Dirty Tuba
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December 02, 2004
Odd meters
Its funny how I had set out on a mission to write a piece in 13, and after telling a few people that I was doing that, we all (including me!) began to run around beating our chests while counting to 13 (try it 1,2,3-1,2,3-1,2,3-1,2-1,2). but then after we started practicing the piece over and over and getting it up to speed, we have found that its better to think of it as a lopsided 5 (1-2-3-4,5). These last couple of days I have been running around thinking about "Shit Stall" (thats the working title) that lopsided 5 makes more and more sense.
I'd also like to say that after years of writing video game music and music for kids toys, it is refreshing to write in odd meters and odd keys. Granted there are some limitations that you have to deal with when writing for 12 Brass Players and a gaggle full of percussion (although, I don't write specifics for the drums), and there are some spots that I would have concidered difficult only to be fucking suprised that it could be that easy. Sometimes a complex harmony will trip a lot of people up, or a passage of up beats, but for the most part if I concentrate on POWER, and oddities the music seems to take off... like light a gas fire place.
We also are jumping on this Surf tund, The Wedge, by Dick Dale. Dick Dale was the originator of The Surf Sound which is a combination of a driving beat (most resembling the train snare roll that came out of southern blues/rock) and balkin/greek scales on a twangy/reverbish electric guitar with a sway bar. So anyway Lieb had one of his brilliant itches to play this song and wrote out the tune for us. the lower brass decided to throw down the balkin backing on it which is kinda like surfing a wood board wrapped with bacon on the waves of an oceanliner, but hey, this is Extra Action, right?
Funny thing is, is the 4th bar is only 2 beats (instead of the normal 4 beats), so there is this wierd hickup in the middle of tune that isn't really felt like an odd meter but rather, one of those extended melodies that you hear in balkin/turkish region.
I do have to say of all the new songs that we are working on, this one will probably be first out of the bag, and it will rock hard!
Posted by gropo at December 2, 2004 08:47 PM