A poem by wb yeats whiich i put to music., this is just a rough take like


WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh. 


A Drinking Song (WB Yeats Poem) by Brian Sewell

Silhouettes

I penned this song by imagining what it would be like to write a love song under the moon with a violin playing goat as my only company.

Demo 1- Old Fashioned Serenade

From forthcoming new album CARRIE & LOWELL
Preorder it: http://akrec.co/1y05i0M
Available on Asthmatic Kitty Records March 31st (US) / March 30 (EU)

More info: http://carrieandlowell.com

LYRICS:
Now that I fell into your arms
My only lover
Give out to give in
I search for the capsule I lost

Drag me to hell
In the valley of The Dalles
Like my mother
Give wings to a stone
It’s only the shadow of a cross

I slept on my back 
In the shade of the meadowlark 
Like a champion
Get drunk to get laid
I take one more hit when you depart

I’ll drive that stake through the center of my heart
Lonely vampire
Inhaling its fire
I’m chasing the dragon too far

There’s blood on that blade
Fuck me, I’m falling apart
My assassin
Like Casper the ghost 
There’s no shade in the shadow of the cross

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Sufjan Stevens, "No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross"

This song is from a bit before Christmas 2008. After a bit of an incident, went to the piano and played the first thing that came out of my fingers, which, for the most part, was this. All old school inspiration and stuff, I played the vast majority of it as is in that one sitting, catharsis and stuff. The title is just short of "fall in love".

A lot of the form represents the transition from positive to skewed to negative. For instance, the section that starts at 0.32 is repeated three times, the first in a major key, the second in a sort of a skewed minor (on the octave repetitions, the distance of tone or semitone on either side of the main note is reversed, so you get a scale based on the leading note, Lydian based on the dominant, which has a sharpened 4th so no tonic in it and stuff), and a third time just minor.

The end is basically a summation of this as well, where the last three chords are in order major, augmented and minor, so the whole positive to skewed to negativity thing. As well as this, while the high G major chord was heard in root position, the most stable one, first, now it is heard with the 5th in the bass, the most unstable position, again, positive going to negative etc etc, I'm sure your getting the idea. 

This piece is one of the first properly motivic songs, and that's from study of Chopin in college, where nearly all of the musical features were taken from one musical idea. This was maybe the first song I did this where it was a move from my sorta throw out tunes thing to basing it on sounder fundamental compositional techniques.That said, it's still just bashing out improv, but with slightly more thought, not too much, don't worry Thomas.

Taken from Chopin also is a lot of the vamping sorta waltz thing, as well as some of the chromatic turns. These are often based on composed accelerando, or whatever they're called, from Chopin, where the first beat is divided into two quavers, then three triplet quavers, then four semiquavers etc.

I actually lost the score for this piece of music, which was terrible, and most people who write music will agree that the worst feeling ever is losing a piece of music and not being able to remember it or anything! And as well, I write a horrid lot of music, and sometimes I lose the very odd piece, but you'd totally forget about it after a while or even not notice, but this piece I actually remembered not having! Was terrible, but then I found it, obviously.


A Drinking Song (WB Yeats Poem) by Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell Music

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