“It had that perfect commercial combination: startling originality and easy classification.” — Sarah Bakewell, referring to the first published version of Montaigne’s Essays in her book How To Live, or, A Life of Montaigne.
I’ve been thinking a lot about style and arrangement lately. In fact the closer I get to wrapping up the composition phase of this album, the more important it seems.
I’ve gone about this album in an unconventional way. First of all, it’s an album for a group that doesn’t exist yet. And it’s not easy to write for a group that doesn’t exist. Duke Ellington famously wrote for the specific musicians in his band. Most rock and jazz composers do that.
It’s been a challenge. For one thing, the idea of what the band sounds like changes. One day, depending on the musical ideas I come up with, the band sounds like Jimmy Page’s solo album, or one of Jeff Beck’s records from ’75-’81. Another day the band is lean and interlocking, like The Meters. Another day it’s laid back and sophisticated like John Scofield with Medeski Martin & Wood. Or it’s a bit post-rocky. Or slightly Radiohead. Zeppeliny. Or, in one case that gave me a particularly hard time, early Pink Floyd.
One begins to feel that one is shooting in the dark (and probably missing the mark).
I expected this particular challenge from the start, which is why I tried to consciously model some of the writing I was doing on certain records. To borrow a band, so to speak. I’ve written a few of the pieces like this, but most times the ideas that I find most interesting don’t fit into the program.
To counter that problem, I set my goal at 18 compositions, figuring I could discard 6-8 once I had them all in view at the same time. It may work. Hopefully I’ll find that I have a unified group — that I can then make even more unified by bringing in a group to play them.
As of now, 14 tracks are written, and 4 more planned by Feb 1. I’m a little behind on my writing at the moment, so we’ll see if it happens like that. And of course, worst case, if I find in February that I need more compositions to round out a group, I can take some more time for that. More soon…
Yikes — another month! I worked all September on “Hermes,” which is finally done. Uh, done-ish. I should say that the demo for “Hermes” is mostly done. It’ll need to be mixed, but I think all the sounds are there — certainly the bones are in place. 
