Anyone Ever Set Themselves Stupid Challenges When Writing a Song?

It wasn't me!

well, anyone ever set out to do anything especially odd? My current project, arising out of the St. Patrick's Day festivities, is to add a section to my current jazz fusion piece in pi/4. Yup, 3 and one seventh beats per bar, should be fun. Anyone else do anything like that?

Doctor J

Many moons ago my guitar player and I, struggling to come up with an intro for a tune, wrote out all the notes A Bb C C# D Eb E F F# G Ab on pieces of paper, randomly picking them out to some up with a 128 note sequence which we had to learn...


... it was **** :rolleyes:

It wasn't me!

Heh, I'm aiming for this to be a stroke of creative and musical genius though.

Doctor J

Here's the basic situation as I understand it.

Girls like to dance and, therefore, despise stupid time signatures.

Guys wants girls.

You might want to re-evaluate your pie unless it's pastry filled with fruit or meat

It wasn't me!

Heh, a nice summation of music there Doc, and definitely one with a lot of merit to it, but I think there's got to be more, got to be able to push myself a little bit further.

rcaz

Hehe, well said, Doc

Reminds me of Bill Bailey, "You should never play Take Five at a funeral, as the unusual time signature takes away from the solemnety of the event."

As for Pi/4, you sir, are a genius! How's it coming along so far?

It wasn't me!

Heh, a mate's actually done the first installment, it's weird. Requires honours leaving cert maths to work out how the hell it should go.

rcaz

I can see it now... Two music stands, manuscript on one, Log tables on the other

A Primal Nut

I can imagine the likes of powertab being useful for this - write something in 4/4 (maybe using another part of the song), then takeaway notes and shorten others till it fits. It's gonna sound weird anyway. I can't imagine a human being able to process a piece of music in that time signature without hearing it first.

Frankiestylee

Theres a rather fantastic band on the Dublin music scene at the moment that have a musical part of there song that says the chorus in morse code... if ya get me, the rhythm of the instruments is the words for the chorus in morse code. I think it's rather clever, something I had thought of moons ago but realised I'm woeful with anything other then standard time signatures. Sounds differant and cool though when they do it.

Doctor J

Rush did the morse code thing many, many years ago on their tune YYZ

Frankiestylee

Did they? Hah hah... then a certain upcoming gigsmart gig will be a lil less special knowing that.

frobisher

When I first started songwriting I set myself all sorts of challenges. Nothing crazy, just excercises in learning like making myself write a song about a colour, about inanimate objects, without rhyming, only in flattened notes etc. I've also done a lot of songs that have changed meter.

Undergod

It wasn't me! wrote:

Heh, a mate's actually done the first installment, it's weird. Requires honours leaving cert maths to work out how the hell it should go.

And I still haven't quite figured out the tempo equivalence...