Bach Double Concerto - just one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written - and playing it at my absolute best I was always butchering it. So it was really, really disappointing to kind of feel that the better I got, it felt like the worse I actually was".

I've experienced this frustration myself.  To overcome that hurdle, I set about writing my own personal repertoire of music to play that is mine and mine alone - little melodies I can play for enjoyment that are free from any genre, style, quality, precedent, example, tradition, expectation or sound other than my own devising.  OK cool.  That's now done.  I have 50+ tunes.  Enough to last a lifetime.

Last month I saw Bill Frisell play in New York City.  With him were Thomas Morgan, Rudy Royston and Eyvind Kang.  The improvised musical repartee that this quartet was able to achieve was both transcendent and discouraging.  The ease at which these guys made music together was an ever present reminder that what I'm doing is something completely different.  To overcome that valley I had to hit the reset button and realize that what I'm doing is something completely different.  So there.

When I reached 50 tunes in February - three months earlier than goal - I gave my mind a break.  However, I'm always going to have a creative drive that can't be turned off.  Fortunately I have an open tap and whether it's a blank page or a musical instrument, shit is going to come out.  It might be shit, but shit is going to keep coming.  That can't be stopped.

Tune number 51 is called Flea Circus.  I had the title before I had the melody, so it was going to be the title of whatever I wrote next.  This is what I wrote and it came to me almost immediately after hearing the Arthur Russell album Love Is Overtaking Me for the first time.

Number 52 is Doro Wat.  In this case I had the melody first.  I stole it almost entirely from the music of Mulatu Astatke who is basically the inventor of Ethiopian Jazz.  Soon after "writing" this music I needed a title and found the words Doro Wat which I learned was an Ethiopian chicken stew.  At my first opportunity I went to an Ethiopian restaurant to sample Doro Wat, and yes it is tasty!

Tune number 53 is called A Weird Drame.  It's a direct result from seeing Bill Frisell in New York.  During his first set that night he played his tune Baba Drame.  That sound stuck with me and the first time I picked up my banjo after returning home a melody very similar to that was the first thing I played.  The same exact notes you hear here.  Before leaving for New York, I had already been working on a little melody that I had hummed while listening to melodica player Augustus Pablo.  In the interest of convenience and synchronicity I forced that Augustus Pablo type melody upon the Bill Frisell/Baba Drame inspired melody.  A Weird Drame indeed.

Number 54 is called Kestrel.  I guess there are four mini parts to it.  It's a combination of things but I can't remember what the genesis was.  Some of it might be from steel drum music.  But steel drums have 55 notes not 54.  I know that one section of this was in my head as I woke up one morning and I played what I had heard in my head on the banjo as soon as I had gotten up and walked downstairs.  The rest of it - or all of it - might be an exercise in trying to make distinctive melodies out of a small amount of notes.

Tune 55 is Now Defunct.  I pride myself on not being able to transcribe by ear very well.  This is how I convince myself that I've written an original melody instead of a direct note for note copy of something someone else came up with.  So hopefully that happened here, although a trained ear might hear a similarity to an obscure composition called Funky Resurgence by Ulysses Crockett.  I noticed that because Funky Resurgance's head melody was my source for Now Defunct, but upon transcribing/writing it I noticed an unexpected similarity to the Phish song Meat.  Cool.  I love stuff like that.  The B-part was just slapped on spur of the moment.  This may be a continuation of the trend to write really simple, sparse melodies with just a few notes.

Finally, tune 56 is called Wanderley.  Six tunes in less than two months might be a fairly fast pace, but it's not as fast as the 50 tunes I wrote over nine months from June 2017 to February 2018.  I don't feel as much pressure to create right now, being content with the 50+ tunes I've got.  I can't even get to all of them in a week now unless I play an average of 8 per day.  Anyway, I had a little melody going based on what sounded to me like the vocal line of the Bad Religion song Operation Rescue.  It was too insignificant to stand on its own so I shelved it temporarily.  Meanwhile I was listening to the Brazilian organist Walter Wanderley and as a result came up with a tropical sounding melody.  I played with some more experimental sounding B and C parts for it, but then I realized that the teeny tiny little Bad Religion based melody could be tacked right on and a simple, fun tune was now in existence.  I would like to welcome Wanderley to the world.

That's all I got for now. 

50 Tunes in Less Than Nine Months!

I had a goal to write 50 tunes in one year.  The first tune of the 50, Toca Paseo, was completed on June 14, 2017.  The 48th tune, Frosted Cherry, was written on January 31, 2018.  In a little over 230 days I had come up with 48 new tunes to play.  Just two more to go.

I spent the first few days of February in a state of malaise, with subtle waves of illness making their presence known.  Although I never fully succumbed to whatever malady was horning in, it did stifle my interest in playing music and being creative for a few nights.  Instead of holding a banjo, I just wanted to hold a book and then go to sleep.  Some part of me may have been wanting to delay this process to hold on to the chastity of a project nearing consummation.

More and more, I've been applying words to a melody - a syllable for each musical note to use as a reminder.  I hadn't tried it the other way around - adding a melody to words - but I knew that for one of my last two tunes I wanted to try doing that for a Marosa di Giorgio poem.

The Curtis Mayfield/Impressions song People Get Ready had been stuck in my head recently.  With that in mind, early in the morning on February 8th I opened the Marosa di Giorgio book of poems I Remember Nightfall to page 197 and all of a sudden the words on that page began to sing.  It begins:  All of a sudden, gladioli were born. In a high place, in the North. I know that there are red gladioli, and blue, and black gladioli. Around my house there are only white ones.  I begin to walk toward them.  

Just like that I had found the poem I needed for inspiration.  I extracted a few other lines from the poem and in a manner of minutes had arranged these words on a scratch pad and appointed musical notes for each syllable, without concern for scale or theory or form.  I left for work thinking that I would edit later, but by evening the notes I had selected that morning seemed to solidify.  All of a sudden, there were gladioli.

Gladioli

Getting over the complex hump of tune number 49 made me want to make tune number 50 as effortless and lighthearted as possible.  Upon re-listen to Steve Earle's The Mountain, I took notice of the little instrumental track Connemara Breakdown with new ears.  It's sort of a bluegrass/Celtic mandolin tune, with possible similarities to Red Haired Boy.  

Yesterday morning I played around with the same general theme and came up with something similar, but different.  To add a little meat to it I referred to some scribbling from the night before based on a melody from Jean Ritchie's Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians.  It all fit and as simple as that, without overthinking it, I had tune number fifty.  

To give this tune a name, I thought back fondly on the tiny Irish village of Roundstone in the Connemara region that I had visited twice over a decade ago.  On one night there in Roundstone I might have set a personal record for most Guinness consumed in one "sitting", but that's another story that I'll have to hash out later.

This Irishy sounding tune provoked Laura to get out her bodhran for the first time in over a year and play along.  A mini Cardinal Puffin reunion of sorts.  I hit record to capture the moment.

Roundstone

What happens now?  I suppose I continue to enjoy the 50 tunes I've written, but also consider it done and start a whole new batch of tunes.  No need to rush though. 

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January's Tunes: Numbers 40 Through 48

I'm getting close to reaching my goal of writing 50 tunes in a year. Very close. There's 48 now in a span of 8 months.  In January I added 9 new pieces of music.

Goodbye Carnival

If I achieve this goal of writing and playing my own tunes, then a possible negative is giving up the Caribbean melodies I had been playing for enjoyment.  So Goodbye Carnival (and Domovoi from the month prior) is an attempt to carry over elements of those Caribbean tunes into this new format while also leaving them behind.

Tropical Tango

You can see this Caribbean trend continuing in the naming of this tune at least: Tropical Tango.  When I was writing it I wasn't concerned with what key or what scale/mode I was using.  I intentionally didn't analyze it and just let the notes fall and resolve where they wanted to.  I naturally ended up with a very common scale (the Major scale) in an unusual key (F#).  The B-part might have an unintentional Beatles similarity.

Latin Lover

Domovoi (12/29/17), Goodbye Carnival (1/1/18), Tropical Tango (1/4/18), and Latin Lover (1/6/18) were all written within a span of 10 days so they feed into each other.  Latin Lover might be more in a Slavic/Balkan territory than the Caribbean, but the first time I played it the name Latin Lover was assigned.

Goner

On 12/29/17 Phish played an exceptional version of their song Chalkdust Torture. At about the 16-minute mark Trey goes into a really fetching melody that is reminiscent of Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel.  Those few measures stuck in my head and I found myself playing similar notes on the banjo - the beginnings of a new tune. I kept hearing the words "Gone, just like a train" in the melody. That is of course the title of a Bill Frisell album which I then listened to.  The 2nd track on Gone Just Like A Train is called Verona, and I took part of the Verona melody and did my normal mixture of getting it wrong and further tweaking.  Now I had a B-part and an A-part...another tune!  Meanwhile, during all this process I was also hearing and playing a melody that is similar to a section of The Grateful Dead's Scarlet Begonias. I slapped that on as the 3rd part and voila - a three part tune!

The Fox That Was Too Foolish

My whole point with writing my own repertoire is to have tunes that are uniquely my own, but it's also fun to carry over aspects of my favorite music into this format.  That's what I've done here with The Fox - perhaps too obviously.  This is definitely veering into Scents and Subtle Sounds territory, but it toys with that spirit just enough to veer in and out of it.  As an aside, I've been loving my K-Board recently.  It's such a fun instrument to play!

Brown Eyed Rig

When I first started playing a musical instrument - tenor banjo - back in 2006 one of the first things I instinctively did was try to write an "original" tune called Brown Eyed Jig, based on the melody to Beautiful Brown Eyes.  Eleven years would go by before I tried writing anything else.  A couple weeks back I found that year 2006 tab for Brown Eyed Jig and realized that by combining some portions, changing the key, and changing the rhythm from a jig to more of a rag, then I could have something of interest.  That became the B-part to this new tune called Brown Eyed Rig.  The A-part I added on 1/18/18 was fairly effortless, and a surprisingly good fit if you overlay them.

Montegno Cedeno

My tunes are instrumentals, but I've found that by adding phonetic, top-of-mind lyrics to them I can better remember how they sound.  Basically, each note in the melody equates to a syllable in the words I insert as reminders.  Sometimes now the rhythm of the words comes first.  That happened here with "Montegno Cedeno, the merchanteer", or "Montegno Cedeno, a merchant she".  It doesn't have to mean anything other than the sound it makes.  More syllables/notes followed "Danced for the guard-yun of the Redwood tree" / "Trained with the master of the Wu tai chi".  The B-part - where I heard the words "the soul of the sphere, the soul of the sphere, pumpkin of the patchwork, the giant hunts the deer" - matched up to portions of King Pharoah's Tomb by STS9.

Coffee and Tea

This whole time now I've been wanting to write something in 6/8 time that could be thought of as being jig-like.  That might have happened with Coffee and Tea.  Better yet, I was able to incorporate a minor-key vibe I had been wanting to laud.  I can tell where I got the second half of the tune from, but the first half is cloaked in a mystery that even I can't unpack.

Frosted Cherry

That was going to be it for January, but then Frosted Cherry turned up.  I already had the name Frosted Cherry and was fairly certain that my next tune - to be written in February 2018 - was going to be called that.  However, it got written and completed by January 31st.  It's so diluted that even Trey Anastasio may not be able to find it, but some of the notes in the first part of this tune are lifted directly from the Phish song Horn.  The B-part is lifted from what I believe to be a super obscure track called Margarita by Honore Bienvenu Et Son Orchestre from a record called Zouk Vol. 1. Together they are Frosted Cherry.  To record this example of it, I downloaded an app called SampleTank, randomly found the sound Synth Flute and recorded the first (and second) takes.

I'm at 48 tunes now.  I expect to write the last two this month, and already have ideas for those.  Then I'll have 50 and be done, right? 

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December's Tunes

I'm in the midst of a goal of writing 50 tunes in the span of a year that I could then, presumably, have as a repertoire to play for fun going forward.  In December, six tunes were added to this project.

Pass Code
Pass Code was written on December 6, 2017.  I don't recall the inspiration behind the A-part.  I had spent the first part of December attempting to "transcribe" melodies out of some of the longer jam sections from Phish's Baker's Dozen run.  The A-part of Pass Code came to me independent of that, but for a B-part I looked to the notes I had transcribed from the Phish jams and saw how it could be directly applied, albeit with a different cadence and rhythm.  Pass Code should have a little lilt to it.


Snow Crawl
Snow Crawl was written over a two day period - December 9 and 10 - when we had a very pretty and non-disruptive snow fall in our area.  This was also the weekend of a local beer crawl that I did not participate in.  Instead I stayed home and this melody flowed out in full.  Show Crawl arrived to me as an existing composition that I simply had to transcribe from my own head by what felt like memory.


Tasting Room
Snow Crawl came to me unexpectedly.  I had been trying to write a sequel for Pass Code, or at least a tune that could be paired with it.  It took over a week of labor to come up with Tasting Room, although the end result seems fairly natural.  I'm not sure if it is original, but it serves my needs for a tune of this sort.


Matching the Breeze
Twenty to twenty-five years ago, long before I ever played a musical instrument, I would write little poems that were more like song lyrics than poems.  None of those writings have survived the years, but I can still recall snippets.  So this month I tried setting some of those to music.  I think it worked out in this case, even if I did steal a little bit from Bob Dylan (musically, not lyrically!).


The Gretchen
It's an annual tradition at my house to play Kokomo Jo's Caribbean Christmas album while putting up the Christmas tree.  The tree usually goes up on the night of Winter Solstice.  There's actually a song called Caribbean Christmas on that album and it got stuck in my head this year.  I don't know or care if I properly transcribed it, but I somehow managed to alter the lyrics to that song and apply it to fit words and themes from song lyrics I had written 20+ years ago about the characters Ray Hawk, Kelly Rainbow and The Gretchen. 


Domovoi
I thought I was being pretty creative to take something written in G-major and alter some of the notes to make it more like an Eastern European scale.  What I ended up with though, were the notes in a B-flat major scale with a tonal center of G, which is the same thing as G-minor.  Anyway, I've got a few traditional tunes in major keys from the West Indies and I pulled from aspects of a couple of those to accidentally put together this minor key AA/BB piece which I am calling Domovoi.  A domovoi is a protective house spirit in Russian folklore.

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