Sounds like….

Sounds like…. 

One sound. A few years back I was playing around with G major, such a core sound that Apple made it what you hear when you turned on your Macintosh / plus / iMac etc. so billions of people know what it sounds like.  When composing, you start with a note / chord and then you have 3 choices: 1) repeat that note, b) go up from that note, or c) go down from that note. Then, if you choose (a) and repeat, you can stay on the note but actually shift it to a different chord so it doesn’t sound like G - it could be to E minor, especially as both have the same key signature, but sound quite different. And so on for (b) and (c). This sounds a little prescriptive and formulaic but in practice it’s just what you do, either with your hands on the keys of the piano / strings of a guitar etc., or on a blank sheet music page or, better still, on notation software which saves lots of rubbing out on paper!

On this occasion I went for (c), but going down a half note (more precisely, a half-tone or half-step); that is, to the next key down: from G it is a raised ‘black note’ = F sharp). This changes the chord to D major, but I held the G note in the bass, which provided a seamless and slight shift in tone; sort of mixing the two. You have lots of choices on a piano keyboard: the 8 notes up/down from ‘middle C’ are repeated 10 times on a piano keyboard and there are 12 semitones. This always reminds me of a wonderful record shop on Reykjavik called “12 Tonar" 12tonar.company.site and a great coffee shop a bit further down the hill called “Mokka” — on a snowy April day a few years back, I had warm and encouraging conversations in both places with Johannes Augustsson, owner and co-founder of “12 Tonar”. Before leaving, I had a bundle of ‘Sigor Ros’ type Icelandic albums I’d bought for my sons, chosen with help from the staff from 100s on offer. At “12 Tonar”, the love and kindness begins a few moments after customers walk in the door, with the offer of a free cup of espresso and encyclopaedic staff knowledge — for a review see: chloejakiela.com/12-tonar

Back to G major. What I came up with that day I was happy with as a nicely shaped chord progression mixing major and minor, nothing more. I was about to record my 2nd album, “Trespass”, with Heath Cullen heathcullen.com producing, on a grand piano at a bush location just inland from the south coast of NSW so I sent the sound file to Heath as a taster of what I might try to record. He came back and said it has a lovely melody line so I filled it out a bit with pauses, trills and some repeated phrases. On the day, we recorded it in one take, capturing (as often happens) the mood and texture best before repetition can wear down what a song sounds like to something tired and mechanical. So this is what my solo piano version sounds like (Under “iPhone Blues”) at soundcloud.com/stevecrumpmusic

Lots of sounds. When I was young, pre-teens even, my mother took me to hear the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at Sydney Town Hall (there was no Opera House yet). They were fun escapades away from the rest of the family, travelling on a Sydney Harbour Ferry in the early evening, then train from Circular Quay, sharing an “Old Gold” Cadbury’s chocolate bar there and back. But, of course, the music is what we went for and it seeped into my consciousness unlike anything else in my childhood except perhaps the freedom of growing up near beach and bushland. So when I play something, like “iPhone Blues”, I can’t but help hear lots of orchestral instruments ‘playing along’ with me. 

Serendipitously, in 2021 I bumped into Jabra Latham jabralathammusic.com at a Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra event - that “bump” is quite a story in itself but for another day. We knew a little, but not a lot, about each other. Mainly, I admired the arrangements he had done for the recently released Monique Brumby moniquebrumby.com album with the TSO. We organised to meet up over coffee and clicked. The result is we’re working on about 12 of my pieces for arrangements and hopefully recording orchestra-style later in 2022. Jabra is incredibly respectful of my piano line melody, tonal shifts and dynamics / pauses - i.e., the way I compose and play that makes my compositions “me” - whilst extending and elaborating on them in a way that makes them richer and textured through the interplay of ensemble instruments.

So this (link below) is what a digital demo ensemble arrangement of “iPhone Blues” sounds like, adding violins, viola. violincello and double bass to the piano. This version includes a melody line composed for voice by Naarah naarah.com.au further enriching the melodies and emotions, based on some lyrics from Pablo Neruda’s poem, “So You Will Hear Me”. You’ll hear a passage where the violins stay on G throughout a whole chord progression, illustrating my point above ‘sounds like’ the same whilst sounding different! And you’ll hear a new bit, a musical ’bridge’ Jabra said it needed ASAP so I stayed on G but added B, D and F sharp to a chord to build a short 4 bar passage and it seemed to fit nicely. Incidentally, to do this I just went down one 1/2 step from G, as in the example above for the solo piano, but this time the chord is B minor.

As this is a copyrighted work-in-progress, please do not share. I’ll put up the “played by humans” ensemble as soon as it is ready