Happy Friday and welcome to issue #20!
Today I’m sharing something I recorded a couple of years ago with the rest of my musical gear at hand, and with more time than I generally allow myself for each installment of Notes Unfolding.
In the first minute I get a groove going with a Rhodes electric keyboard sound, a bass patch I designed on a synthesizer, and percussion from an electronic hand drum. Later I solo over this using lead sounds designed on the aforementioned synth.
I mentioned “getting a groove going” just now and I want to talk about that word: “groove.” We use it pretty casually but I think it's an important concept in music, distinct from the those of “beat, “rhythm, or “flow.”
The word “groove” fits well in music as in creating or carving out, and falling into. Thinking about that word in the physical sense of a space something could fall into or move through translates nicely to the idea of a musician or other listeners “feeling” the music and bodily/mentally falling into the rhythmic and tonal spaces it carves out.
The groove is an interesting, and maybe paradoxical, thing to think about as a solo musician: it's something I need and want to create and also something I need to exist in the first place, at least in some subconscious sense, in order to create. Happily, before the music making process even starts we have thousands of years of musical tradition (and sound patterns that occur in the natural world) that have done a lot of the work in establishing well worn grooves.
I mentioned “getting a groove going” with reference to “Truant” because that's what was necessary in this case: for me to try to do the kind of soloing I do in Truant necessitated a strong, steady, simple groove in which to play around. So it’s a straightforward example of there being first a groove, and then subsequent music that falls into it.
So there's that idea of playing or otherwise enjoying music in a groove space that already exists. But then there's this other nice thing that happens sometimes where the groove itself is the point more so than it might be in other music. I can't think of a better personal example than what I shared in issue #16 (Orogeny), exemplified in this section:
Here my enjoyment of the music is so much about simultaneously making and being in that groove, without regard for some other musical thing that may come later, whereas with Truant I recorded the groove separately to free myself up to lay down a jam over that.
As I mentioned last time I shared a past recording, you won’t be hearing a lot of music like this (i.e. multi-instrument pieces that are a little more polished) until we settle back down somewhere after our travels.
I hope you can get into the groove of Truant though. And I hope that you’ll consider sharing Notes Unfolding with your friends who are looking to expand their aural horizons through small doses of original music.
Most importantly, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
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