Here is the video that started this blog. It is a stop-motion animation of my song Flying Dream, as it moves in harmonic space. It’s a preview of what the blog is all about. Red = bass, yellow = melody, and orange = the harmonies. Be Love is the second full song video I did….
I love open mics. I have two favorites in San Francisco that I make every time I’m in town — Hotel Utah on Mondays, and Sacred Grounds on Thursdays. It is in places like Sacred Grounds that the culture begins, where it wells up right from the ground, not manufactured or corporate or in service…
I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been working on an animation of my song Real Girl. It’s a complicated one, a dance of harmonic tension and resolution. The bass and melody chase each other around the lattice like courting butterflies. Meanwhile, there’s more to be extracted from the Be Love video. A mode is a…
At the very end of the chorus, Be Love showcases one of my favorite notes, the 7b3. Most of the notes of the inner lattice can be approximated on the piano, but not the septimal minor third. It’s in between the keys. Blues pianists can evoke it by trilling between 2 and b3, but only variable-pitch instruments…
The chorus of Be Love is solidly in major territory. The chords are I, V, IV, the classic backbone chords of the major scale. The verse, however, is going to be back in the Northwest — I, bVII-, IV. I have to get back over there somehow, and I want to lead the ear strongly so…
Be Love was written and arranged on the lattice. I consciously used the lattice as a tool to make the music do what I wanted it to do. Working with this song has taught me a lot about leading the ear. Different parts of the lattice have different sounds. The upper right, the northeast, is…
After two years of working mostly with existing material, I’m happy to be writing songs again. This one took me over completely for a few days, and then I spent another couple of weeks recording it and animating it on the lattice. Be Love is a simpler song than Flying Dream, and I think it…