Hello and welcome to today’s installment.
I’ve changed the name of this publication from “James Bridge Music” to “Notes Unfolding” for a few reasons, one of which was just that I thought it would be fun to use something other than my name. More importantly, though, I feel this title gives me a little more flexibility. Although my main purpose here is to share my music with anyone who cares to listen, I like that this can also be a space to write a bit about the creative process and other things. I think the new name with its double meaning more accurately reflects what I’ve been doing here so far.
So, about today’s music. It’s actually sort of two pieces divided by the sound of chimes (performed by our three-year-old daughter, Vienna).
The first half, “Alarm,” in its initial notes sound to me like one of the wake up sound options on alarm apps. I used a simple filter in GarageBand (a music editing software that comes pre-loaded on many Apple products for those unfamiliar) to temporarily allow the sound to feel a little “closer,” a bedroom feel I guess as opposed to a dreamlike spacey feeling, starting at around 00:50. I wish I’d played around more with that effect because I like it (note to my future self).
I don’t often consciously set out to capture a very specific thing through music but in the case of “Alarm” I was thinking along the lines of drifting in and out of sleep.
By the way have you ever heard of the Norwegian electronic jazz group Jaga Jazzist? I would say they are an inspiration in some of my music and I think that probably comes through in some of the melodic elements of “Alarm.” (If you want to check them out, I love the albums “A Livingroom Hush” and “The Stix” and would especially recommend the tune “Lithuania.”)
As for “Chimes,” the second part of this piece, the idea was simply to include the sound of these chimes that are hanging by the stairs in the home where we’re currently staying, and then play something sort of ambient in the same key (roughly anyway: the chimes aren’t exactly in tune with my keyboard).
The two recordings seemed like they could fit together so I decided to combine them into this week’s music.
I hope you enjoy the unfolding of today’s notes!
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