Genre/Style:
Underscore for a video of my own landscape photography.
Creative Vision for the Track:
In order to cope with all the upheaval in 2020 my wife and I have done a lot of RVing together across Minnesota. The RV is our mobile isolation booth of sorts. I always take at least one camera and take way too many photos of the landscape.
“Takin’ The Cure” is intended to be a hopeful, positive piece that will play underneath a video of my landscape photography. The images, the hiking, the controlled traveling, and the very act of making music all serve as an antidote to the stress, upheaval, sadness, and depression that surrounds us these days. It is a respite and minor escape, even for three minutes, from the ugly.
Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc):
- I set a personal challenge to stay close to a I-VI-IV-V progression.
- I altered the chord structures to mask the traditional bass progression. (Ab2, F-11, Dbmaj9, Ebsus4/Eb9).
- I used a secondary II-V to get back to the tonic Ab. As with the progression the structures are different than expected (Emaj13, Amaj9).
- I normally do not write for guitar but I used four guitar tracks on this for strumming patterns and specific stereo melodic runs.
- Minimal percussion was used until the last 25% of the tune. Rhythmic drive was provided by repeated patterns in the instruments themselves.
- Percussion was reserved to help draw attention to section changes (e.g. the suspended cymbal swell leading into a more orchestrated section than the previous section).
I also controlled the dynamic contour more through adding and removing instruments than by riding levels or written dynamics. There is a sense of growth.
Main Instruments used:
Kontakt factory libraries, Logic Pro X libraries, CineBrass
Enjoy!