A brief synopsis of how I approached this project as written
documentation is absolutely key for remembering creative endeavours in later
life; the game of drink is the chief corruptor of all things memory related.
So, as it has
become custom now – well, at least in 2016 anyway – that any period of time
longer than a few days spent away from work is utilised within in a recording
studio; the 13th – 23rd of August was no different.
The basic premise
– which as always, was devised a short while before actually heading in to
start tracking – was to write four songs loosely based on Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea and also scribe
and record an original poem to go along with it.
To add to the
randomness of this project, I asked the four lads from Fife band, Moonlight Zoo
to each pick a page from The Old Man and
The Sea, as it would be these pages from where I would draw inspiration
from for each song.
From there, I
decided that each song would be titled – to some extent anyway – after a fish
and that each song would have its own tuning.
To challenge myself, I created a brand new tuning – well, brand new to
anything I’ve tried before – and gave each tuning the same title. This led to the following:
Albacore – Eb F C
Eb Bb F
Crushed Dolphin – E B D C A E
Dentuso – F F F F F F
Dead Mako part 1 – D D D E A D
Dead Mako part 2 – D E A D D D
NB: The reason there
are two parts for Dead Mako is that the full song itself is in two parts, thus
two tunings…plus, as above, there are at least two ways to get the word DEAD in
a tuning and these two instantly worked; Dead Mako part 3 is still up for grabs
to anyone reading this.
Finally, to bring
the overall piece into context with the title, I decided that each of the songs
main hooks would then feature in between each track to provide the ambient
vibes for me to recite a stanza of the poem over. For everything to work as I wanted, I
bastardised the poetry form of Chaucerian Roundel, i.e. instead of reading Abb
abA abbA, it’s abb aba abba.
Tomas Bird
