Week #30 - Greed

I really wanted to write lyrics to this. I had a melody in mind (for the verses anyway) but just couldn't come up with the words unfortunately. So at this point it's a very simple, straightforward piece - just guitar, bass and keyboard all pretty much playing in unison. Perhaps I'll get back to it someday, but here's where it stands thus far:



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Description:

For the feeling of greed I wanted something in a minor mode, and I ended up in Aeolian which tends to be my default I think. I also thought the song should have a driving feel, and even without drums, I think I accomplished that. I also thought the piece should be very focused. I thought getting too complicated or fancy with the parts didn't really work for this emotion since greed can be to all consuming so rhythmically everything is pretty locked together after the intro. So that harmony and rhythm. As for timbre, I stuck to my familiar palette of sounds. I'm reasonably happy with the clean, delayed guitar and slightly phasy electric piano, though overall the song could use a bit more dirt. A lead part would help too.

Tools:

Ableton Live 7
Line6 POD Farm
AAS Lounge Lizard
PSP audioware Nitro
Waves MasterVerb LE
SPL Free Ranger
Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp
Kjaerhus Audio Classic Compressor

Notes:

- The intro is pretty free form. I had the giutar part, just douled the low note on the bass and improvised the rhodes part around it.

- The structure is:
Intro - Chorus - Verse - Verse - Chorus - Verse - Middle 8 - Chorus - Chorus

- The chords are:
Chorus: Em | Em | G | G | Fm | Fm | Bm | C Am |
Verse: Em | Em | G | G | D | D | Em | Em |
Middle 8: Em C | Em C | Em C | Em |

- I took a modal approach to the chorus the first 2 times, sticking to an E in the bass. At the end the bass follows the root notes of the chords. I also altered the bass part on the third verse to make it a bit busier.

- The progression for the verse was taken from Pink Floyd's Time, taken down a step.


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