'Brainmatter' - New Original Music - A Late Night Idea I Like A Lot Thus Far...

late night idea, just kind of a random jam, trying to find a progression or pattern I wanted to build on. I had started here with the progression below, though that had a few incarnations before I settled on what can be seen and heard here. Eventually, an intro was added, which was a little riff I'd been playing on guitar earlier. I added it here with a sort of free-meter flow, just to have some interesting variation up top; we're in Emaj (sorta E mixolydian a lot of the time) for the main progression, but the intro starts on Ebmaj7, to Dmin7, Fmin7 and resolves to Gmaj7. Then it does a little Esus4 to Emaj7 to E7 thing, before the main song kicks in. The bass (Track 3) was the 'upright bass' included with Native Instruments free pack they give away, and it wound up sounding really good here (and I like the bassline a lot).

wound up really making the tune, and were a happy accident. Initially, I had a basic beat, just kick and snare hits; I recorded that into what is now Track 8. I took that clip and doubled it, but I had cut off the recording slightly before the barline. When I copy-pasted it to double the length, it wound up being too short; I had a second copy in a track below, which I fixed to match the barlines, and I forgot to mute the shorter version. When they played together, it made for an awesome effect, which absolutely worked out here and wouldn't have been something I did within a single drum loop on my own. I also added some hi-hats in Track 5 to build things up a bit more halfway into each 16 bar segment.

and helps to break things up just enough I think. I might need a melody line of some kind at the end, maybe extend the length a bit to have it come in and play long enough, just so there is a little more that changes. But, for now, the break handles that. I took the progression in Track 1 and recorded the audio to Track 2. The first time around, it is raised a 5th (7 half steps), so on top of Track 1, we get some cool harmonies. The second time, it's raised a 4th (5 half steps), altering those harmonies but keeping the same overall idea going. This is a super easy way to double a progression and make it much more exciting, though depending on what is in the original part, these harmonies can result in dissonances you don't want. Here, it worked out with the mostly pentatonic ideas in the original.