Borrowed Body
original music, rough draft.
feauturing art by Cameron Gray
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Notes
Hey everyone. I hope this post finds you well! I typically share moderately-finished pieces of music on Steemit, but today I wanted to show some of the early steps of writing as well as give an opportunity for you to give me suggestions on how to proceed with it.
What I'm thinking with this piece is to eventually write some rap over it, because I've never tried to rap over mixed meter. I've really been liking how 7/4 feels recently, so that's the main time signature throughout, although there are bars of 5/4 and 6/4 as well in the B section. My approach with writing mixed meter is to use what feels interesting but also natural.
I also wanted an excuse to practice my throat singing, so that's what this is based on (the title is a play on the main syllables of the throat singing in the first part: ba-er-oh-ah-ee-ah-eh) There's a ton of vocal doublings of octaves and fifths, as well as a thirds part added later on. The melody vocal that comes in on "doo" syllables is something I'll probably write lyrics for and it will become the "hook" of the song.
For percussion, there's beatbox, as well as a kick patch to make the beatbox come through stronger. During the B section I didn't add any beats yet, not sure what I'll do there. Definitely want to switch things up somehow! There's also a bass patch recorded in A = 432 hz that I laid down before anything else to make sure I stayed on pitch. (By the way, I never use melodyne or auto-tuning in any of my music.) Don't ask me why I put the old-school hip-hop sounding "1, 2, 3, Leggo!" at the beginning, I just thought it was funny. Probably it will get taken out of the real version.
Suggestions
I'm looking for suggestions on how to extend this into a 3-minute-ish song (about double its current length.) I would also welcome critique-like analysis comments about the composition, the mix, or anything else. I will reward the best comments with a hefty upvote! The percentage will depend on how much effort and insight are evident in the comment, but my current 100% upvote is worth almost $10 SBD. As long as you're respectful, I don't really mind how critical you are so long as it's constructive.
I have a Yamaha Montage keyboard, so I have all kinds of instrumental patches that I could use as additions to this song. There's no real lyrics or subject matter decided yet, either. So you can also have input into what I ought to rap/sing about. If you have an idea I think is interesting, I'll at least try it out to see if I like it. It should be fun to have this piece be a little more interactive than an ordinary song I create!
Audio & Writing
by 
4/21/18
.
Art by
Cameron Gray
.1 — "A Prayer for the Earth" [cropped]
2 — "Sacrament for the Sacred Dreamers"
3 — "Born of Osiris, Soul Sphere"