Birth of a new composition (part3) -ETHEREUM ; take a look and listen

Hello, fellow steeminians!

As promised, this is the third and the last part to this post : https://steemit.com/classical-music/@tomista/birth-of-a-new-composition-take-a-look-and-listen-part2, where i try to explain my process of composing in a user-friendly /funny way. There is a TLDR section at the bottom.

For all the people that are here just for the music watch the video below.

Oh, wow, u are still reading this? Guess people really like me, or they got too much free time to waste :)

1.)THE BEAR TREND

When the crypto-bear market started in the 1st quarter of 2018 i needed to take a short break. After realizing that i have no clue how to finish the composition and lack of ideas for my next steemit post led to a 6-month deep depression. Lying on a couch the whole day, getting fat, watching reality tv shows like dance with the stars and eating popcorn seemed like a wonderful idea at that time. Even picking up the TV remote was just ludicrous :)

Thankfully the summer is coming and the crypto space is blooming again so let's get to the business, shall we?

2.)THE TRIO OBLIVION

U guys probably noticed an interesting addition to our duo,....and no, it is not anather fern (reference to this post https://steemit.com/classical-music/@tomista/between-one-fern-episode1 ), we still can't afford it coz we are poor. Human labor is much cheaper in my country so we decided to get ourselves a cellist.

I can honestly say that we are very satisfied with the purchase and that all of my compositions wouldn't be as good as they are without her. She is like a gardener, she removes the leaves so i can clearly see the trees behind them :)

3.) THE NAME

Now that the introduction is out of the way let me present u with my first finished musical piece here on steemit;

for guitar, cajon and cello

Now, u would say.....

Yup, no , it is not a joke. When i started learning about crypto, one of the 1st altcoins that i stumped upon was ethereum and i immediately thought to myself; hm,... this is a nice name for a composition ,so here it is (and no, i am not going to call another song bitcoin or riple or "something else".....:))

Ok, now that we established that awkward thingy about the title let me share with u a word or two about the recording u just witnessed.

4.) SOUND RESEARCH AND ONE MIC RECORDING

The whole concept of such recording is to capture the true essence of the performance without cutting or using any editing tools or artificial enhancements. What u hear is actually very close to what we hear in the studio; all the little slips, mistakes and tonal ambiguities that create those unique moments that make a live recording so precious. As u may realize by now is that this task is extremely hard to achieve when u have to compete with instruments that are 3 or 4 times louder than your own. Oh, bydway did i mention that the whole piece was recorded only by one mic?

For a better understanding of what i am talking about here is a video of a superb live performance vs........."something else" :)

5.) ETHEREUM TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

This is my favourite part of the article where i can finally unveil the mystery

of a good composition and how to achieve it. Press play, start reading and let the article lead u till the end. Just follow the timelines and have fun :)

1).THE INTRODUCTION - SAM (0:00-0:49)

Every great and not so great piece of music starts with just an idea. A Stupid Ass Motive(SAM) that is immediately stuck in your head, doesn't let u go and is always present in the deepest subconscious of your mind. It doesn't matter if it is a good or bad one or 100% genius, the only important thing is that now u have some original(hopefully) material to work with and a chance at expressing yourself.

For future reference we will call this idea "SAM"

Now that we have our little musical introduction its time to go further. What to do next?

Hmmm..... lets put a few interesting chords together with some arpeggios in a typical Andalusian cadence, pair it with the pizzicati cello bass line in a zapateado (6+6) rhythm but twist it to still sound fresh enough to be disguised as an original work. Add a simple build up at the end, nothing major (we will use this build up again in the future) and vuala!

GREAT JOB!

We 've just made around 50 seconds of music and are ready to move to the next phase of our composition;

2).THE a-THEME - BACKBONE (0:50-1:46)

The a-theme is the BACKBONE of our music piece, it is the foundation that we can build on. We can shape it, twist it around, mould it into something pleasant, strange, different and possibly unique of its kind. Basically, the correlation between theme/ composition is what BTC is for Crypto. If btc is shaky and in a bear market, everything will follow his path :) If we manage to put together a nice, entertaining, recognisable melody, something that our listener can relate to in the future we did a great job!

3). RESOLUTION or b-THEME (1:49-2:54)

After showing a bit of guitar strumming, solfeggio knowledge and a few tricks here and there i finally decide to use my personal slave,.....ups ,,,,sry,.....i meant my super beautiful smartest in the entire world with perfect pitch and godlike virtuoso improvisational skills and extra soft silk-like skin cellist :)

No, guys we do not have a "relationshit"

Nop, no, we do not have "sexy time" together

and i am not in love with her but!...........

i just kind of literally called her my personal slave so she deserves some appriciation. Hope i will still have a cellist tomorrow when she reads this.......

yeah, i am an idiot......

Clap, clap!

So,.....

wait a minute ....

what was i saying,,.....oh yeah right.....

After showing a bit of guitar strumming, solfeggio knowledge and a few tricks here and there i finally decide to introduce my personal cellist into the equation and at 1:49 she puts an end to my guitar rambling and starts her personal b-theme.

A well-rounded composition usually has a theme that is divided in 2 parts. The first part or part-A and the second part, part-B. If the first theme is fast, technical, in a minor key, the second B-part is usually the complete opposite in a major key, less complicated, more easy going that help us create a resolution and a nice ending. It is a very old and simple system that composers discovered more than 300 years ago and it is still applicable today.

We can throw in a bit of SAM (2:00), u remember sam do u? The Stupid Ass Motive(SAM)? Repeat the whole resolution thing and end it with a nice rasguado (the technique used at 3:01). Now we can say that we finished playing the 1st set (introduction, theme-a, theme-b), we have 2 more sets to go.

4). THE BRIDGE (3:04-3:42)

After completing one major milestone we need to take a break, sit back, relax a bit, take a look at what we have accomplished and be happy that the audience isn't screaming in agony and throwing raw vegetables at us. If they are still quietly listening we can pet ourselves on the head

and enjoy our time left because the next set that we are going to play is definitely the hardest and the most masochistic in nature.

Up to this point, everything was easy......

So, as a happy ignorant masochist, we venture into the next dark abyss and torture that is known as the build-up!

5).THE BUILD-UP (UPS & DOWNS) (3:42-5:36)

The build-up should be considered the centre of a music piece. This is our time to shine, to show off our imagination, our technical skills, make previous ideas evolve, interconnect and gradually adding suspense to the piece until we reach the climax. There are a lot of UPS & DOWN in this segment and as a highlight, i would point out the part at the 4:48-5:25 mark, where we have a big up move and a "SEXY" down at around 5:23 :)

Basically, we are making a beautiful ascending triangle that will catapult us to new all-time highs :)

As soon as we break the "imaginary resistance zone" new ideas start flowing in. Ideas, theme, build up, all interconnect and expand resulting in forming a bee-like colony that unanimously works togather a common goal; reaching the apex.

This is a rare and special moment for me. I open my mind to new possibilities, concentrate, breathe in, breath out and when I am relaxed enough with my eyes closed,

notes start popping and dancing around, producing musical phrases, new chords, that interact together forming an endless puzzle that is trying to solve itself in a perfect homogeneous mathematical harmony.

but.....

It doesn't work like that, NOPE!, never happened, never will. Unfortunately, we live in reality and not in some beautiful mind cracking code scene. In reality, composing the build-up is something more similar to this;

U try to figure out what to do, but anything u try just doesn't work.

Anyway, we manage somehow to disguise the whole build up thingy by merging SAM and the a-theme together, we add some chord progression, play 30% lauder so we can pretend that we did an Ok job and finish the whole thing as we started, with SAM. Remember SAM? The Stupid Ass Motive? Good

If u were quick enough by reading this u should be approximately at the 5:36 min mark in the video ,...meh i dunno why i am typing this, nobody is reading this poop aniway
, i could write anything, i could sneak in a video about "Jordan Peterson troll fest"

and no one would care.......

sry, where was i?.....u might notice i am a spontaneous guy ,i do what i please :)

OMG GREAT WE MADE IT PAST THE BUILD UP!!!!!

6).REPETITION (5:36-8:40)

Now basically our composition is 99% finished. We are playing the end game, it is the 3d set. All we have to do is repeat the b-cello-theme with some variations, repeat the bridge, the introduction, add a nice ending coda and round up the whole thing by repeating SAM for the 13th time :)

"SAM"? do u remember Sam?

Evry time u heard it, were u aware of it? Were u ever bored of it? Or maybe were u a bit annoyed already with the tam ta tam ta tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam ? 13 x right? Good

Guess that SAM motive is pretty much stuck in your head now, right? Hope u will remember this experience as a pleasant one and maybe one day u will have your own Sam to play with

Good

A big influence in modern contemporary music are repetitions. How many times can u repeat something and get away with it to still find it interesting enough for the listener to enjoy it? Well, in all honesty, i hate repeating stuff,... It feels like a scam,.. like the bitconnect of composing. U do not do anything, u just copy paste the whole segment and now u have 3 min from nowhere!!!! WOW 3 MIN!!!!! This is literally free music....

So, let's have a look at one composition that mastered the art of repetitions with just 2 notes!!!!

And now let's have a look at some other contemporary artist that in my humble opinion is a pure genius.

Great u are still here!! U made it!!!(7:10-8:40)

So, we are finally at the end of our journey. Many of u were probably worried about my "disappearance" on steemit. What was i doing? What were my intentions about the political issues in Brittain? What about Uganda? What about the little worm in the sand?(https://steemit.com/music/@tomista/a-new-composer-joining-the-steemit-ranks-take-a-look-and-listen) Is this real? Are we "really" here?

BAM! WAKE UP!!!

The Ethereum composition should be finished by now. Breath in and out a few times and relax :) I could bore u with what u just witnessed with nlp training and subconcius manipulation but in reality, here it is ;

read it,

TLDR; Basically we are trying to make a story that fits the music. With simple ideas, greater things can be accomplished. But what is the story of this music piece?

Is quite simple actually ..........

So, we have SAM

that has a BONER

and is trying to RESOLVE

his issue by crossing a BRIDGE

to find his SEXY lady

After a bit of Up and DOWNS

SAM is happy coz he resolved his issue without the use of any magic pill...

Guys don't buy drugs! Become a pop star and they will give it to u for free!!! Duh...