Hiya! Got another Pillars: Alpha reflection going. This time it’s SIRIUS... 18/17.
So for those of you who don’t know, the challenge was to write and record a song/idea every day for a month, starting at 25 seconds on day one, all the way down to one second at the end. However, I cheated on the last track I wrote about and combined the 20 and 19 second days, and I figured if I did it for those, I might as well do it one last time for this track.
For Sirius: 18/17, it was the same deal as Arcturus: 20/19. I had two full ideas (the chorus was just one song, and the intro/outro strung together were another idea I had), but they didn’t sound complete on their own, so I changed the rules of my own challenge to bring them together in what is probably in my top 3 tracks I’ve ever written. This track kills it in so many ways.
Part A (0:00-0:06) comes in at full intensity immediately, with blast beats, sixteenth note harmonized guitar runs, etc. I didn’t really hold back for this part and just wanted it as over the top as possible, but still musically interesting. I played around with adding sweeping and arpeggios over top, but it was all flash and no substance, so I ended up not using it.
Part B (0:06-0:25) is a somewhat typical chorus for me. Half-timeish drums, piano providing some embellishment and extra ear candy, a warm and soaring guitar lead (which, like a lot of my chorus guitar leads was improvised). However, I usually do a lot of slowly arpeggiating the chords of the rhythm guitar in my choruses, picking out each note of a full six-string chord to fill the space in the mix. That’s actually a bit of a crutch, because I’m always working on improving my guitar writing to write rhythmically interesting and engaging foundations for choruses. Usually I struggle with it though, so I end up writing rhythm parts that are more just washes of sound and lower octaves. But for this chorus, I wrote a very syncopated rhythm guitar pattern, that alternates between the lower three string chug of the chord, and then a higher triad on the upper strings, which is played open as opposed to the palm muted chugs. This way, I still get a rhythm that’s driving and has some booty to it, but can still have some of the open washiness from my old rhythm guitar techniques that I enjoy so much.
Part C (0:25-0:35) is a pretty typical ‘djenty’ whatever throwaway part, but I threw in a little pentatonic fill at the end of each measure complete with blue note to add at least SOME character to it. Finally the same riff that went into the chorus from Part A closes out the song to staccato notes and a cymbal choke. \m/
Anyways, that’s all I really have to say about this track. I’ve been trying to find some place for it in the new music I’m writing, but haven’t been successful so far. And that’s a real bummer, because I absolutely love this piece of music and want to flesh it out a bit more. Oh well, in time.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow this blog, like my Facebook, check out my Bandcamp for all four of my albums, available for whatever you’d like to pay (including nothing!). Next up in these write-ups is a bit of an outlier on P:A, Capella: 16. Get hype!
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