Back Beat, Hip Pocket

I love movie music. Some of my favourite artists are soundtrack composers like John Williams, Mark Mothersbaugh, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and others. But in the top 5 of inspirational artists across all genres stands Vangelis with his amazing, one-of-a-kind musical landscapes. 

From the very first time I listened to Vangelis, I was transported by the sound of his synthesizers and drums; by his unique blend of high-technology (this was a while ago…) melody makers and ancient pulses; by the way in which he painted richer and richer tapestries with layers of melody and harmony. It’s fair to say that every other type of electronic music I have listened to from that point on was viewed through this defining lens. 

And indeed, much of electronic music owes its most popular musical devices to a small group of pioneers, some of whose names I’m still learning as I explore: Tangerine Dream, Kitaro, Jean-Michael Jarre, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk. My newest composition is as much a tribute to those influences as it is a fresh take for me as a creative exercise. 

Crossing Aldebaran Boulevard begins as a random experiment with my newly-installed and yet-to-be-tested DAW, Presonus’ Studio One. Bundled with the Studio One+ membership is Presonus’ impressive Mai Tai synthesizer, on which I was doing the customary hunt-and-peck search through presets. While playing around with some tenor-range arpeggiations, I hit on the rhythm that comes in at about 1:45 in the song. It becomes the spine around which the full song wraps itself. 

But that’s quite a way into the song and getting there is a slow burn. I have generally found that one of my least-favourite habits is that I tend to rush songs, compositionally speaking. I’ve had songs which I composed to the point that I had a “big part” of the song. But I have struggled to expand those ideas into a coherent narrative that doesn’t either go from zero-to-sixty in the first few bars, or peter out and become boring.

With Aldebaran, I had a vision for where the narrative would need to go almost immediately. I had picked a medium-slow tempo, which in the end felt like a sort of forward-driving pressure. Once I added in a 1.5-beat delay, the syncopation immediately marched me down some imaginary street, led from the front and behind by the relentless flow of a city crowd. I was floated down avenues lit by modern magic, called by ancient wisdom. 

There it is, put simply: this is a song about a city street. It is a mission. Not one that meant to involve the flow of the crowd, but one which like all such plans will need to be shaped by it. My arpeggio is the flow of a crowd to which our protagonist (because now, we have one) is a stranger. It is unyielding yet passive; It is indifferent. 

The melody is just an unspecific swirl of mystery. It’s not a statement of its own: it is seeking and never finds the counter melody that completes it. Is our protagonist searching for someone? Tailing someone? Or are they the one being observed from a distance? 

And so my narrative was set off and running. A few extra layers of synth and some atmospheric sounds later, I had a song on my hands. Many more hours of listening, adjusting, poking, prodding and creating later, I had a finished product.

I have to say that Presonus Studio One made a huge difference to actually getting this project done. I have lots of other projects which, as mentioned above, failed to launch. Much of the blame for that goes to my own inexperience in songwriting. But it was surprising to me how much of it was just friction with the DAW software that I previously used. Studio One comes with a sort of shocking number of “spit polish” additions to any previous DAW I’ve worked with that just took one or three steps out of a process for me.

The workflow with Studio One is sort of an effortless blending of loop and live recording, all working together seamlessly. Whereas other DAWs seemed to struggle to make pretty basic decisions about how to loop a recording, SO kept me creative by anticipating my needs.

In the meanwhile, I guess I’m starting to post songs to the Back Beat blog, now. I’m still working out what the social media landscape will look like for this new project, so everything’s in flux. I’ve discovered Headliner, a service that allows you to subselect a section of a podcast and create a shareable video for social media. That’s handy. But I may actually start designing a workflow for publication to make sure I’m not missing anything.