Take a listen to the big band arrangement:
In the course of the painting process, I soon had to admit to myself that it is impossible to capture a piece of music from beginning to end in suitable colors, patterns and other fantasy shapes. I have now drawn the course of the melody of the chorus in a double line, which moves from the left edge of the picture to beyond the upper edge of the picture. The double line illustrates the repetition of the main motif. The white lines in the lower left quarter depict the movement of the melody of the bridge.
Trying to give my images something „readable“ and have my improvisations happen in our writing from left to right is basically a very logical approach. In the implementation, however, I quickly notice how arbitrarily I move across the picture in the process. I could assign the interval of a fourth to any line segment, or an Eb minor scale to the violet hue. If I try to read the picture less arbitrarily and stick exactly to given lines, I feel constricted.
Whenever too many possibilities open up to approach a thing, it is advisable to create anchor points. So I decide to go back to my approach on „Heaven in Pennies“ and give myself a simple, clear task. I took a closer look at the melodic concept of „Gotta Be Another Way“ and noticed that the sequence of notes in the chorus melody repeats itself raised a semitone, as well as the sequence of notes in the bridge recurs shifted down a whole tone. The piece is in itself strongly influenced by the element of modulation, so I set out to develop a melody line that remains the same in its interval sequence, but transposes upward.
Below you can listen to the original improvisation as well as the further development of this idea.
I would like to make a general comment about the improvisations. Since some of the improvisations last several minutes, and may not be intended for public ears in their entirety, I have limited myself within this blog to isolating only the motif on which the subsequent song idea is based. The complete improvisations are available on request.
The following associations have arisen with this work:
- Nebula
- Vastness of the universe
- Diversity
- Incompatibility
- Repel from each other
- Be contrary
- Layers
- Disturbance
- Brightness in the dark
- Contrariness
- Jagged
- Inside turns outside and vice versa
- Mediocrity
- Border
- Rebellion
- Shield
- Whirling
- Parallelism
- Be encroaching
- Pushing boundaries
- Getting closer to the unknown
- Whirlpool
The following idea for a hook emerged from the above associations:
Live your mistakes awesomely
There’s no need for apologies
You don’t have to go down in history
Cheers on your mediocrity