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This is the concluding piece of a 100-song collection – the Brooklyn Walking Songs – a project that has kept me creatively engaged for the past four years. The collection wasn’t conceived as a grand ambitious concept. Rather, it was something that developed as time went by and the songs started piling up - a singular idea growing complex.
The beginning was simple enough. Upon moving to Brooklyn, my wife and I decided to sell our car and rely on public transportation to get around, as well as walking. It wasn’t long before I noticed I was humming and whistling new melodies during neighborhood hikes. I started recording these melodies, and then tried developing them into more elaborate and complex compositions. Recognizing a common theme, i.e., that they all came from the walking experience, I conceived what I thought was the lofty ambition of composing a dozen Brooklyn Walking Songs. But once I got into it, the songs kept coming. Soon I doubled the number to 24. I was on a “walk and roll” high!
As melodies continued to arrive in my brain, I tried to analyze where they were coming from. This became a special concern when I raised the goal to compose 100 songs, because the creative challenge was not only to write original music, but also to make every one of the one hundred different from its companions. I worried about duplication, both in melody and in sound. When I was younger I wrote most of my songs by banging around on a guitar until something usable developed out of the sequences. Occasionally, behind the wheel of an automobile, I came up with ideas that seemed related to the rhythm of the road. The act of walking was generating new melodies faster than I could keep up with them. One hundred songs – that sounded like a big number, a worthy challenge, bordering on the excessive, but it was certainly attainable, because I realized that for every song I was developing, there were two or three melodies I was passing on, usually because they weren’t distinct or of enough interest. The way these melodies arrived seemed unconscious. There were times when I thought I might be recycling something I’d just heard in a store or cafe (virtually every place you go into these days has some form of music playing), but it never seemed to be anything I could specifically pin down. When I come out of a store consciously humming a melody I had just heard, well, that simply remains that song for me, and doesn’t lead to any spinoff or new thing. Usually, I would be just walking along and a melody suddenly manifested that seemed to fit the mood of the moment.
The collection falls into halves based on recording software. The first 48 songs were done with a digital sequencer called MicroLogic. The program had a bug, causing frequent crashes, and problems with the output. After I acquired Apple’s GarageBand, the sound and the production process improved dramatically. Then I joined MacJams, which gave me valuable peer feedback, which led to more improvement (especially in two factors – learning to use drums loops and overall production values).
What makes a walking song a walking song? For me, the answer was simple – it’s a composition developed from a melody that occurred while walking. (This collection became more specific by being about melodies that occurred while walking around my Brooklyn neighborhood.) I set no preconditions and I had no format for style. Some songs were rendered as two-handed piano statements, yet some became three and four-handed, if that’s what felt right. On others I went crazy with synthesized sounds. Lengths vary from a short 24 seconds to 4:45 (the longest). Tempo was song-specific. Some songs became developmental, circling back on themselves. Others became exercises in variations. A couple became nothing but a series of tangents – walking songs that headed off wherever they wanted to go.
It has been said that an artist always faces challenges from the past. In composing these pieces, I didn’t feel like I was competing against anything specific. However, in the background, I heard echoes of classical precedents, like the Arabian “One Thousand Nights and a Night,” where a variety of stories are clustered under a general theme, like Bocaccio’s “Decameron” (100 stories), or Yoshitoshi’s “One Hundred Aspects of the Moon” (100 prints), or like the structure of some of Chopin’s piano-piece collections.
There’s always a certain let down when a goal is reached. Mixed in with the joy of achievement is a sadness of knowing something significant is over, that I’ll never pass this way again. I think this is why there is as much enjoyment in the process as there is in hitting a mark. I even find this to be true of individual songs. When I’m recording an instrument (most of the walking songs were made with a synthesizer keyboard), trying to get the notes and the timing right, I love doing take after take until I arrive at a place that is acceptable, but then a certain sadness creeps in, because I’m aware that I’ll never perform this sequence of notes again – not ever. I may go on to listen to a finished piece a hundred times in the weeks and months and years that lie ahead, and there will be moments when I’ll marvel at how it all got put together into a compositional whole, but rarely will I find the listening as thrilling as the process of creation.
The beginning was simple enough. Upon moving to Brooklyn, my wife and I decided to sell our car and rely on public transportation to get around, as well as walking. It wasn’t long before I noticed I was humming and whistling new melodies during neighborhood hikes. I started recording these melodies, and then tried developing them into more elaborate and complex compositions. Recognizing a common theme, i.e., that they all came from the walking experience, I conceived what I thought was the lofty ambition of composing a dozen Brooklyn Walking Songs. But once I got into it, the songs kept coming. Soon I doubled the number to 24. I was on a “walk and roll” high!
As melodies continued to arrive in my brain, I tried to analyze where they were coming from. This became a special concern when I raised the goal to compose 100 songs, because the creative challenge was not only to write original music, but also to make every one of the one hundred different from its companions. I worried about duplication, both in melody and in sound. When I was younger I wrote most of my songs by banging around on a guitar until something usable developed out of the sequences. Occasionally, behind the wheel of an automobile, I came up with ideas that seemed related to the rhythm of the road. The act of walking was generating new melodies faster than I could keep up with them. One hundred songs – that sounded like a big number, a worthy challenge, bordering on the excessive, but it was certainly attainable, because I realized that for every song I was developing, there were two or three melodies I was passing on, usually because they weren’t distinct or of enough interest. The way these melodies arrived seemed unconscious. There were times when I thought I might be recycling something I’d just heard in a store or cafe (virtually every place you go into these days has some form of music playing), but it never seemed to be anything I could specifically pin down. When I come out of a store consciously humming a melody I had just heard, well, that simply remains that song for me, and doesn’t lead to any spinoff or new thing. Usually, I would be just walking along and a melody suddenly manifested that seemed to fit the mood of the moment.
The collection falls into halves based on recording software. The first 48 songs were done with a digital sequencer called MicroLogic. The program had a bug, causing frequent crashes, and problems with the output. After I acquired Apple’s GarageBand, the sound and the production process improved dramatically. Then I joined MacJams, which gave me valuable peer feedback, which led to more improvement (especially in two factors – learning to use drums loops and overall production values).
What makes a walking song a walking song? For me, the answer was simple – it’s a composition developed from a melody that occurred while walking. (This collection became more specific by being about melodies that occurred while walking around my Brooklyn neighborhood.) I set no preconditions and I had no format for style. Some songs were rendered as two-handed piano statements, yet some became three and four-handed, if that’s what felt right. On others I went crazy with synthesized sounds. Lengths vary from a short 24 seconds to 4:45 (the longest). Tempo was song-specific. Some songs became developmental, circling back on themselves. Others became exercises in variations. A couple became nothing but a series of tangents – walking songs that headed off wherever they wanted to go.
It has been said that an artist always faces challenges from the past. In composing these pieces, I didn’t feel like I was competing against anything specific. However, in the background, I heard echoes of classical precedents, like the Arabian “One Thousand Nights and a Night,” where a variety of stories are clustered under a general theme, like Bocaccio’s “Decameron” (100 stories), or Yoshitoshi’s “One Hundred Aspects of the Moon” (100 prints), or like the structure of some of Chopin’s piano-piece collections.
There’s always a certain let down when a goal is reached. Mixed in with the joy of achievement is a sadness of knowing something significant is over, that I’ll never pass this way again. I think this is why there is as much enjoyment in the process as there is in hitting a mark. I even find this to be true of individual songs. When I’m recording an instrument (most of the walking songs were made with a synthesizer keyboard), trying to get the notes and the timing right, I love doing take after take until I arrive at a place that is acceptable, but then a certain sadness creeps in, because I’m aware that I’ll never perform this sequence of notes again – not ever. I may go on to listen to a finished piece a hundred times in the weeks and months and years that lie ahead, and there will be moments when I’ll marvel at how it all got put together into a compositional whole, but rarely will I find the listening as thrilling as the process of creation.
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thetiler
you put into this. All the writing and telling how this was concieved. Lot of
writen thus to me shows caring because it seems so carefully done.
Catchy melodies, I can almost see you walking down the street Especailly
with the add of the beat. Like the happy melody theme as well.
Nice going, lots of fun to listen to!
Great going Warren, thanks for sharing your musical work!!!!