I saw this ferry stop on a floating dock in the River and walked out on it. Since it was between tours there were no other people around. The river and the central city skyline made a massive impact. I thought the vibe would be great for a panorama video backdrop and panned the view with my GoPro8 camera, using its horizon stabilizer. The spooky dusk vibe inspired me to try making some music in Phrygian mode and I used the Push 1 to play an orchestral mockup. I worked out a nice ballad style melody theme through the chord changes and improvised a guitar solo and a tenor sax solo with the EWI.
The Phrygian mode has a certain evil side to it, that I like. Neither minor nor major, it stays in a grey zone that you normally just pass by on your way somewhere else. Much like dusk, the shortly flickering passage between day and night. But Phrygia nails you to the coffin while the same notes keep coming back in ever-shifting series of various configurations. And Phrygian can be extremely dissonant. I think listeners may instinctively experience these characteristics as an instant threat, thus causing the well-known “flavor of evil” we know Phrygian for.
In this track, I’m playing my EWI loaded with a SWAM tenor sax patch by AudioModeling and my 8-stringed *strandberg guitar with a slightly rough flintstone pick through an Axe-Fx-III. I also played the eighth notes based bass line with this guitar. The spiccato strings are from Spitfire Audio’s sampler library Symphonic Chamber Strings. Finally, the virtual drum kit I slapped maestro Magnus Brandell’s MIDI files over is the Superior Drummer 3 from Toontrack.
In early May 2020,
OddGrooves.com shared a generous gift with the worldwide musician’s community, the Lockdown Grooves Pack. A free pack of drum kit performances by master drummer Magnus Brandell. Being a long-time OddGroves fan I grabbed the download right away and found this pack-of-drummings extremely inspiring for a song idea I was working on. I had already been using OddGrooves for some time, and this pack locked in so nicely with this Phrygian mode instrumental piece. Magnus Brandell plays the drums with a deep understanding of the story-telling aspects of musical performance. Ghost hits, fills, and transitions are not just thrown in at specific points, they are all parts of a continuously evolving rhythm vibe through-out the long drum kit performance. Exactly the type of drumming that inspires me as a player and composer. I felt how my sax and guitar improvisations along this track in C Phrygian came out like “standing on the shoulders of giants”… he, he… in this case the shoulders of Drummer Giant Brandell :-) Thank you, Magnus. Good job!
OddGrooves announced a contest, “to support musicians around the world to go creative during the Corona Lockdown”, and I submitted this instrumental track. A week later I was informed that my piece had won the contest, sharing the highest rank prize with three other submissions.
