With the finalized lyrics from good ol' Luke saved in our documents, Hayden and I met up last Monday to get inspired for further work on the first combustion. The two of us, plus the third member of Amoranth, have developed a sort of routine approach to writing songs, but with Luke's lyrics being our first source for inspiration, Hayden and I got a fresh start to arranging some music. To be more clear, Hayden, David, and I tend to use little musical snippets or vague musical concepts as our first speed boost into a song, so starting with these wacky lyrics has been quite exciting.
So I guess I'll move on to our process with this combustion so far. The first step was determining a big picture 'skeleton' for the song. After some discussion with Luke and Jessie beforehand, Hayden and I realized that the best approach toward creating this skeleton was to treat it as a sequence- sort of like slowing down real time of maybe 30 seconds to a minute and turning it into a 3 to 5 minute piece of music. Our reasoning behind this approach was that the lyrics seem to at first hold to a third person narration, so when colorful descriptions of a circus and a city were expressed, we felt they should be treated as mostly separate realities.
Anyway, back to the sequence. Just as Amoranth tends to do, Hayden and I maintained a mostly conceptual approach in our first meeting so as to confirm the likely success of a sequential setup for the song. Luke provided significantly more lyrics describing Bloom, or the city, than those for the carnival. Perhaps this was because the carnival stanza was meant to parallel the city, or, in other words, not be an actual reality, but a meta-metaphor to further describe Bloom as a somewhat chaotic, perhaps declining city. If this was Luke's intent, Hayden and I strayed from it somewhat, but hopefully held to it enough so as to not abstract too far from Luke's poetic contribution. To be more clear, Hayden and I viewed this song as two objective realities- city life and a traveling circus passing through said city- that are being subjectively observed through the eyes of somebody that we're just going to currently refer to as Character A. We intend for the listener to experience these separate realities as if they are existing in real time, but for the subjective reality of Character A to be realized toward the climax of the song. This way, the viewer can subjectively experience the objective realities before he or she realizes the full objective picture- that Character A is having a very similar experience through his or her observation of the same two objective realities. In other words, the realities become all but inverted when moving from their musical expression to their reception by the listener. Hayden and I believe this will help the listeners relate to Character A's experience, and, ultimately, realize that both a world and a Character of this world are being introduced to them.
In order to do this, Hayden and I decided that the best structure, or skeleton, to guide us would be as follows:
A-B-A2-(AB)-C
The A and A2 sections are intended to represent the city reality while the B section would represent the circus. In order for the song to flow the way Hayden and I pictured and also maintain the content of Luke's final draft, we placed B between A and A2. This will hopefully provide colorful and moody sections for the listener to be immersed in while also providing a parallel between the city life of Bloom (and perhaps of any urban location in our world) and the world of a traveling circus.
The AB section is pretty much what one probably imagines it as- a combination of both the city section and the circus section. However, musical reminders of A and B are each going to fade in and out throughout this section at seemingly random times. Hayden and I intend on AB emphasizing Character A's subjective reality. So the fading in and out of each reality is supposed to reflect Character A's mind. In other words, the listener will be experiencing Character A taking in his or her views over the circus and the city life in Bloom.
Section C is supposed to be a conclusive outro to this song, but also a reminder that this combustion is an introduction to Bloom, Character A, and the world of Kindlyn. Since this is its goal, C is going to be a very explosive section so as to provide a wrap up feel to this first exposure.
This wraps up the conceptual approach to the musical side of Kindlyn's first combustion. There will soon be a detailed post on the actual music that has been written to coincide with our sequenced realities. Hopefully you guys found this interesting and continue to keep up with our work. Thanks!
ANY QUESTIONS? (Of course not, Jordan! You explained that perfectly).
... but seriously if you do have any questions feel free to comment!
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