Day 1#
Like on every jam, kinda just started out by feeling the vibe from the theme image, which gave me a bit of an majestic but bittersweet feel, with how only that spot had a clearing in the clouds and sunlight beaming down on the wrecked ship and the iceberg.
Based on those feels, I started trying out different melodic stuff that came to mind while improvising and then felt one of them was pretty OK, and decided to stop there for the morning and come back later with fresh ears.
Later in the afternoon when I listened to the melody I came up with in the morning, It felt a bit drunk/wonkily played, but the notes and figures still sounded good to me, so I started to refine that initial idea to be a bit better. Usually when I come up with a basic melody/motive, I like to then start recording piano improv stuff around that idea, while trying out different approaches of using the melody, and then taking the one I like the most and then working upwards from that.
But really have 0 ideas on what type of stuff or sounds i’m going to do/use, Ambient? Orchestral? Synths? Acoustic Instruments?, so I’m stopping here for today and then hopefully with fresh ears and mind, tomorrow I’ll get some ideas on where to go forward from this piano skeleton track.
Piano skeleton of the first idea:#
Day 1 cont.#
I said I would stop for the day, but got some weird burst of energy late at night and split up the sketch to individual lines/voices and put those on a string section.
Initial arrangement test:#
Day 2-3#
After arranging the sketch for strings, it took me a bit to think of what instrumentation I would add with them, and I finally decided to add some woodwinds, choir and light percussion (timpani, bass drum, chimes) to the end climax part of the track, which worked pretty nicely for the sort of majestic, slightly bittersweet feeling I got from the painting.
That was what I got done on Day 2, but on Day 3 I started to tackle the earlier parts of the track, since it was just strings at the moment, I wanted to add some doubling to give a bit more colour to the parts. Since I initially had come up with the main melody while playing around on a English Horn sound, I wanted to have the English Horn playing the melody here too, which I put doubling the melody when the track starts building up after intro, with a flute coming to double the backing melody a bit after.
After that I felt like the parts before the climax had enough stuff already, and couldn’t come up with anything that I liked, so I took a new look at the climax part and tried out adding some chromatic percussion (celeste, vibraphone) and harp playing some quick arpeggios to add more feeling of momentum/building to it, and felt that it actually sounded pretty nice after I got the dynamics so that they would blend well with the rest of the ensemble.
Now I was really out of ideas, and felt the track was in a good state, so I stopped here for the day.
Now with added instruments:#
Day 5#
So… it’s been a few days, and I haven’t really done anything to the track. I’ve tried a few times to come up with more ideas to add to the track, but the track feels pretty complete to me as it is, just maybe needs a softer intro.
So as it has happened multiple times before, I was just noodling around with the main theme on the piano late at night, and suddenly came up with this sort of minor version of the melody, that is not exactly the same thing in minor, but slightly different, that I felt might work as an intro section before the big orchestra parts.
I made the intro parts melody be slightly different, so that when it changes to the lydian version on the orchestral parts the change would feel more powerful with the mood shifting to a more uplifting feel.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep the intro as just solo piano, or if I’ll arrange it to something, but if I keep it as just solo piano, I’ll probably need to clean up the midi of my performance to make it not sound so sloppily played, or maybe I’ll just leave it as is for the human factor, even if its a bit crap at parts 😁.
The new piano sketch leading into the orchestra#
Final Day#
After trying ideas for the rest of the jam, I really didn’t feel like the piano sketch needed to be arranged to anything, so I decided to keep it just as Solo Piano.
Since its the final day and all for me, I tried to get the bridge from the piano intro to the orchestra smoother. I added a vibraphone and harp playing some rolled repeats of the final sus chord from the piano, a triangle and crotales for some added rhythm with them playing first then the rolled chords on the next measure, to hopefully give a feeling that somethings coming.
I still feel that the transition to the orchestra is a bit off, or at least it still feels like that to me, but I didn’t really get any more ideas and its the final day, so I best get this done and submitted before I forget 😁.
Closing thoughts#
Feels like this jam ended up being one those where I get really inspired on the first few days and get a lot done, and then just feel like I cant do anything more to the track.
After day 3 was the moment where I realized it was going to happen again, and lo and behold, I only managed to get a piano skeleton sketch for the intro parts and never got the inspiration/feeling to actually arrange them…
I was a bit 50/50 if I should just cut out the whole intro part since I couldn’t actually arrange it and going from solo piano to orchestra makes the whole orchestra feel a lot less powerful, but since I liked the material itself on it, I decided to just keep it in, even if it makes the whole orchestra part feel smaller.
I should’ve added the piano somewhere in the arrangement of the orchestra part, but as I mentioned, I’m really feeling uninspired to work more on the track, so it is what it is I guess…😅.