Selfish
The latest song I’ve been working on is entitled “Selfish”. It’s a topic that’s been haunting me for the last four years and haven’t been able to get off of my mind no matter who I tell. I’ll go into more detail about it once I have the lyrics finalized.
“Selfish” is going to be my first Popular Music piece written since I moved to Lakeland and started my schooling. Since then I’ve all but refused to write a song with the standard I-IV-V Chord Progression that found running rampant throughout most popular music. It’ll be interesting to see how different this song turns out than that of “Call It What You Will” and other Spacesuit Goddess songs recorded just before I moved.
Unintenionally I’ve also written the basis for the the Bass Guitar as well. It’s something that just flowed out. I’ve always had a thing for progressive basslines which is in part how I got the chord progression for the verse. The song is in the key of E-Flat Minor. I liked the progression from Eb to Db to Cb to Bb. Assuming these were the root notes I’d have the progression of i-VII-VI-v which isn’t one of the strongest. Instead I replaced the VII with a III 6/4. This allows me to have the same bassnote of Db but it also adds a better progression because III is the 5th of VI. So now I have the progression of i-III-VI-v.
I adjusted the progression a little further because I felt it could be stronger. First I wanted to have a Major Five Chord which is typical, even in a Minor Scale. From there I wanted to make it more symetrical and having a minor-Major-minor-Major progression and I changed the VI to a minor vi. This also helps making the piece a little more interesting: i-III-vi-V.
Normally the minor Six Chord would sound a little out of place in a Minor Scale but the a vi chord shares 2 of 3 notes of the i (tonic) chord. Which almost makes it sound like a i-III-i-V progression.
The verse at least has a minalistic quality to it but not to the extreme. It builds constitantly adding new parts and instruments in the beginning of it.
As for the rest of the piece. You’ll have to wait and see. I’ll probably start recording bits and pieces of it here shortly and provide a short teaser for it, hopefully making you want more!
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