FAWM 2018 Demos

I just thought I'd put all of my FAWM 2018 demos in one place, along with what I wrote about them.  Usually for FAWM, I have some instrumental goals.  Here's my description for this year:

This year's FAWM (2018) will be my 9th. 

For every song, I want to use at least two of the following: a keyboard instrument, guitar in open D tuning, slide guitar, and a "wind" instrument.  I'm defining "wind" instrument simply as an instrument I play by blowing into it, which (in my case) means harmonica, recorder, flute, and melodica (maybe even trombone, but probably not).

1. "Den gamle"

I came up with the basic electric piano part for this about a week ago and thought I would flesh it out during FAWM.  For one section, there's a modulation to v (rather than vi or IV, which are pretty common).  I thought I'd heard this in Oscar Joost's "Am Montag fängt die Woche an," and while I think I was wrong, I still thought it was an interesting modulation and wanted to use it.  At the end of that section, I'd intended to go back to the tonic, but because I'm not a great keyboard player, I accidentally played the dominant (Gsus4 to G major, actually), which I thought sounded better, so I kept it.

I wrote a part on acoustic piano that I wanted to play on recorder, but I had to change the key from E major to C major to get a better range.*  As it ended up, I kept that part on piano because it didn't sound great on recorder.  I still wanted a recorder part, but what I eventually came up with isn't all that interesting.  On the whole, I think this is too repetitive and kind of boring (I guess that's what I get for using |: C major | F major :|).  An inauspicious start for FAWM 2018.

*This also revealed that I'd inadvertently nicked the chords from the bridge of the Zombies' "Maybe after He's Gone."  Changing the key made them exactly the same: D minor | E minor | F major | Gsus4 | G major.

2. "Når og nå"

When I started writing this I thought it was in A minor; then I thought it was in G major. I considered resolving it to E major (with a Picardy third), but I eventually ended it at the end of a different section, where it resolved to C major.  So I have no idea what key this is in.

I've listened to nothing but Handel for the last three days, which is why this has harpsichord and recorder (the recorder might be a bit much though).  I'm not sure how similar they are, but the slide guitar part in ELO's "Whisper in the Night" was the referent for mine.

Originally, I was going to have harpsichord all the way through, but the rhythmic change in the melody between the end of the B section and the beginning of the (repeated) A section proved too difficult for me.  Rather than record the harpsichord part section by section, I just dropt it for that bit and had only acoustic guitar.

Once again, I took something from the Zombies.  The chord progression in the middle of my A section owes a lot to that in the bridges of "I Want Her She Wants Me."  The beginning of the chord progression for my B section is straight out of Jeff Lynne's ELO's "When I Was a Boy" (although my changes are faster).

Maybe it's because I just wrote it, but I think the sections might be a bit disconnected.

3. "Den kjempestor fornøyelsespark ved sjøen"

I wrote two sections (melody + chords) of this about a month ago after I practiced my B major scale on piano.  Yester-day I started writing a harmony part for one of the melodies, and it started out OK but didn't work towards the end.  So instead, I just made that its own melody in a second A section.  I was going to play the whole thing on piano, but the chord changes near the end of the A section are a bit beyond my skill (without sufficient time to practice, anyway), so I kept the melody on piano and moved the chords to guitar, which I think actually turned out better.

I was just going to export the file with guitar and two piano parts (acoustic and electric), but I'm not sure that really counts as fulfilling my instrumental goals, so I added a small slide guitar part too.

I'm not sure some of my transitions are that great.  The song's mainly in B major, but one section is in C# minor, and it seems a bit shaky going back to B major.  And somehow I ended up resolving with an F# minor.

4. "Trekant"

I recently rewatched a performance of Handel's Water Music (I've listened to nothing but Handel since FAWM started), and this was my (feeble) attempt to write something like the first movement of the G major suite (in the performance I watched, this movement was mostly flute and lute, which is quite different from the recording I have by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields).  Really, all I took from Handel was 3/4 time and something of the instrumentation (I used flute and guitar in open D tuning).  Mine's also in G major, but I think that was coincidence rather than borrowing.

I think this is only the fourth thing I've recorded with flute, and while I'm getting better, I'm still not very good at playing flute or recording it.  (I think part of my problem was that I wrote the flute part on keyboard, and while I had my [limited] range in mind, I neglected to consider the breathing.)  Like a song I recorded for 50/90 last year, I recorded the flute part phrase by phrase.

5. "En annen krone"

I wasn't planning on doing much for FAWM to-day, but I wrote this in about two and a half hours.

Once again, I modulated to v for the B section.  This is the first time I've played slide guitar using acoustic guitar.  It wasn't quite loud enough, so I double tracked it.

The fuzz guitar part is just a little too repetitive.  If I revisit this, I might change it for a section or two.  At first I was going to use electric guitar without any effect, but I thought the extra sustain that comes with the fuzz effect would help with all of the glissandi.

I probably could have varied the acoustic guitar part a bit too.  For most of the song, it just plays straight chords, which gets a bit boring.

Between the instrumentation and the key (D major), this reminded me of a song I wrote for 50/90 a couple years ago.  That's where the title came from.

6. "Et svart hjul"

I came up with this guitar part, and - were it not for FAWM - I probably wouldn't have done anything with it because it's not that great.  But I have fourteen songs to write, so I threw some stuff on top of it.  I missed a note or two near the end, but I didn't bother re-doing it.

For 50/90 a few years ago, I wrote a song where I had two harmonized slide guitar parts.  It didn't turn out that great because I wasn't very good at slide guitar yet, so I thought I'd try doing something like that again.  This is certainly better, but I'm not sure I really have what I was going for yet.

I recently found out that the Moody Blues' Ray Thomas died last month, which is probably why I used both harmonica and flute here.  The flute part even has the same rhythm as the mellotron part at the end of the Moody Blues' "The Sun Set," although that was just a coincidence.

The minor key (D minor) made this sound somewhat funereal.  That reminded me of a line in The Great Gatsby, which I used for the title (I just translated it into Norwegian).

7. "Falco plastico"

I started writing this for 50/90 in 2016 (which is why the title is in Italian rather than Norwegian).  I didn't finish it then because I didn't know how to structure it (and part of the guitar picking was giving me problems, which I solved by playing it on the G B E strings instead of high up the neck on the D G B strings).  I'm not sure that the structure I have now is all that great, but at least I finished it.  Back in 2016, I had just this acoustic guitar part and most of the electric six-string guitar melody.  Everything else is new.  (This is why the melodica and clavichord parts repeat but the guitar part is different the second time.)

I haven't used twelve-string guitar for a while, and I haven't used melodica or finger cymbals for even longer.  I just kind of threw them all together here.

I'm still not sure about that low C note on clavichord at the end though....

8. "En sjanse"

I try to practice a scale a day, cycling through five instruments before moving on to the next scale.  I wrote the first section of this after practicing the Eb major scale on piano back in October and decided to save it to develop during FAWM.  I recently returned to Eb major in my cycle of scale practice, so I finished this off.

A couple days ago, I finally got a Nord Electro 5, which I've been looking at for years.  The piano sounds are so much better than what I had been using, so I went with acoustic piano rather than electric piano, which had been my intent.  I used a single line out, but in hindsight, maybe I should have used left and right channels and spread the sound out a bit.  I also used mellotron, which I couldn't have done before.

I tried to break up the acoustic guitar part a bit, but I'm not sure how well that turned out.  The melodica sections feel a bit out of place too.  I probably should have just used mellotron for that, but I felt that that was cheating on my instrumental goals a bit.

9. "Redselsfull"

I wrote this guitar part way back in April 2012.  I had the notion to do something with it during FAWM, but I don't really like what I came up with (although the slide guitar part isn't too bad).  I recorded the guitar parts and the first electric piano part yester-day and intended to do something different for the other two sections.  But because I'm behind and already didn't like this one that much, I just repeated the same thing, switching to acoustic piano for one section.

I stuck around on an E major in the guitar part, and I thought I could either do something really neat there or it would cause me some problems.  It was certainly the latter.

10. "En fugl eller en tosk"

I've run out of ideas, but I threw a bunch of stuff together for this just so I could have an-other FAWM song.  Last night I started playing around with the beginning of a chord progression my cousin used in a song he wrote (an unusual progression: C major | D minor | F major | F minor), and I tried to develop my own thing from it.

I came up with the middle bit a few days ago and initially rejected it because I thought, "This is too short; I can't do anything with it."  It might not be exactly what I'd been playing around with, but it's pretty close (I remembered the chords I played, at least).  I had to do a couple takes because I kept messing up, so while one note is a bit rushed, it was the best I could do without taking some time to practice it.  I probably should have waited an-other measure before going back to the A section, but I didn't want to have the same problem I had in my last FAWM song.

I recorded the electric piano part first and layered stuff on top of that.  The vibes part was added last, and because of that, there might be some dissonances between it and the electric piano part (I'm pretty sure I played a B note above an F major, for instance).  By that point, I couldn't do anything to fix it though.  I wanted to use glockenspiel, but I don't own one, and the glockenspiel sound on my keyboard wasn't exactly what I was going for.  I'm not sure it's a large enough part to constitute improvisation, but I hadn't planned on playing the notes at the end (for the record: G and C).

11. "En elsker av sølv"

This started with my revisiting a phrase I used in a 50/90 song back in 2014.  I moved it from E minor to E major and used a different chord progression.  From there this developed into its own thing.

The acoustic guitar part at the end is an old idea I've had laying around for years (since December 2012).  I'm not really sure it goes with the first part, but I needed to make this longer and it was in the same key so....

I feel I cheated a bit on my instrumental goals (at least two of: a keyboard instrument, guitar in open D tuning, slide guitar, and a "wind" instrument).  This does contain two keyboard parts though, so maybe it works.  I probably should have added something to the first two sections because they feel a bit empty.

12. "Kvinnen i rød"

It's getting to the point where I'm just throwing stuff together to have a FAWM song and I don't know if it's any good or not.

One of the recorder parts shifts between double-tracking the first part and harmonizing with it, which - if I remember correctly - is a feature of some Buddy Holly songs, albeit with vocals (I think the Beatles also did this on some early albums).

I played acoustic guitar all the way through, but after I'd recorded the softer section (with picking rather than strumming), it sounded too involved.  I cut the guitar out for that part, but now it sounds a bit too empty.  The whole song is a bit sparse, really.

There are two chords I should have played for only one measure each instead of two measures each because there are three measures without anything happening.

The last section is supposed to be the same as the first, but because I wrote and recorded the other parts in between recording those two, I'm not sure if they actually match.

13. "Mer frost"

I realized that one of the obstacles for my writing songs is that I think I have to come up with an original chord progression for each one.  To avoid that, I just outright stole this chord progression along with a bit of the structure and the feeling of the unaccompanied piano phrase.

The slide guitar part gets a bit too repetitive (and there's some sort of mistake at the end of the last one, but I kind of liked how it sounded, so I didn't re-do it), and I'm not sure the second mellotron part really goes with the piano part (there might be some dissonance there).

14. "Skygger"

I recently listened to a three-disc set of the Shadows.  In one of the tracks ("Theme from a Filleted Place"), one of the guitars switches between chords and a harmony part.  This is my attempt at something like that.  I didn't have a lot of time to spend on the harmonies though, so I don't know if they really work.

For part of the chord progression, I re-used the chords from an earlier FAWM song.  This is in 4/4 and standard tuning where that was in 3/4 and open D.

It seems that I usually start my melodies on the second beat, so I tried to avoid that here and started with an upbeat.

The F#s on my harmonica sound a bit off, but I couldn't really do anything about that.

Mixing this gave me some troubles, partially because I've developed a cold and my ears are a bit blocked up.