I have already begun the story at philmccleanmusic.com and it is called "The Music Box". But I have yet to complete the piece, which at a little over a minute's duration is a bit of a joke that I haven't. But the music is there, the vision is there but there is something off about it that I can't pluck out of the air. Maybe I'm over thinking it. It's probably due to how pleased I am with "Heresy" and also how I don't want to retread the same story.
The hardest part is the "violining". This is a technique where you feedback an amp and through volume, tone and finger placement, you achieve (or try to) a sweet violin-like sustain to wrap around the melody. But it's not a perfect science and requires the lightest and yet, at times, firmest touch. The slightest artifact, i.e string scrape, can be echoed ten fold if you are not careful, especially when using a form of delay with it, which means a mistake can be repeated which I don't want. The piece is led by a music box motif, with various strings and voices throughout. I want it to convey a childlike innocence with a little bit of an unnerving edge. As the director M. Night Shyamalan said to the composer James Newton Howard of the theme for "The Sixth Sense" It should bring to mind "an invisible animal in the room that you can hear and feel
moving around and that you feel threatened by; just as you think
you're going to be attacked, it leaves the room".
The two pieces are nothing alike, but this is the same idea I wish to convey, albeit in a less threatening more ethereal manner, if you will. Thanks for reading.
