SCP #21: The Sea

Week three down, only 49 to go.  The end is nowhere in sight, but I'm still mostly enjoying myself. Yesterday was a first for me in terms of improvising on guitar and voice at the same time, today's piece is a first in that I've never really used my loop pedal with a guitar before, only with my voice.  Each of these daily compositions give me a chance to try out new ideas, but they also give me a chance to struggle at actually performing them without much practice.

Today's composition exercise was quite structured, as I wanted to lead myself away from habit.  I took the same three-note chord that began yesterday's piece with the intention of turning it into something rhythmic.  I took the word wild from yesterday's title, and assigned each letter a number based on the number of strokes the capital letter contained, so 4, 1, 2, 2.  I used this as the basis for the rhythm of an ostinato.  The total of the numbers was 9, so I went with a 9/8 time signature, and the length of each note in the ostinato was its assigned number in quavers.  It resulted in a kind of whacky tango feel, and there was no way I'd have been able to play it and sing at the same time without significant practice, hence the loop pedal.  The looped arrangement is simple and very clunky, but is definitely a starting point for more exploration.

To harmonically differentiate this piece from yesterday I made it minor rather than major, and intended to go with a Dorian #4 scale as the basis for the melody, although I'm not sure I actually use the #4 at all in the piece.  Lyrically I kept with wild as a theme, which led me to wild places, which in turn led me to a kind of desolate and untamed coastal setting.  The lyrics definitely feel like an afterthought, and I would have liked to put more work into them, but they are working fine as a skeleton of an idea for now.  I don't know when I'm going to have time to refine all these half finished ideas, perhaps not until my 49 remaining weeks are through...