Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

Listen on Spotify What does funky bass music have to do with the 19th-century French sculptor Rodin?  Fragments. This is the best image that illustrates how I work when I produce albums.  I've always been a collector of ideas and have a good system for organizing them. It's essentially the process of serialization and generativity: making another piece in a series, transforming existing works into new ones, then framing them within some kind of a concept--as Rodin assembled fragments of sculptures.  I invent nothing, I rediscover.- Auguste Rodin "In later years, Rodin also used to tell the anecdote that the bust he originally intended to create had actually become a fragment, because as a young artist, he could not afford to heat his studio overnight. During a bitter cold winter night, the back of the 'Man with the Broken Nose' froze and broke off; this way from the bust only the face was left. Rodin officially favoured such accidental damages - at least he fa...

An idea which started with an idea on a bass tuned DGDG. All other rhythm and synth tracks were built on top of it. Almost everything in this track is somehow "vintage": the organ part is almost a Booker T riff from the 60s, the synth sounds are early 80s, even the bass I'm using is a 1962 Jazz Bass. It's also a possible track for the "Immortality Ball", May 1, 2046 (to represent Neone's pre-immortality state). Melange by Lee Barry

2046 by Lee Barry Chord changes are major and minor versions of chords a tritone apart: C#/G/C#min/Gmin. Possible dark scoring , with low strings and tuba:

Ancient AI by Lee Barry Alux (Duende) with some "place" added around it. Towards the end, an EDM groove is added with a short bass interlude based on the main tetrachord (G-Ab-B-C), then fades.

I like to refer to these as a "cluster changes" rather than chord changes. Sometimes you want to construct chords simply by stacking notes without consideration of what the chord symbols are. Chord "symbolization" can corrupt the thinking about harmony. These clusters are essentially a ii-V in C minor, but have nothing to do with C minor as a tonality. Ancient AI by Lee Barry

3/4 with 2 and 4 polyrhythmic overlays. Ancient AI by Lee Barry

Working title. Other possibility: "Digient Dreams" Changes, sounding like something Zawinul would come up with:

The piece started to sound like it could be scored for a quartet, and here's the first section. It sounds like Ravel in this context. Playing it through various MIDI patches sounds almost Russian. It's working title was "Morfeo". later changed to MOTN. MIDI  

Rough chord and melody/riff ideas. (Perhaps D minor or E minor are better keys) 2046 by Lee Barry

Chromatic bass idea (with a "Another One Bites" funky feel) using a 3-note cell alternately ascending and descending. Chords are in D Phrygian, but the piece is too chromatic to be in any key. First draft, but will change drastically. Ancient AI by Lee Barry

On this second mix a riff emerged:

This started out with chords on the piano as "Time Being", the first two alternating between C minor and B major 7. It's a strange harmony that eludes a key center, much in the way that jazz is about cycles around the circle of fifths, and subdominant/dominant relationships. It ends in C minor but few of the chords are from that key. The second draft was set in 12/8 and tracked up from a drum and bass part. I didn't like where it was going--too harmonic. I found a nice melodic path (desire path) in the guitar melody.