Saturday, July 5, 2014

Climbing out of an oblivion, and plunging into rage.

It's been quite sometime since I have been trying to avoid writing lyrical songs, and focus mostly on instrumentals. This definitely demands for more versatility in music. When I used to write lyrical songs; the music would be on one particular scale and the flow of thought would then be supported by  mainly the lyrics. So now, when I am to write an instrumental the important question I face is 'How to narrate a story using just instruments?'.

With my most recent song, 'Goodbye Darling, Wish you death' (linked attached below) I wanted to primarily convey an idea, that "a person is growing out of a confused state in life inflicted upon him by people he once used to confide in; and now on looking back he feels guilty and angry of being mislead."

So the song starts on normal Am (Ionion mode), with a Cmaj chord creating a very light and merry feel, however it is followed by a few diminished and maj7add9 arpeggios which brings in a bit of tension. Hence creating an overall environment of 'confusion'. There is a small part before moving on to a mood of 'retrospect' which I played on the Hungarian minor scale, before connecting both the former and later moods with an Am add9.

For the part where I wanted to highlight retrospect, I had to keep it slow and sustained. I also thought that throwing in flat 7th note, and chromatics will intensify the tension (which I hope worked). However the arpeggio structures that I made use of were inspired by 'River flows in you - Yiruma', which I have tried to cover on guitar.

The Climax is composed of 'rage' and 'guilt', and I realized it might be important to bring in more semitones to bring an element of 'repentance' to the whole feeling of 'anger'. So, I conventionally introduce the Phrygian mode on E, and tried to take a leaf out of Raga Bhairavi in the very end.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Mr. Gautam Lahiri, my guitar teacher for not just teaching me guitar but also providing me with tools to analyse music much better.    


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