So, the stated purpose of this blog is to write about the creative process.  So far, I've just been giving you tracks after they were already done.  It's time to write about the creative process while it's in process!  If this is your first time here, and you want to hear some music, please scroll down and skip this entry!

For me, creative inspiration often comes from unlikely sources.  A lot of my best music has started from a stupid idea, like a stolen sample or a recorded noise from a household object.  Or maybe a melody with words about penguins or dogs.  I take that stupid seed of an idea, and build something on top of it, then end up removing the original thing I started with.

A few weeks ago, an individual who shall remain nameless left a somewhat unusual message on our answering machine at home.  Apparently, they were in their car, and just as the machine beeped, another car cut them off in traffic.  As a result the message left was basically a string of profanity, followed by a long pause and then "hello?"  I thought it was hilarious, and I saved this onto the computer for future use!

Friday night, I was thinking it would be fun to record some kind of heavy metal song and include the phone message.  I'm someone that frequently hears the melody in a speaking voice (just ask my wife, I sing her words back to her all the time), and there was a definitely a melody and a rhythm to the phone message.  There's a piece by Steve Reich called "Different Trains," where he took recordings of Holocaust survivors talking, and built a string quartet around these little snippets.  The strings match the pitch and the rhythm of each voice.  It's quite amazing.  That's an idea that I was always fascinated with. 

So, I sat down with my guitar to figure out what melody I could make out of this phone message.  In order to try to synch it up and figure out the exact tempo, I started to sequence the notes with a cello sound.  Once I started to do this, though, I quickly abandoned the guitar idea, and started to layer up some more strings.  I ended up with a pretty cool string quartet idea.  The rhythm and the key are a bit different than what I normally would have done just out of the blue, since I started out with that voice.  The speaking voice fits with the strings perfectly, but in the end I don't think I'll use it.  Mainly because the person speaking would not appreciate it, but also because the music has grown beyond the original goofy idea.

Yesterday I recorded some drums for it, and today I recorded some bass.  I'm very happy with the way it's going.  I'm going to try to figure out what I can do with it with some guitar....