A quick diversion before I get going:
...however I'm not sure who William Gibson is!
Anyway, back to the music. I have skipped ahead a little, well a lot. Now that track 1 is finished I'm going to tackle track 3. The reason being I am bursting with ideas for it. Track 1 was "body", track 2 will be "mind" - track 3 is "spirit". The three major sections are 3.1: God, 3.2: the Devil and 3.3: Man. We will come to 3.2 and 3.3 in due course, but for now the obvious splitting of 3.1 is into 3.1.1 God the Father, 3.1.2 God the Son (Jesus) and 3.1.3 God the Holy Spirit.
Which is all very well, but how do you represent them in music.
Well for God the Father I have been reminded (by my brother as it happens) of Elijah's experience of God. There was a huge wind, but God was not in the wind, There was an earthquake but He was not in the earthquake. There was a fire, but he was not in the fire. After the fire, a still small voice. So in three minutes I am going to build to a cataclysm and then have a still small voice. Tonight I have done the cataclysm.
It starts orchestrally with timpani beating out a quiet, urgent rhythm in 7/4, quiet brass comes in and builds up. A drop down to build up to louder, and a final drop down to build up to a huge stabby brass timpani cymbally thing to which then thick, wide, loud synth sounds are added to make it truly a wall of noise - then it stops quite abruptly.
In terms of the process: I had a broad idea of what I was going to do, and it effectively came to me on the fly. Lines, harmonies, which part does what where all seemed to just roll along having had the basic rhythmic idea. Even picking the key (D) was done by seeing where the timps sounded best. Every few bars I was thinking "well I can do this little bit and then maybe I need to stop to let this mull for a day or two" but every time it became obvious what should come next. I love it when that happens.
My only reservation is whether it sounds too much like Holst's "Mars" - it does a bit.
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