Anyway, while studying for a test over the Peloponesian wars between Athens and Sparta and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of Constantinople, I got completely sidetracked and pulled out my piano. It's so handy having a piano all to myself now... probably the best investment I've ever made. Here's a picture of it.
This is my studio! Haha. I would be embarrassed if I weren't so poor. I take pride in it.
I still just use garageband, and the piano sounds are surprisingly beautiful.
So I recorded this in the course of forty-five minutes or so.
I'm surprised at how well everything came together for it. This is the first song I've written on the piano that actually had an express purpose of experimentation. I'll explain.
I had the melody all ready to go before sitting down at the piano. And the idea came to mind to try to have the same melody for both a minor and a major scale in the same song. Composers do it all of the time without batting an eye, so I figured I might try my hand at it.
The song begins in the key of A minor. Well, C technically, but when the melody comes in, it comes in the key of A minor. So what I could have done, after going through the melody in A minor, is just go through the same melody with a chord progression in C major. There's not really a problem with this, other than it's just rather gutless. A minor is in the key of C major. C major is sort of the root of A minor, if you understand me. So if I were to just do the melody in the key of C major, there would be no real dramatic change, no lifting of the spirits of the song, if I may sound transcendental.
What would be a bit more out there, a bit more gutsy, is to do a key change from A minor to A major. Completely craaaaaaaaazy.
The way one goes about this is to find the chord that pulls itself towards the key you want to change to. In this instance, the chord is E major. This is completely convenient, because after every melody, there's a little ditty going between the keys of F major and E, where E could be either major or minor. So what I did is make the E a major chord, which then pulls us to the chord A, which turns out to be A major, if you want it to be that. I know there's probably some nifty term for such actions in music, but I don't care. I believe I understand it. At least I thought I did until I tried to express it in words.
Then to go back from the key of A major to the key of A minor, I did a dramatic change to going back to the F major, which isn't in the key of A major at all, but is in a way in the key of A minor. It all sort of works together nicely.
I wanted this all to happen without the listener really recognizing what's going on. I wanted it to flow. And I wanted to get the emotion right.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!
And I'm still not aloud in the music department at my college! :(
Okays bye!
Isaac
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