blues du jour

i had some really feasty dumplings this afternoon at wencui with buddy ewert.

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my digital piano at home seems to have cought a virus or something. all the sounds in it has a strange slightly detuned ring to them, as if run through a ring modulator. but it´s old and i have played it a lot so if it´s giving in it´s no wonder. snif.

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the day when i eventually, four years after the fact, upgraded my computer..

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to the erotic prose of anaïs nin, somewhat energetic.

though you can play it anyway you desire.. like rather, slowly and making use of the built in transpositional melody in the end.

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back in dear old stockholm (tjockhult, nicknamed by dag vag).

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in the backseat of my dads car, heading north through the forested shire of ‘småland’ (a portion of sweden it takes ages to drive through, at least that is how i´ve always felt about it). it´s been a good week with friends and family and maybe that´s why this piece came out slightly melancholic. the 15-bar blues structure i guess i have to blame the ‘endless’ car ride..

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two ferry rides (apart from the train) on my way back to sweden (putgarden-rødby, helsingør-helsingborg) and a tune is constructed. i wrote ‘sturdy’ as an instruction on how to approach the melody due to the fact that those ships are rather slow movers.

on the train back to berlin, stopping at wolfsburg. a huge wolkswagen-sign bside the station. an annoying door signal. there it is.

my friend rita is a great sax player and i wrote this with her hungarian heart in mind. the intro flirts with bernsteins ‘america’ since ritas man tobie studies in new york.
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rita and tobie at the ‘sonnendeck’.

this day i took a trainride to the nearby city of lucerne, by the foot of the alps. half the melody written on the train, the rest on a café in a park. but the chords got adjusted in the ‘musik hug’ piano department on a funky schimmel upright. then i went back to basel and bought me a couple of pocket knives to bring back home. the recording was made next day in ritas studio, minutes before i had to rush away to the train to berlin, just one run through and bam. thanks rita, a pro you are.

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ritas studio is actually a carpenter’s workshop. very snug place.

katrin and veit got a little son, a charming rascal that this melody (with a certain sweetness to it) is dedicated to. helping out on trumpet is feya faku, a warm hearted music sorcerer of the best kind from south africa. we made the recording swiftly and illicitly at the birds eye jazz club just before opening.

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maximilian, veit, feya and katrin. sweet people.

through the bicycle friendly city of Basel runs the river Rhine, these days so clean that people swim in it. or drift rather since the current only allows for moving in one direction. people take their specially made water proof bags, walk up streams, put their belongings in the bag, seal it and make sure it contains enough air for proper buoyancy, then bobbing their way through the picturesque city center. before the last bridge you must re-enter shore, walk up for another round or enjoy a drink in the riviera-like afternoon sun at one of the buffetes. highly recommended. or you could do what i did, visit ritas studio and play some music:

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minutes before the splash

on the road again, not bringing my computer. pen and paper will do though.

i´ve always composed or come up with melodies and riffs when i sit down improvising by the piano but they usually melt into air before i nail them down on paper or any other medium, so sometime during the spring i got this idea for a blog with not so much words on it, just music in various forms. a blog as a means of a creative outlet, or as an instigator to solidify all those ideas.

the concept of a daily ‘blues’ theme dates back quite a few years from when i went to high school, and i kept on doing it for short periods of time every ones in a while, sometimes penning down the stuff and then forgetting about it.

apart from me being a big fan of blues music (it´s the backbone of all good (musical) things (coming out of the USA) the blues form lends itself very well to short concentrated pieces of compositions, with a clear structure that you can both rely on and deviate from. and i’ve always loved the concept and look of ‘the real book’ where you only have the core information about a piece of music, which leaves the interpretation to the players. so with that in mind i try to scribble down (and/or record) only the essential elements. the recordings are in general done very quickly and are quite crude, as a mere documentation. they are not intended as production demos.

the material in this blog is of my own origin except where indicated. however, inspiration to the songs come from from a wide array of sources over the years. it´s highly possible, if not inevitable, that there is a resemblance to existing music. nothing new under the sun. then again, this very constellation of humans only exists now. now´s the time.

if there´s anything in here you want to use or experiment with in any context feel free to do so, but please drop me a line and share it:

magnus at smallfunk dot com

be creative, keep the flow going, support your favourite art.

m.