I’ve done a lot of musical experiments in my journey as a musician.
In fact, a lot of my musical journey is me seeing something and being so interested that I try to make a version of that thing. In my first EP, Bad With Titles (Spotify, Apple Music), it was the song “Cold”. I had just learned about Minor 11th chords and how moving chord progressions in a specific way causes them to sound Darker or “Colder”. Thus came the song and the title of the song.
During my undergrad, I made several attempts to be a band leader and arranger. I tried to make live arrangements for several ensembles, failing multiple times, but ultimately resulting in the show 50/50, which I created for my Senior Recital.
One of my most recent experiments was a composition I wrote for my Jazz Combo at Georgia State University, called “The New Script”. This was my first time really composing anything for a group of people to perform, and not for myself to record in my room, and it was titled that way, as this was a new context for my music.
Another musical experiment is “Storm Call”, one of the songs on Bad With Titles II. Storm Call was written in my undergrad, through a challenge a classmate gave us.
See, being at Auburn and joining the Composition area, that was the first time I was working with other composers and artists on a regular basis. And often a few of us would go into the same studio room and do production and composition challenges
One of these challenges was just to set a 20-minute timer, work as fast as you can, and present to everyone else what you can come up with in that time. My result was the beginnings of Storm Call.
Storm Call, essentially was written with two competing string sections competing for the attention of the Listener. By the end of the challenge, I had a really good string call and response and a melody I really liked. I added some drums and played keys over it, and I ended up with something I would call epic, and something that I imagine would be playing as a superhero was fighting in a storm.
I’ve got a snippet here, and I really hope you will listen on Aug. 30 when Bad With Titles II comes out on all platforms!