thereshopeyet wrote:
Neil
Thanks for Part 5.
In the lesson preview at the beginning you mentioned when you wrote Wai’uli.
Did something happen to inspire the tune, was it an internal ear worm bursting to escape or experimental ?
Dermot
Hi Dermot,
The short story is I walked across the street to the beach park a little before sunrise, probably about 5:00am, hit a D chord, started noodling with a little melody on the top strings, added a descending bass line, which started with a 4-note diatonic drop to G, and repeated that, which gave me four measures. To balance those four I stretched out the bass descent by making it chromatic so it could land on A, the dominant step in D. I spent maybe 30 minutes fine tuning the melody over those eight measures then started the B Section, looking for a complementary eight measures with a different mood. That's how the Em ascent came about.
It wasn't until a few weeks ago I wrote the coda, feeling like it needed one more thing to wrap it up.
Not sure that answers your question but I can say that I planned to play something new then, not just practice an old standby. Usually I write new stuff with a plan to write something new, start playing, and see what drops by. The best way to get more comfortable writing is to just do it. Don't worry about creating a masterpiece. (Anybody see Tim's Vermeer by the way?).
Neil
