#look up the chords for all i want for christmas is you and transpose it to c major

[stuckwith-harry]

i just explained the ~ christmas chord ~ to my parents but i am NOT about to explain to them why i was streaming phoebe bridgers’ depressing ass christmas EP on loop last december lmao

[tmp-jatp]

Guys I just wrote my first fic.

I mean, I’ve written fics before, but never finished them. But I was struck by inspiration and I’ve been trying harder to write while the muse is there because you never know when she’ll leave and not come back. I’m so excited to share this with you.

You can read it on AO3 here (2479 words btw) or read it below. I’d love it if you checked it out :)

-

It was safe to say that Luke’s mind was near constantly full to the brim with music. As a songwriter, it was one of his favorite parts of himself. He had notebooks galore, all chock-full of half-written verses and melodies he hummed once in the shower and chord progressions he’d heard in a dream.

Usually, once he freed them from his mind via his pen, they were gone, saved in ink on the page. He would come back to them, to draw inspiration, to weave pieces together, to fashion them into full-fledged songs eventually.

There was always the one song that stuck around, though. It would never leave him, no matter how hard he tried.

He would hear pieces bouncing around between his ears. Sometimes it was a drum beat. Sometimes he heard snippets of words. Sometimes it was two voices, his and another always unrecognizable one, blending more beautifully than he would’ve thought possible as their two sounds danced together.

The Song had always been there, since before Luke could remember. At first there wasn’t much, just three notes that repeated over and over. One day, five more came to accompany them. As he had grown older, he’d learned what The Song meant.

Luke’s parents loved to sing their Song to one another, or they would sing it by themselves when they were alone to feel the other’s presence with them. It was a beautiful sound, and Luke loved hearing it. He asked his mom to sing their Song to him each night before bed for far more years than he would ever admit to Alex, Reggie, or Bobby.

When Luke tried to sing his parents’ Song, either by himself or with them, he’d found he never could. Even though he’d heard it a million times, his mind couldn’t recreate any part of it.

Luke would get frustrated and pout, but his mom would kneel down and smile at him.

“That’s because it isn’t your Song,” she’d told him. “Your father and I get to share this with each other and with other people, and it’s something that’s just ours. You have your own Song, and it’s just yours. One day you’ll find the person you get to share it with.”

Luke knew from middle school that he wanted to be a musician. He’d always been crafting songs, even while his own Song taunted him in its incompleteness.

When he’d gotten his first guitar for Christmas in seventh grade, another gift had come with it: more of The Song. He didn’t know which gift he valued more.

Luke learned how to play chords and arpeggios. He learned techniques while his hands learned the dexterity they needed. He developed muscle memory and honed an ability for transcribing music from his ears to his fingers.

The more he learned, the more his mind seemed to go wild with ideas at possibilities for songs. He started collecting notebooks. He always had one near or on his person with a pen also within reach. They filled haphazardly at the whims of Luke’s imagination.

Luke would play his ideas on his guitar and let them drift through his bedroom. They’d grow on their own and become more. It never felt like Luke was writing them, they just came to him.

His parents called it a gift.

When he wasn’t playing his songs, Luke was playing his Song. It burned into his mind. When he didn’t know where to go next with a piece, his fingers would always bring him back home.

The four boys started a band together. They met in Bobby’s garage and played their hearts out. Luke collected stray ideas all together to form and fill in coherent songs that they would play.

They sounded good.

The boys all knew about each other’s Songs by then. Reggie’s had a country twang to it that drove Luke crazy. He liked to play his Song’s chord progressions on his bass, but he was learning the banjo too to help him fill out the sound in his head. Alex was always humming his between reps and during set up and tear down, lost in his own world. It was soft and sweet, like a lullaby. When he got anxious, he would tap out rhythms and vocalize melodies to help calm himself down. Bobby’s Song was energetic and exciting, a sharp contrast to his shy self. He liked to play it on his electric before practices started and would always be finishing up just as the boys came into the garage, so they never heard much more than that which would seep out into the backyard.

None of them ever tried to replicate each other’s Songs. Songs were personal, they were intimate. Anyway, it wasn’t like they could recreate them, even if they tried.

Luke tried one night to transpose his Song to paper, but it never worked. His pen would hover above the sheet but never write anything at all. He tried to get something, anything, even just a word down, but it wouldn’t come out, determined to stay only inside his head. That was what Songs did.

They named their band Sunset Curve and started playing gigs. Other people liked their music, too.

Bobby became less shy when he was on stage, drawing energy from his Song to create a confidence that he would wear. Alex let out his anxiety on the drumset in a different way than how his Song would relieve his anxiety but which ended up helping just the same. Reggie wrote more country music in his free time. Sunset Curve never played it.

Luke grew older. His voice deepened and matured. One afternoon in the middle of practice, he stopped playing. The other three petered out once they noticed.

“Luke?” Alex asked from behind the set. “You okay?”

There was a voice singing his Song now. His voice was singing his Song.

“Yeah,” Luke smiled and assured. He didn’t explain what happened.

But after practice, he was humming again, a tune which complimented what they’d heard him play before. Reggie, Bobby, and Alex shared a grin while Luke wasn’t looking.

All four of them were in the music program at their high school. There were a lot of talented students in their class.

In junior year, there were a bunch of new freshmen who came up into the class. They showed a lot of promise. Sunset Curve became friends with a group of four of the freshmen. Their groups meshed well as eight, but they also all found a complement within themselves. Alex and Carrie liked to dance together. Reggie and Flynn explored new music genres and played pranks on the other six. Bobby and Nick became study partners. And Luke? Luke had Julie.

She was...well, she was Julie. She wasn’t afraid to be herself and wore it proudly, with her butterfly hair clips and dozen friendship bracelets and doodled shoes.

Reggie suggested that their group of eight should have a name. Flynn was unamused by Bobby’s suggestion of “Octuple Trouble”.

Luke wondered what the four freshmen’s Songs sounded like. He never asked. Songs were intimate, and lots of people were shy about other people hearing them. Songs revealed the deepest parts of your soul.

Luke knew that his soul was pure music and music alone.

Besides his parents and his brothers, no one ever heard Luke’s Song. No one else needed to hear his Song. It was his.

Julie, Carrie, and Flynn showed the boys how to make friendship bracelets. They explained how you made them for each other and then tied it on each other’s wrists so they would never come off as long as the friendship would last. Luke thought he would be embarrassed by wearing friendship bracelets and how it would clash with his style of jean chains and cutoff tees and metal rings, but somehow he wasn’t. They all eight hung out at Carrie’s house and tied bracelets for hours that night, with Star Wars playing in the background on the TV at Reggie and Nick’s requests. By the time they were finished, beads were in mis-matched piles on the ottomans and slivers of tape and string sprinkled the floor. It was one of the best nights of their lives.

Luke wore his bracelets proudly. They were dorky, but they were so them and Luke loved them. He had a purple and blue knotted pattern from Julie, and an orange and green one with beads that read B-I-C-E-P-S---M-C-G-E-E from Flynn.

Carrie made Alex something pink that Luke never saw closely. They’d spent the whole evening with her teaching him some fancy pattern of knots that would make a picture, so theirs matched one another’s.

Luke didn’t see what Bobby, Nick, or Reggie had made or for whom. He’d been too focused on his bracelet for Julie. He tried to channel all of his love for the friendship he’d found with her and with all eight of them into the strings, but his fingers that normally were so dextrous and able on the guitar couldn’t hold the strands with the right tension and it ended up a mess.

She loved it and wore it anyway.

Luke eventually had one bracelet from each person in Octuple Trouble and had given one to each person in turn.

Luke’s Song still plagued his mind day-in and day-out. Every day it felt it was more complete. He heard it all the way through now, but even still it wasn’t complete. There was always his guitar playing, but there was another instrument dueting his. Luke knew what the instrument was in his heart but he couldn’t name it when he tried. It was just...there. A sound that he knew better than any other but it was also different than anything he’d ever heard before. He heard his voice singing all the words, and he heard another voice, too, but it belonged to nobody. The other voice was the biggest mystery to him. It made him feel like he was home but like he didn’t know where home was.

A few months into junior year, Julie changed. She became more reserved and stopped playing in music class. Luke knew why. He didn’t know how he could help, though. He tried to just be there, and to make sure she knew he always would be.

Sunset Curve was gaining a reputation and playing more and more gigs.

Carrie started her own group, Dirty Candi. At some point she cut off all of her bracelets. Alex still went to all of their performances to support her.

Julie and Flynn stayed closer than ever before, but the rest of them...drifted.

A part of Luke fractured alongside their group. He was pretty sure a part of each of the rest of them did, too.

Senior year started and the eight of them felt practically like strangers once more. They were still all in music class, but it was different. It had been different for a long time. Nick and Bobby didn’t study together anymore. Alex and Carrie still hung out, but Reggie and Flynn hadn’t pranked anyone since November. Luke missed Julie.

Alex came to practice late one afternoon in September with wonder in his eyes and voice about a skateboarder he’d met.

“Well, he sort of ran into me...literally, and we both fell down. And I scraped up my hands pretty bad on the concrete trying to catch myself-” Alex showed them the bandaged heels of his palms “- and it stung, like, really bad. You know how I have that nervous habit where I hum my Song when I’m anxious? Yeah, okay, so I started to do that while he apologized and grabbed band-aids out of his pocket - I don’t know why he had band-aids, Reggie, probably because he gets scrapes pretty often too. But so I was humming my Song, and he started humming it too.”

Luke wondered what it felt like to hear your other half complete you.

A year after Julie changed back in junior year, she changed again. She came back. She played in class again and Luke was once again in awe of the power packed into this sophomore. He’d forgotten just how amazing she was. He didn’t know what had triggered this return, but he didn’t care. She was back.

Three weeks later, Luke was looking for Mrs. Harrison. He needed her to sign some form for him for his guidance counselor, something about graduation requirements. Luke hadn’t been paying attention.

He had his hand on the handle to the music room and was about to twist it open before he heard a sound from inside.

Three notes, repeated. Five notes. The whole sequence repeated once more.

Any thoughts of forms fell from his mind. Luke opened the door with a fervor he’d never experienced before. He rushed into the room but only made it two steps in before his shoes squeaked to a halt on the wooden floor.

Luke locked eyes with Julie. She sat behind the piano, in a black dress he’d never seen before.

The paper in his hand fluttered to the floor. Wordlessly, Luke crossed the room and picked up Mrs. Harrison’s acoustic guitar. He slipped the strap over his neck and faltered. What if he was wrong?

He took a deep breath and pushed his doubts down.

Luke turned around and saw Julie, who was watching him with a concerned curiosity.

No turning back. No regrets.

Luke’s hands started playing the first song he’d ever played. The song he’d played a billion times. It was etched into his dreams and it framed his every thought. Luke played his Song.

Julie’s eyes widened in recognition and her jaw dropped open.

Luke started singing and that seemed to spring Julie out of her stupor. Her fingers started moving across the keys in chords that accompanied his plucking.

She picked up the verse where he left off and Luke was hearing The Song for the first time. The other instrument that melded with his was the piano underneath Julie’s fingers. The other voice was hers.

Luke could see it in her eyes. She felt it, too.

Home.

It was exhilarating.

They filled the music room with their Song - no longer his, it was theirs - but the entire world was just them two. Nothing else existed but their music together.

Luke walked around the side of the piano while he played so he could be closer to Julie. He saw his god-awful friendship bracelet on her wrist while she played and smiled at the part of her that he carried on his, too.

That wasn’t the only part of her he’d been carrying, he realized.

Their Song.

Wow.

The two of them drew to a close, out of breath with amazement.

We create

A perfect harmony

They locked eyes. They were home.

@pink-flame @thedeathdeelers surprise you’re on my taglist

[jessicakmatt]

Multi-Instrumentalist Orphy Robinson on Freeing Your Musical Compositions

Multi-Instrumentalist Orphy Robinson on Freeing Your Musical Compositions: via LANDR Blog

Music is a language, especially if you work with others to create it.

The notes, dynamics, chords and rhythmic choices you make in your songs all communicate something to your audience and those you collaborate with.

But understanding that language and knowing how to communicate musically takes a lifetime.

So who better to talk to about the language of music and the meaning of musical collaboration other than Orphy Robinson–a highly skilled multi instrumentalist who’s worked with everyone from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Pink Floyd’s Robert Plant, to the legendary free jazz composer Don Cherry.

We sat down with Orphy to hear his ideas about the language of music, the role of a multi-instrumentalist, composition and how the internet is changing the way artists collaborate.

Learning to communicate in a band

As a youngster, Orphy started playing music when he joined a local Scottish pipe band. 

Learning snare drum rudiments was a useful start into the world of percussion, but he consistently found himself enamored with the marimba and xylophone.

He hung around the local roller disco during his teenage years where he made friends and it wasn’t long before they started jamming.

They formed what Orphy calls a “workshop” band with initially a bassist and guitarist– they’d cover Kool and the Gang tracks and the occasional attempt at an Earth, Wind & Fire song.

Over the next few years, the band evolved as players came and went. 

Soon the funk band named itself “Savanna”. They would go on to release a few singles that briefly showed up on a few UK R&B charts.

“I think at a certain point I got excited by xylophones and marimbas, the size of them got me thinking ‘Wow! One guy plays that? That’s cool!”

“The first bands I was in though, I was playing congas and percussion and I would sometimes do some keys and things.”

Finding mentorship and growing a vocabulary

Savanna was only the beginning for Orphy. Congas, drums and the occasional stint at the keyboard wasn’t enough. 

Inspired by the likes of vibraphone jazz legends like Lionel Hampton and Bobby Hutcherson, Orphy decided to get better at the vibes and the marimba.

Orphy was on a quest to learn from the best vibes players he could find, but he also wanted to expand his musical palette outside of pitched percussion.

He was drawn to the alto sax partly because a massive vibraphone was so hard to get around town with, but also because the alto saxophone is such an expressive instrument.

He picked up a sax with some Christmas money and started transcribing saxophone parts from his favorite records, learning them both on the vibes and the sax.

“I went through different phases of learning music, and then got to the point where, okay, [the vibes] are the instrument I’m most familiar with, it feels very comfortable.”

“That started the pursuit of going all over London–anywhere you could get classes or you could you know play with people learning”

“I liked how the saxophone players moved when they were playing–how they would move through the instrument. We didn’t really do the same on the vibes.”

Learning the vibes and saxophone at the same time helped him understand how the languages each instrument spoke and worked together.

Orphy’s journey to find mentors paid off. His lessons with his sax teacher soon led him to his first big gig with Courtney Pine and the Jazz Warriors.

“Joining that band coincided with a movement of young people really getting into jazz in the UK and then doing new things with it.”

Pioneering new genres in the London jazz scene

Touring with Courtney Pine and living in London during a generational shift in London’s 80s jazz scene opened Orphy’s mind to new forms of expression.

Before his touring gig with The Jazz Warriors, Orphy recounts a chance to see Tony Williams while working at the Hard Rock Cafe and playing with Savanna.

“One day one of the managers said ‘you need to go and see this band–don’t argue. Here’s a ticket, it’s a freebie.’ It was Tony Williams and it completely blew my mind. I was like ‘oh wow okay’ this is a whole other thing.”

It was the first experience where Orphy really became aware of how powerful different forms of expression in Jazz can be.

The second came while on tour with Courtney Pine when he saw the Sun Ra Arkestra.

The contrast between Sun Ra and the buttoned-down look of the Courtney Pine band struck Orphy–he wanted to work in freer forms of musical expression.

“That completely destroyed my mind–The Sun Ra Arkestra–they wore all these capes and the makeup, it was like music from the ancients and the future–you know? Free, but then there’s bits of structure.”

  Accessing new worlds through different instruments

Orphy grew somewhat tired with the straight-laced sound and look of Courtney Pine and the Jazz Warriors. He soon broke off into more experimental areas of music.

Being a multi-instrumentalist with sought after skills, he was able to collaborate in many different musical projects–often surprising collaborators with his ability to experiment with different instruments.

“I realized I could turn up with anything and they would go ‘yeah that’s cool.’ It wasn’t like ‘oh we thought you were just gonna bring the vibes’–instead they were like “cool man, you’ve got a load of pedals and a load of electronics.”

He soon left Courtney Pine to work more closely with free improvisation groups that were more experimental.

At one point touring with composer Lawrence Butch Morris in an improvisational ensemble that relied exclusively on hand signals from the conductor as instructions over sheet music and notes.

“I’ve always been Into experimentation with sound. So now it was like this is so cool–the first loopers, that sort of stuff. I was really taken by that world to such an extent that I cut down on the other work that I was doing with straighter projects.”

That tour would lead him to work with many free jazz and experimental projects–including work with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Sun Ra Arkestra member Marshall Allen and experimentalist Don Cherry.

Composing as a multi-instrumentalist

Orphy’s experience working with many mediums in the jazz and experimental world gave him the chops he needed to become the flexible, creative and adept composer he is today.

Interestingly, Orphy struggles to compose on the vibes and marimba–the instruments on which he’s most comfortable.

Rather, he prefers to compose on the keyboard, saying his average skill keeps him from going on tangents.

“I cannot write on the vibraphone and marimba because I tend to go all over the place drifting, soloing, doing all sorts of things–but because I’m just a very average keyboard player I can sit at the keyboard and not get out of my line, I stay in my lane.”

Orphy finds direction for his compositions by looking at three sections that make up a grid from which he finds his inspiration.

The first section of his grid is the undertone of the piece he’s writing. It’s what helps him understand what sounds work best within a sound world or story he’s trying to tell.

The second section he describes as ‘text’–the elements in a piece that moves a composition along for the audience.

 Orphy sees the ‘text’ of a composition coming from rhythms and melodic elements that push and pull against the undertones to create tension and release. He suggests the modal scales as a good place to start when playing with textures.

The third section in Orphy’s composition process is the frequencies and volumes between different instruments. For him, this is how you blend light and dark within a composition.

Thinking within this grid helps Orphy determine what instruments he needs to tell the right story within his own compositions and when working with other collaborators.

“It’s the same thing when you’re working with Improv or with musicians who are playing any instrument you try to find a common ground that creates a conversation.

“It’s about making in your mind a kind of grid that’s in three kind of sections.

You have the undertone–or the underground and you build that with whatever sounds work within the story.

Then you’ve got the text which could be using rhythms–creating tension, pushing and pulling.

Then you look at frequencies–look at volumes, look at density, at lightness. I use all of those in creating a music vocabulary that works for that story.”

What’s your advice for young musicians?

One of the coolest things the internet has done for music creators is how it opens up new avenues for both learning and creative exploration.

There’s just so much out there to absorb, especially when it comes to learning as a young musician.

The ability to easily find old music, transpose it and learn it is one of the things that excites Orphy most.

“There’s a lot of old things on the internet that you can dip in and out of. 

You know when we grew up, if you were trying to learn something you’d put the record backwards and forwards trying to copy something. 

But now you can go to various sites and slow down things, there’s different ways of manipulating it.”

His suggestion for young artists? Be patient. Listen to a lot of music. And, open your mind to new forms of expression.

“Patience and to just listen, absolutely listen. Don’t be blinkered on one thing. 

My thing is to dip into all these different palettes and come up with something that you identify with–that other people can listen to and identify with as well. lt’s not about making music only for me or for other musicians to stroke their beards.”

Working and collaborating through online communities

In 2020, working and collaborating online has grown to a greater level of importance than ever before.

Orphy sees this new paradigm as an opportunity to reach artists and collaborators that previously wouldn’t have been as accessible.

He believes online communities like LANDR Network are a big part of this shift in thinking, because it makes it so easy to find talented collaborators.

“It’s like a one-stop shop. You can go straight to there and find a fab keyboard player or drummer. Or, hey! There’s an oud player, there’s a saxophone player, there’s a bagpipe player from here–how about putting that on top of a trap groove or on this group. 

It’s absolutely incredible. I think LANDR is that platform that’s gonna be the best practice for this fantastic new world.”

The post Multi-Instrumentalist Orphy Robinson on Freeing Your Musical Compositions appeared first on LANDR Blog.

from LANDR Blog https://blog.landr.com/orphy-robinson-multi-instrumentalist-music-compositions/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/626368271763046400