http:\/\/zingman.com\/music\/mp3\/jazzDemos\/DarkSkies.mp3<\/a><\/audio>
\n<\/p>\nWork on the last couple tracks for the third Buzzy Tonic record, Elixr continues apace, with the epic and angular Plague of Frogs, the new and funky Leave the City Behind, and the poignant Ballad of Galadriel in the offing. But meanwhile I\u2019ve taken on another recording project, albeit of a much lighter nature.<\/p>\n
My Saturday jazz group, the Haven Street Quintet, is advanced enough that I figure it\u2019s worth trying to do some originals. It\u2019s kind of amazing to me how few musicians actually write, but to me it\u2019s always been part of the deal, even if only aspiratiionally in the days before I figured out how. Alot if my earliest songs were jazz compositions, and in fact I wrote quite a few before I took on the added challenge of writing lyrics and singing.<\/p>\n
In a way writing jazz song is much easier than writing a rock or pop song, because all you really need is a sketch: a melody, some chords, a feel, and maybe an overarching concept. Then you leave it to the musicians to fill in the details and bring it to life.<\/p>\n
The first couple of songs I brought to the group we already fully composed, first played by my 80\u2019s fusion group Event Horizon \u2013 (I Miss My) Baby in Bb and Solstice. And although the sounded pretty good, they weren\u2019t really right for the direction of the group. Baby in Bb in particular is an uptempo funk, and doesn\u2019t translate on an upright bass. Also I wrote it on alto sax, and it lays just terribly on the tenor. So we\u2019d have to change the key as well as the groove to make it work. Solstice doesn\u2019t have any of those problems, but it\u2019s through-composed enough that learning the structure is non-trivial. Might as well move on!<\/p>\n
I have about a half-dozen ideas I can use as the basis for songs for the HSQ. The first of these I\u2019ve named Dark Skies. It\u2019s based on a fragment I\u2019ve had in my head for a long time, but always needed something to complete. I was humming it on the way home from jazz last Saturday and came up with a bridge that was perfect. Came home and banged it out on piano.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no point in trying to track a jazz song on the computer, because the performance is where it\u2019s at. So I had the idea to make a quick demo just to get across the sound. It came out quite well, and was a amazingly fast to record. I tracked the piano on MIDI, and then just repeated the head a second time to provide a backing for the first solo. The bass and drums are MIDI also, just an outline of the rhythm and harmony. The drums are little more than a click track with some pauses and accents. But then I put a sax track over it and that really brought the whole thing to life. I nailed it on the first take. The effects are all well-known presets I just dialed in, some reverb on the horn and some compression on the master out. It only took a couple hours from start to finish.<\/p>\n
Hopefully we\u2019ll do it at practice next week and it\u2019ll light up with the band. If all goes well I\u2019m gonna try to knock off a jazz demo every week or two while I finish the last couple tracks of my rock album, a sort of side project within a project. Best case scenario we\u2019ll have some fun and unique new material for the group, and it\u2019ll push us toward the next level. Worst case I\u2019ll have a nice little collection of jazz demos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s a new song of mine: http:\/\/zingman.com\/music\/mp3\/jazzDemos\/DarkSkies.mp3 Work on the last couple tracks for the third Buzzy Tonic record, Elixr continues apace, with the epic and angular Plague of Frogs, the new and funky Leave the City Behind, and the poignant Ballad of Galadriel in the offing. But meanwhile I\u2019ve taken on another recording project, … Continue reading “Jazz Demos — Dark Skies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-3386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-jazz-demos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}