'Lacking Center' - New Original Music/Songwriting Practice! Jazzy/Atonal/Experimental + Walkthrough!

grapthar (74)in #music • 6 years ago

So this began as a really melodic

bass part in the piano, but as I wrote more, it began turning into something much weirder, so I ran with that thread and voila, a super strange, almost atonal song. Technically there is a key center on A, but the harmonies and melody on top don't really feel like they settle into a key easily. I like that it feels sort of like a pop-rock organization, with 4 bar sections, but with a crazy, avant-garde sort of tonality. Let's get into it!

Listen to Lacking Center here.

Track 1 is our piano part,

and as you can see in the overview, it comes in 3 varieties: Light Blue, Grey and a Darker Blue, with the Light Blue repeated 2x for every 16 bars. I have attached screenshots of the Light blue section below, as it would take up a lot of space to include every section. Essentially, the bass notes/left hand part of the piano are mostly the same for each of the 3 parts, while the stuff on top of it varies a bit, sometimes feeling a little more "resolved" and at other points getting insanely dissonant.

Track 1, Light blue, described above.

Track 2 is our drums,

which mostly are just used to provide a backbeat so I could jam over it. If this ever became a real song, I would want these to be a little more interesting. We begin with just kick/snare and hihats, then it opens up to the ride cymbal, before returning to the closed and pedaled hihats.

Listen to Lacking Center here.

Track 3 is our bass part,

using the same bass guitar synth I have worked with a lot lately. Although the entire section is Red in the overview, this too has variations for each of the different piano parts. Again, I have attached the part that corresponds to the Light Blue sections of the piano below, so feel free to use it as a reference.