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"Drift Me On"
Aug 2007, Aug 2009 || Score
This is a tune I wrote in 2007. I got its inspiration from a woman I met sometime prior to the writing.I lusted after her and probably loved her too, but I didn't tell her anything about that. There were too many differences and obstacles between us. And, as the time passed while I attempted to forget about her altogether, I developed this feeling of helplessness: We are mostly not in control over the events we encounter in love. I felt this huge, slow-but-steady and in-a-way-merciless flow of water beneath my feet that was there to drift me on and on. And no matter how hard I tried to resist, I couldn't seem to escape from the tide.
Let's talk about the technical aspects of the tune. I used an interesting software called Glitch (by Illformed) for the cymbals part.(hear) You hear some of the hihat hits sound like what you hear when you stop the record player, and others are sort of fragmented into tiny pieces. Compare that audio with this one, without the Glitch effect. Listen to the Glitched cymbal part with the rest of the drum parts.
The guitar part of this tune ended up having a little amount of volume in the entire mix, so I think it may be of your interest if I shine some light on it here.(hear) Here's the part with the drums too. I used Guitar Rig (by Native Instruments) as an amplifier, to process the raw guitar sounds.
Score || Leadsheet || Piano || Drums
(Continued from the left column)
There is also a synth part that does arpeggios exclusively.(hear) What you see at the bottom of the image here is the pitch-bend controller. And, as you see, some notes are fragmented. Here's the part with the drums.
Let's hear the lead part, which is accompanied by the harmony part.(hear) And here's the part with the drums.
When this tune was first produced in 2007, it didn't have a piano part. But in the reproduction of 2009, I added it to enrich harmonic texture. My piano software is The Grand by Steinberg, who also makes my DAW application, Cubase. Here's the piano part alone, and here's the piano & drums.
I also want to talk about the chord progression of the tune.
This is an Em tune, and its A section (main melody) begins with Im (pronounced one minor) chord, Em9. Then it moves to Eb9, to D9, to Db9 and then to CΔ7 (pronounced C major seven).
Eb9, D9 and Db9 are all dominant 9th chords, which are extensions of dominant 7th chords. And dominant 7th chords create gravity toward a chord whose root is either perfect-5th below or half-step below. So I exploited that character of dominant 7th chords here. The Eb9 goes to D9, whose root is half-step lower, and then the D9 goes to Db9, whose root is, again, half-step lower. And it moves on to CΔ7, following the same pattern.
CΔ7, in this tune, is a bVI (flat six) chord, which is diatonic to the key (meaning it's a built-in, non-altered chord within the key). So, in a nutshell, I connected the first chord (Em9) and the fifth chord (CΔ7) with a bunch of dominant 9th chords because they move down by a half-step smoothly.
There is also a synth part that does arpeggios exclusively.(hear) What you see at the bottom of the image here is the pitch-bend controller. And, as you see, some notes are fragmented. Here's the part with the drums.
Let's hear the lead part, which is accompanied by the harmony part.(hear) And here's the part with the drums.
When this tune was first produced in 2007, it didn't have a piano part. But in the reproduction of 2009, I added it to enrich harmonic texture. My piano software is The Grand by Steinberg, who also makes my DAW application, Cubase. Here's the piano part alone, and here's the piano & drums.I also want to talk about the chord progression of the tune.
This is an Em tune, and its A section (main melody) begins with Im (pronounced one minor) chord, Em9. Then it moves to Eb9, to D9, to Db9 and then to CΔ7 (pronounced C major seven).
Eb9, D9 and Db9 are all dominant 9th chords, which are extensions of dominant 7th chords. And dominant 7th chords create gravity toward a chord whose root is either perfect-5th below or half-step below. So I exploited that character of dominant 7th chords here. The Eb9 goes to D9, whose root is half-step lower, and then the D9 goes to Db9, whose root is, again, half-step lower. And it moves on to CΔ7, following the same pattern.
CΔ7, in this tune, is a bVI (flat six) chord, which is diatonic to the key (meaning it's a built-in, non-altered chord within the key). So, in a nutshell, I connected the first chord (Em9) and the fifth chord (CΔ7) with a bunch of dominant 9th chords because they move down by a half-step smoothly.