The beginnings of a new song

With seemingly no premeditation, on Friday I started work on sequencing a new song. The genesis of the song came from two other songs: firstly, Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill", which is in 7/4 time. I had noticed some time ago that despite this wonky time signature, the tune only starts on the fourth or fifth beat of every bar and finishes (most of the time) on the first beat of the following bar, leaving a few beats open for the flute riff. This seemed like a possible way of writing a song in 7/4 that I could use.

The second preceedent is The Alan Parsons Project and "Sirius" that was presented on the Daily Doug YouTube channel on Saturday. Whilst I've heard the song, I've never really listened to it with a discerning ear. Doug points out that the simple riff fits all of the opening chords, and that this is because a triad D - F# - A (aka D Major) is held in one hand, whereas the bass descends in thirds, from D to B (creating a Bm7 chord) to G (G Maj7) to E (E min 11). I've done something like this in the past, although I don't recall exactly where - maybe it was just a sketch that didn't progress far.

Anyway, I laid down an initial sequence on Friday afternoon, and throughout Saturday I worked on improving it. The song is now at an intermediate stage, and that's where I'm leaving it for the time being, for several reasons:

• I want to let the song mature, whilst in the mean time I may think of further harmonic progress, or even a complete bridge. At the moment, the song sorely lacks harmonic variety, being more of a 'groove' piece, despite the time signature.
• Words!
• On Saturday morning, my right ear became blocked after swimming. Normally this would clear up almost immediately, but all throught the day (and night), I couldn't hear much through my ear. This explains why the instruments in the song sounded so muted and muddy: I couldn't hear them properly.

This morning, my wife had to wake me by shaking me: the phone was playing its alarm call but I couldn't hear it as my left ear was in the pillow and my right ear wasn't functioning. On the morning walk, my headphones apparently broadcast through the left ear only, although I know that's not true.

During breakfast, I heard some 'cracks' in my ear that might mean that the problem is resolving itself. I am reminded of the protagonist in David Lodge's "Deaf Sentence": It’s stuff [warm olive oil] you put in infants’ ears for glue ear. The heat of the sauna melted the wax in your ears and the sudden deluge of cold water solidified it into a perfect seal. This might be what happened: the extremely hot weather may well have softened the ear wax, and the cold water solidified it.

Last night's band rehearsal was excrutiating: once again, all I could hear was the other guitarist playing very loud, along with some drums. I couldn't hear myself at all and had to play by imagining the sound that I was making. Our performance is on the coming Friday evening: I hope that my ear sorts itself out by then.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
96	23/07/2007	Favourite films	Films, Woody Allen, Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Hugh Grant
268	23/07/2010	Porting the Amateur Reasoner/2	Prolog, Bill Thompson
1054	23/07/2017	This bird has flown: the enduring beauty of Rubber Soul	Beatles