SCP #11: Honeycomb
I love lyrics, words, text and poetry. They have always been the driving force of my composition practice, and I think Lydia's Needle from last week was possibly the first thing I've ever written without any kind of textual component. That makes today's contribution is my second ever instrumental piece (although can I call it instrumental even though I'm singing the melody?).
From yesterday I took the ascending major sixth interval that appears at the beginning of the melody and inverted it so it became a descending major sixth. This formed the backbone of the melody of the first half of the tune, and for the second half I transposed this descending sixth motif twice to develop the melody. Before I knew it I had the entire melody written.
I had wanted to work on some of the lyrical ideas from yesterday's writing exercises that I didn't use, but there's a certain art to fitting lyrics to a pre-composed melody that takes a lot of time and patience. It's not just a matter of shoe-horning text in, as language has natural stresses and melodic shapes that need to be adhered to, or else the phrasing of the words ends up awkward and strange. This is the reason I almost always start my work with some kind of lyrical idea, so that the melody can shape itself around the language rather than the other way around. I spent a good deal of time trying to fit some text into this one, but the angular melody with its intervallic jumps and syncopation made it a very difficult job. I have kept my drafts, so I might revise it later in this project.
The name comes from honeycomb cells, which have six sides. I had originally considered calling it Goose-Fall, with Goose from "6 geese are laying" and fall from the descending interval, but decided that name was just a bit too weird.
