This Monday and Tuesday, we decided to work separately on our respective tasks. For me, that meant officially starting to compose music! To make things easier, I broke down our musical needs by person and mood. We decided to also interview Tess to add background information, so we had four people in total. Then, each of the interviewees needed four moods - happy/excited, sad/depressing, neutral, and inspiring - and Tess just needed a neutral mood. All in all, my starting goal was 13 different 'songs'. I made all the music in Ableton Live, which is kind of like Garage Band but fancier. I also used a little midi keyboard that I have.
For Mark, I started with a loop that I'd made a while ago, which had drums, bass, and guitar. Mark's music style was supposed to be jazz, but since I can't write jazz, I decided to use a horn and put it in 3/4 to sound funkier. For Mark Neutral, I basically used the loop as it was and added some freestyle horn playing over it. Since the original was in C major, it was really easy to improv over. For each different mood, I made a little bridge section to link the original neutral loop to the next loop. The bridge parts were pretty similar - they just lead to different chords progressions in a different way. Each mood's loop had a drum beat based on the original but different, a different set of chord progressions in the guitar part, and a different bass melody to match the chords. On top of those three 'basis' loops, I added several improv horn parts that could be looped over to add more or less time as necessary. On Monday, I finished all of Mark's songs. They all sounded fairly similar, since the rhythms and instrumentation were basically the same for each, but they were different enough to evoke the moods.
On Monday, I only got around to Jason Neutral. Since his music style was "sad lumberjack" and artists that used a lot of guitar and other plucked instruments, I recorded my guitar on my phone instead of using digital instruments. I decided to use A minor and E major, since they're really easy to play on the guitar, and I kinda played around with a plucking/strumming pattern until I got one I liked. That became the basis of Jason Neutral, and I added several plucked guitar and ukulele melodies over the top to be looped. It was a lot of fun making up the guitar melodies as I've never really done that before - I usually just strum or pluck chords, rather than doing monophonic plucked melodies. It took a bit longer to practice each section, since I'm not as good at guitar as I am with a keyboard. Nevertheless, I had a great time since it was a different creative mindset than using digital instruments.
For Mark, I started with a loop that I'd made a while ago, which had drums, bass, and guitar. Mark's music style was supposed to be jazz, but since I can't write jazz, I decided to use a horn and put it in 3/4 to sound funkier. For Mark Neutral, I basically used the loop as it was and added some freestyle horn playing over it. Since the original was in C major, it was really easy to improv over. For each different mood, I made a little bridge section to link the original neutral loop to the next loop. The bridge parts were pretty similar - they just lead to different chords progressions in a different way. Each mood's loop had a drum beat based on the original but different, a different set of chord progressions in the guitar part, and a different bass melody to match the chords. On top of those three 'basis' loops, I added several improv horn parts that could be looped over to add more or less time as necessary. On Monday, I finished all of Mark's songs. They all sounded fairly similar, since the rhythms and instrumentation were basically the same for each, but they were different enough to evoke the moods.
Mark music in sequence
Mark music loops
On Monday, I only got around to Jason Neutral. Since his music style was "sad lumberjack" and artists that used a lot of guitar and other plucked instruments, I recorded my guitar on my phone instead of using digital instruments. I decided to use A minor and E major, since they're really easy to play on the guitar, and I kinda played around with a plucking/strumming pattern until I got one I liked. That became the basis of Jason Neutral, and I added several plucked guitar and ukulele melodies over the top to be looped. It was a lot of fun making up the guitar melodies as I've never really done that before - I usually just strum or pluck chords, rather than doing monophonic plucked melodies. It took a bit longer to practice each section, since I'm not as good at guitar as I am with a keyboard. Nevertheless, I had a great time since it was a different creative mindset than using digital instruments.
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