2-bit Music

 I've been catching up on the excellent 8-bit Music Theory set of videos. The real eye-opener was his analysis of "Rain" from Halo 4: ODST. It sounds like sparse, almost random noodling on piano and sax but on analysis every single note is an important and integral choice to the final effect.

I've dabbled in this before. I'll revisit again, and each time hopefully learn a little more. In really simple form, there's three (maybe four) ways of looking at a harmonic progression. First is the quality of the chords themselves and their relationship to the key. This is where things like the ability of the V chord to be a pivot to the relative key (I think that's how it works!) or the fact that the II and IV are minor/diminished even within a major scale, come in.

Then there's the voicing, and this is how the intervals within the chord get brought out. Simple example; play the root triad of C major. Add the 7th degree to make a C7. Now do the first inversion. That top B that was originally heard in the context of a stack of major thirds is now a dissonant minor 2nd away from the root C.

So particularly in orchestral writing, where the grand clef can easily (even, commonly) extended 8va on either side, how you voice the chords can range from tight cluster chords to open voicing. Or can stress the powerful fifth or the more sombre fourth; the top note of a triad is both of these, being a fifth from the root but a fourth from the octave of the root!

And then there's voice leading. Our brains are very good at tracking a specific line through a pattern of chords, especially if it is in a distinct voice; say, a trumpet part within a mixed/lower brass section. So even if the net movement of the chord progression is going down, and even if the last cadence was from minor all the way grim to diminished...if the notes assigned to the trumpet are making a major fifth ascension at the same time...

Which is part of my "maybe four" above; the strings are quite consonant and of similar timbre and can play in any voicing, but because of the harmonic content brass speaks better in certain voicing, becoming more powerful or more dissonant than the intervals alone would suggest, and the winds have such distinctive characters they almost always throw focus onto the actual line played by each instrument or section.

***

So basically I'm into reharmonization. My first take on the arrangement was to check basic ideas and tone colors, and see if I had a workable pallet. The next sanity check is to record some sections and see if I can actually get a blend. To that end, I've found my music paper and am writing out the first string section.

Yes, Reaper does notation. But quantizing everything to make it look sensible would be a pain. Furthermore, because of how my tracks are organized the strings are all on separate systems. (The limitation of the tracks -- or more technically, the number of tracks I'm willing to try and deal with) means I couldn't really voice the harmonies fully anyhow, having things like two solo trumpets instead of a trumpet section playing divisi. 

And after those sanity checks...

Reharmonization! I need to take a further step back here and not follow the original as slavishly. I am in no way going to call Miracle of Sound a hack. It is completely appropriate and powerful the way he has done it and I know he has the skills. But the original piece was written around a defining and unchanging ostinato with a simple and fixed 3-chord progression over it. Okay, it does break slightly in the climax of the verse.

But I need to move outside, be prepared to go places that are outside of the key, and change the ostinato when needed. You can't write good jazz harmonies just by adding 7ths on top of a triad progression! 

This project is feeling more daunting by the moment. I'll feel better when I've tried recording a few lines. The bass line -- well, I've been practicing that, and it is a pain. Apparently Garritan gave me a five-string bass because I had to drop my low string a whole step to get to the repeated root D. I'm still having trouble damping the notes properly...the last time (only time!) I recorded bass, I could leave the strings open. Now I'm trying to control them to get the necessary tighter sound.

I applied some of the ideas above and cleaned up the first two melodic bars. The main error I had been making is reinforcing the melodic line by assigning as many instruments to it as I could manage. No, the trick was to make it the top voice and having distinctive motion lacking in the other voices. So now I've got that lush string sound, and I've been able to define the chords properly, and I've managed to keep the moving pedal going.

Didn't get it done in time to record at home. I've scribbled the string parts on music paper and I'll rehearse them for a day or two. Then I'll try the experiment. Not really looking forward to recording the same part from three to a dozen times to get the full string section sound...

Kala Vorson, meet Cecelio Medini

 I did need the break from writing. And I'd gotten rusty on music. I still think I need to go to music paper to work out some of those harmonies.

The sketch below was just to explore potential voicings for "Ballad of Commander Shepard." I didn't try to clean up anything -- I didn't even bring out the good keyboard, just throwing everything in with the little clattery Korg Nanokey I mostly used as a sound effects playback controller.

The good news is how nicely what will be the Kala Ubass, the Vorson, the new Tycoon bongos and a shaker I don't own yet fill out the sonic space. Possibly better news -- at least for educational purposes -- is I am very much using multi-part string writing and need all three of my acoustic strings (although I might do a practice run with my silent violin.)

The bad news is how much sax and bone it wants. My trombone playing is lousy and I don't even own a real sax. As I continue to try out new ideas and refine the old ones I'll try to move into slower, more legato lines on the bones. But even with this, it is going to be a great thing for me actually record something instead of just learning (building!) new instruments.

 

And practically speaking, what this means is a few weeks of practice time...and otherwise I'm back to writing.

...run like a leopard, but you'll never be a Chromatic Mediant Progression

 Progress continues on a jazz noir cover of Miracle of Sound's "Ballad of Commander Shepard." I transcribed the ostinato that I'm turning into a bass line, did a rough transcription of the vocal line, and found tabs online:

My music theory is still not good. The ostinato is starting with D as a pedal tone but arguably we're actually in the relative F major all along (for which this is a VI). Or it is D minor -- that Bb should be a clue there! -- and the chord progression is a simple I III IV with that Bb as an VII and that lone C being a very leading VIII. Except that C also pivots to a new I III IV in C major...? 

(Incidentally, that lone Bb gets natural for the ascending melodic minor, and the C...is sharped in the harmonic minor. Minor scales are...weird.) 

Anyhow, after slapping on the basic triads identified by the tabber, I looked to see if I could impose the distinctive chromatic progression of the James Bond theme as a pedal point. Well, sort of. The Dm Dm F G pattern repeated through most of the song means if you start the progression on D you are then trying to put a D# or an E into a D chord. Well...if you extend the chord, there's an E in the 9th, making a Dm9 chord...(DFACE...which actually creates a nice pivot to the upcoming F). According to PianoChord, this chord is typically played with omitted notes and/or inversions.

Anyhow, that is a full step not a half but sticking too slavishly to the signature Bond progression can be a mistake. Next up is then an F...which is the chord we are in. Then either abandon the rise-and-fall to go up to the G, or create interest by backing down to the E/D#. Well, that's a problem. It only shows up in the G6 and we're trying for a bit of a suspension. Incidentally, that G is missing the Bb -- it requires going to Gm. But the point of chord progressions is to create interest by the notes that are not in common. So the strange Gm6/E 3rd inversion is played E (making our semi-chromatic pedal seem like the root), G, the Bb, and a final D.

Whew! And this is before I try to harmonize the brass or the string section! (One of the dirty secrets of chromatic pedal points is you keep it so far away from the rest of the instruments the ear can't hear the problems. So played in high strings, you might get away with this).

Anyhow. This project is definitely sending me back to music paper. It is the best way to work out some of these harmonies.

I'm not going to take that too far before I've tried out some instrumentation. One problem is this was a guitar-driven vocal number originally. Jazz Noir goes better with a broken lead line with lots of open space in it. So the first thing to try is handing off parts of the line to different instrumentation so the contrast will punch up the brass when they do play. Flute, guitar, vibraphone, strings are all options here. High, lush string sections are part of the "spy" sound all right. Sax is also a natural for a very vocal sound, but I don't play sax (and my lead guitar ain't great, either).

And I have been wanting a chance to try out my now nearly-complete string collection -- violin, (chin) cello and (chin) bass!

Drum like a Krogan

A bit of a Wile E. Coyote moment; I've been working so hard on building new instruments and learning existing ones I'm at a bit of a loss to find everything is more-or-less done.

And then I stumbled on the musical idea I want to do this week. This one actually seems relatively easy. And no new purchases!

I've been wanting to do some Jazz Noir for a while and it looks like Miracle of Sound's "Ballad of Commander Shepard" is a good fit. I've covered one of their pieces before, so I'm aware of the challenge of finding pitches to transcribe a spoke-sung vocal line. At least for this one, I've found guitar tabs.

Basic line-up is the Kala U-base with the metal strings that are currently on it, the Vorson electric uke with "surf guitar" processing (weirdly enough, it is the same basic sound for surf guitar, spaghetti western, and spy music), and my new bongos. Oh, didn't I mention those?

Put the Venova through a ring modulator and tried down-pitching it and it still makes a lousy sax, but I think I can work with that. One of these days I want to dump my tenor trombone, because alto would probably be more comfortable for me and it is a cheap bone anyhow (not even a tuning slide).

***

The big danger is I'll lose steam on the novel. I have one more scene to revise from Part II -- Natsumi is moving to the "Karate Kid" scene at Gingaku-ji and I'm having trouble motivating the bit where Penny almost breaks her necklace.

But those are all solvable problems. I'm focused more on the rest of the book now, and still fumbling a bit for what the flavor of the Tokyo section wants to be and how I can carry it off. The Hyatt stuff doesn't seem to blend with the Mario Karts and the Robot Restaurant, and I haven't figured out the best way to work with Yuki, either.

(Basically Penny is getting lessons on dress and deportment -- from an usual perspective -- as well as some brush-up on her acting skills, but I don't think I want or need to show any of that.)

Life is just too busy. I'm glad I'm on full-time now because it -- perversely -- makes me feel less guilty taking a sick day.

Back to Bassics

 I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Last week I got an iPad that IT had tossed in the bin. Took a lucky guess at the password and was able to get in, wipe it, and then set it up for myself. This week I took the chance of opening it up and replacing the failing battery. Just got it back together and it works fine!

Also did some adjustments on the chin bass, brought it up to pitch for the first time, and made a quick recording (off the new iPad...what else?)

Also finished the brand-new Kamo River scene. My sister gave it her stamp of approval. I think, finally, I have a sense for where I am going with Penny as a character. This is after all the plot beneath the plot for A Fox's Wedding. It is Penny realizing she has the chance to become the Athena Fox-like hero -- but also discovering that what she really wants to be is not exactly the character she once played, but something more nuanced.

I've put down more bucks at Fiver for an artist to draw me the interior image for Fox and Hounds. I'd like to hire a cover artist too, but the person who was helping me before has run into problems with a new Fiver policy and has had to withdraw.

At some point I need to find time to do up the new cover art. Oh, and write the book, of course.

Ang an an an ang, ang ang ang

133 words written this morning, on the brand new Kamogawa scene. And I'm changing my mind once again and putting Fushimi Inari Taisha back in Part II.

No, I don't drown the readers with all these foreign words. It is like technical lingo; it is efficient. Not that I just use terms I'd never dare put in the book to communicate to myself in my various notes. I also use references nobody but me would ever get.

And maybe not even then! I was eating lunch at my desk at work yesterday and I saw "M2m Stargate" scribbled on a pad. Obviously my handwriting, but what the heck...oh. This was a note I took during a YouTube video about how so many television and movie themes can be described as two chords and an interval. A major chord, go up two steps, play a minor...that sequence dominates the title theme of the movie Stargate.

So the scene I'm working on, in my notes is "Angler fish dance." Which is a Girls und Panzer reference, and I'm almost certainly not going to take anything from it. Just; the idea of the scene right now is Penny is still on her crash exercise program to try to get buff enough to feel competent dealing with the crazy "Fitness Cult" (more of a self-improvement/UFO cult). So she's jogging on the banks of the Kamo river in Kyoto. Stops to catch her breath near some musicians out with traditional instruments and finds herself dancing along. Then Natsumi, the shopgirl she met at Kyoto Porta, passes by with friends and Penny plays the gaijin card in calling out to her then bullying her -- and her friends -- into dancing along.

So there's stuff about socialization and about Penny's increasing confidence in using her personality to push other people. And about how Kyoto -- and Japan -- relates to the traditional elements of their past in a constant fusion of old and new. And I want to drop in the senpai/kohei because that could be part of the relationship of Deacon and Ojiisan, the showman and the mystic who formed Transcendence.

The current (ever-changing) plan is to follow this with the trip to the Inari Shrine and give this more focus. I've gone back and forth so many times on this. I feel like there are still too many "walk around a temple or shrine" scenes packed into the first half of the book, but moving it to Part III creates all sorts of other problems. At least this way I get to put the idea of "boundary creatures" in there, which she will be using to react to the "Hikikomori Night" scene, and it also means I can have Yuki explain about the kitsune...it isn't completely natural to put it in her scenes but there really are no better ways to do it.

Man. Have I got too many women in this? Or just too many characters? The guys who show up enough to be considered characters are Ichiro Yamada (of course), Jiro Takeuchi, Masao Otami/Deacon Blue, Saito/Ojiisan, Ishikawa Goemon (XIV), Doctor Noh, and Beni (who is back to just his two short scenes at the studio park).

The women are Aki-on-headset, Hanae, Natsumi, Yuki, Suki (hey, if Beni gets billing...), Kei/Sukeban Deka. Actually, the problem isn't there are so many of them. It is that Hanae and Natsumi are the only quiet/traditional types; Hanae with her soft spoken manner and hidden strengths, Natsumi with her hand-wringing shyness. Suki is brazen and outspoken, Yuki is an otokoyaku with the Takarazuka (hrm..there's a Steve problem here...might need to change her to Yukari), and Kei is of course cosplaying a juvenile delinquent with a razor-honed yo-yo.

Right. 133 words and in two hours I'm going off to a high-tech Van Gough exhibit. After the last two weeks, though, my work won't complain if I want to use some of my accrued vacation hours...

Reset

 And now the sound post fell over.

That's okay. I was in the middle of re-carving the neck tenon and I now I can feel a little more free about moving the violin around.

This, BTW, is the improvised tool I used to set it the first time. That wasn't fun.

Plus, I carefully made the first cut with a generous margin...on the wrong measurement. I hadn't taken into account how much thicker the violin gets towards the middle. Another thing that makes fitting the sound post so much fun; you put it in through the f-hole where it is too tall to actually go...

So the new tools came in the mail. Amazing how many specialized tools you want just for basic operations on a violin. We're not even talking the specialized luthier tools like bridge shaping clamps and of course the fine chisels and planes.

Well the drill bit is specific. That's the size I needed for the machine heads I'm putting on this hybrid machine. And here is the neck being glued on again:

Did I mention the big project for work was finished yesterday? Everything fit, too. But I worked on that through the weekend. Thursday we put it in, I took off early to get to some errands that I'd been putting off, treated myself to take-out...everything was going so much to plan I was starting to worry when the other shoe would drop. Got home and slept twelve hours. So there's that.

And that's why chin bass making, and a whole bunch of vacuuming, was happening today. 

Girls Play

 The project at work is taking way too long. Worked all weekend on it and still not where I want it to be. So that doesn't leave a lot of time for writing.

I'm at the up side of the swing right now; I have generally good feelings about the book. But then, I usually have positive feelings about a re-write when I'm in the middle of one. I am half way through Part II now. The problem spots left are going to be reworking the conversation with Ojiisan, changing the sushi scene with Ichiro to take into account all the previous changes I've made, and swapping in Natsumi where Beni was in the Ginkaku-ji scene. Plus seeing if I can borrow any of the stuff I did with her out of the deleted Kyoto Crux scene. And Penny's argument with Aki is re-timed and had to be tweaked anyhow.

And then I'll finally be back to the Shinjuku Park Hyatt and moving forward again. With luck, I won't have to do a top-to-tail rewrite again on this one.

I've turned up the heat slightly on back-burner where the Paris book sits. I think this may be a book without a strong inner conflict; for once, Penny is basically at peace with herself and with her new role. But it may not be entirely an external adventure. Maybe there will be another character who has an important character arc...

Over meals and those times during the long weekend when I had to take a break but couldn't think clearly enough to write (which came far too frequently) I found myself watching a whole bunch of (recorded) streams of young women playing the first Mass Effect game.

 I think it made an interesting sanity check. Obviously there are artificialities in the setting, but the approach and problem-solving was oddly similar between all the players. As one telling detail; Mass Effect has rich lore but is also very well constructed to tell you what you need to know just in the process of play. Even details such as how the combat system works are gently tutorialized through the kinds of encounters thrown at you in the early game. But all of these women were heavy manual readers, dipping into the in-game Codex whenever the opportunity arose. Plus of course there's that aspect of cooperative problem-solving where the viewers on the stream would make suggestions and hints.

I am glad that Penny is not too terribly different in her approach.

Move with a Purpose

Had the vaccine, fully returned to 40-hour week (for first time in several years), have a big project in the shop which is going to keep me working all weekend.

So of course this is the time I'm pushing to get this big revision done and get back to making forward progress on the novel. The thing that really stopped me dead wasn't detail, or even focus. It was that there wasn't an obvious reason for some of the scenes to be there.

So every scene with a big rewrite is about putting a choice into it. Having Penny not be reactive, but making some strong active choice -- and explaining to the reader why she's doing so. 

Tough, because the way I've plotted this thing, the external plot is very manipulative; she's dragged to Kyoto on false pretenses and pressured into playing a role that has been written by other people. And the inner plot is almost worse; Penny has seen the opportunity to actually become the adventurer she dreamed of when she was younger, and she's throwing up objections right and left because she doesn't want to get hurt by trying and failing. But she's never outright admitting that this is what she is doing!

Anyhow. The scene I've been slogging along on today is the revised Nanzen-Ji. I'm pulling some stuff from the deleted Philosopher's Walk scene and plugging that in. But as much as I'm cutting and pasting, I have to rewrite most of the paragraphs anyhow to highlight the conflict and choices better.

It's a nice four-fer scene. She's walking out the tough run she had that morning, trying to keep from stiffening up, she gets intrigued by a mysterious path, finds a secluded little temple and realizes all in a flash that this was all a naif recapitulation of a Tomb Raider sort of adventure. She's also problem-solving on the case at hand with a pop lecture on some principles of archaeology -- which is also setting up a later conflict between the expectations of her handlers that she's there to play a role, and her own actual expertise. And there's world-building on Japan, particularly Japanese Religion.

I'm beginning to think Hikikomori Night may be the most straightforward scene in the book; it is just wandering the side streets of Akihabara meeting weird people who tell her bizarre things about the history of Noh, Cyber Cafes, and the Imperial Rescript on Education.

I find it hard to write during lunch at work, or when I'm waiting for glue to dry (the pieces I'm building for work have a lot of glue in them.) So I did the worst staining job I've ever done:

I thought the stain would come out much lighter. I rather wish I'd left it in blond wood, maybe just put a little amber tint into the varnish. Oh, well.

I reworked the tailpiece, glued in a hand-carved nut, and unwound the bass strings to get them to wind properly on the machine heads. Got as far as hanging the third string...

When the neck came off. Well, that had originally been intentional. I used hide glue (well, Titebond's "hide glue in a can" version) and was sparse with it because I meant to just test fit and then take everything apart again.

Well, it is apart now. So maybe I can actually shape the neck slot a little nicer. All I know is I don't have either the patience or time to do that now. Not until both work and writing have gotten further than they are.

Cut neck

I figured it out a long time ago, though; what happens is I get an idea for an arrangement, and that arrangement inevitable wouldn't be right without this one, specific instrument. Which I don't happen to own or play. So then I either put it in my cart at Amazon and fret about the price until something new happens to distract me, or I do buy it, and then start learning how to play, and by the time I've gotten half-assed with it I'm already off on some other project.

Actually, heck with music, that's how my life works. 

(Right now my cart has a set of bongos and a French Horn in it. And there's a jaw harp on my desk at work.)

I re-shaped the prototype neck -- it was too thick for comfort -- and did a really terrible job on the mortice. I was eager to get some strings on it and get an idea of how it feels.

Prototypes are there to help you discover the issues you didn't expect. Well, weight of those machine heads is one! But I'm still able to hold the chin bass and even do arm vibrato, so I can put up with the excess weight.

Another was that the tailpiece means the strings run up on to the speaking portion. Means I either need to figure out how to crimp on new ball ends or otherwise trim the strings. Ignore the painter's tape there; that's because the fine tuners (which I didn't need anyhow) are rattling.

I didn't want to go further than this without the sound post (an adventure I'm not looking forward to). But I did make one more discovery, and it is an unfortunate one. It makes a lousy bass. At least down on the E. I tried the bridge pick-up and that was worse -- too much finger noise. 

So I might just have to re-hang the gummy worm (the pahoehoe) strings on my Kala to record the bass tracks I was wanting to do.

***

And also reading up once again on modes and scales and chord patterns. Sigh. And turns out that the closest thing to a standard term for what I was wanting to do is "Jazz noir" but search on the Internet has basically been broken by the tragedy of the commons. Too many people figured out how to make a buck or grab an eyeball by catching search terms, so you rarely find information anymore. Just people who promise that whatever it is you wanted, they are sure they can sell one of them to you.

(Amazon is a prime offender here. I've gotten those farcical hits; "Amazon has bargains in liver diseases, just click here!")