Convocation

Rather than immediately jump into writing today’s track after finishing yesterday’s, I decided to take the night off and hang out with the neighbors, go to bed early, and get some more sleep. While Mary’s gone, I’ve been trending more and more toward doing the bulk of the work on the day it gets posted instead of doing most of it the day before with only a quick polish in the morning.

Part of my reason for working ahead is that it takes some of the pressure off – I always have a little slop time at the end if things aren’t going well without requiring me to be up until the crack of dawn. But another reason is a bit selfish – prior to working ahead, I was nearly always the last person to post for a specific day and, as a result, a lot of my stuff wasn’t getting listened to because people were already on to listening to another day by the time my stuff showed up.

This year, however, I haven’t really been getting a lot of feedback on my stuff.¹And the things I have gotten feedback on aren’t the things I expected. For example, not a single person commented on Falling (and still hasn’t as of this writing), which I think is one of my better efforts. This isn’t the point of Song-A-Day, but it can be a huge motivator for me and I’ve found that when the feedback I get favors certain things, I tend to do more of those things. It’s not so much about writing to please the audience, but more that a piece that’s well-received acts like a writing prompt for me. 

I often have trouble finding that starting place. In part it’s because I can’t stick with a single genre, though I suspect I might have even more trouble if everything I wrote were, for example, 80s synth pop. How many bouncing basses can you write in a month and not run out of gas?

In this case, though, Derek Greenberg’s nice comments about The Gathering, combined with my response thanking him, put the next “chapter” of the loose narrative for some of this month’s tracks in my head. So after everyone’s gathered, what happens? Well, the answer is nearly limitless. Could be a war, could be a party, but I have no idea. The end of Gathering indicated something more on the dark / serious / dramatic side of things, though, so I decided to run with that. I normally don’t have a plan going into one of these pieces, but since I knew that this one followed The Gathering, I chose to start it in a relative key so that if they’re played in sequence, they don’t clash.

The title was already sort of in my head, though I had a couple of possibles. “Convocation” seemed to be the coolest of them, though, and I envisioned some big ceremonial thing happening before whatever those who had Gathered started talking. I wasn’t sure how things would develop exactly, but I came up with the main theme, then started repeating and building. I created markers every 16 bars to provide some visual structure while I was improvising.

The surprise happened at 3:25,²That’s the playback time in the track so you can find it, not the time of day it happened. though, when my hands went to a chord (and key change!) that isn’t in my normal “I always play the same things via muscle memory” collection. After listening, it’s yet another obvious Vangelis influence³See Lights in the Mist because that’s a very Vangelis key change. It led nicely into the full climax of everything, though, and I definitely see the Raising of the Book or the Presentation of the Sceptre or whatever other fancy ceremonial thing is happening at that moment.

It was all sounding nice and formal, but wasn’t complete. Once again, I decided on drums and, while I did experiment with a couple of things, ultimately went with my first instinct which is just the big ceremonial drum marking off the procession and providing a solemn marching tempo. I did try adding a concert snare at various places, but it didn’t add anything and was a bit distracting in the end, so away it went.

I’ve always written fairly visual music – people have long told me that I should write for films⁴I’m trying! I’m trying! – and this certainly fits that mold. I don’t know if anything will ever come of it, but if I ever get good enough at CGI (or at telling an AI what I want), maybe there’s a short visual album that will come of it.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

Landforms, LCO Textures, Polaris, Hive2, Masse, Hammers, Spitfire Percussion, Omnisphere

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

Fabfilter, Gullfoss

Image Credit: Wallpaperflare.com

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Notes

• 1
  And the things I have gotten feedback on aren’t the things I expected. For example, not a single person commented on Falling (and still hasn’t as of this writing), which I think is one of my better efforts.
• 2
  That’s the playback time in the track so you can find it, not the time of day it happened.
• 3
  See Lights in the Mist
• 4
  I’m trying! I’m trying!