The Spirit Flows
I haven’t been putting up some of the music that I’ve written lately, and still have some older tunes that I’ve yet to put up. Hopefully that will change, but I’m not holding my breath. 
Anyway, This is a tune I just wrote last week for a guy at my church that has been asking me to write him a song. Not really sure how it turned out overall, I think I tend to write really simply (maybe to a fault).
When I was a kid one of the disparaging remarks that was cast at pop/rock musicians by “real” musicians (jazz musicians, who don’t get much respect from the classical people, maybe they are just passing the negative stuff on to the next guy, which is all a bit ridiculous but I digress) was something to the effect of all rock songs have only three chords in them. (Then we’d go off and play a blues that was, at its core, three chords.) So I think somewhere along the way I ingrained into myself that if it is simple it can’t possibly good. Kind of foolish, no?
OK, enough, here’s the song: The Spirit Flows
Once again in my musical life Joshua Williams (of Canterville Ghost fame) helped me out and wrote some lyrics for the tune (in the past I’ve gotten overwrought with self-consciousness writing words for music).
July 22nd, 2005 at 10:39 am
This is great Tom. It has a kind of majestic quality to it. I just played Sondheim’s “Being Alive” for a friend at an audition, and this song reminded me of it somehow.
Being simple when you write definitely isn’t bad. It’s just a characteristic of your style.. It can be good because it makes each note that much more important. Playing through it I had to pay attention to all the little nuances.
I especially like the chord at m. 59, and the “No Pedal” marking at the beginning (awwww, Tom!)
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:05 am
Thanks for playing it through Jeremy, glad you liked it. I’m wondering if some of the nuances you mentioned would be better lined out by me by notating them? I know I come from a heavy jazz background so some of my dialect, musically speaking, has a different accent that I’m hearing in the notes than say a classical musician might interpret.
Point in case is the way that Joshua wrote the lyrics. On the first phrase before the lyrics I kept hearing it as being two bars long exactly and when you got to the third measure it was the beginning of a new phrase. Josh wrote the lyrics so that the phrase actually continues into the first note of the next measure. I had thought about putting in phrase markings to indicate where I heard the phrases starting and stopping but didn’t. I guess in this situation the change was an interesting surprise that I don’t think changed what I intended.
Anyway if you have specific ideas about certain notations that might help bring out some of the nuances better I’m all ears.