In Walked Slim - A Chord Melody

Sometimes, tunes just fall out.

I was experimenting with some triads, and attempting some extensions. Adding some flat or sharped 5ths, 9ths, 11-ses.... that kind o' thing. Along the way I came up with this little chord melody. So, I put it down for posterity. Here, I'll go over the basics of the tune, and details on recording, etc.

This tune is a "chordal melody", and these are fun to create on accoustic guitar!! (Head over to MusicDispatch for books on Chord Melodies, Chord Libraries, etc.) It's in A, and/or Am. It's in 3/4 time at the start, (a waltz!!), and switches to 4/4 for the swing part. (When Slim walks in.....) If you look closely at the beginning of the tune, you'll see me doing some "interesting" A chords. The first is some kind of inverted A5, followed by an inverted A7add6, moving to a boring ol' D. This was the "invention" that started everything off.

From there, I got this melody in my head that I wanted to follow. Basically, what I did was, pick out the notes of the melody, (focusing on the B and E strings), and then fill in chords on top of the melody notes with whatever sounded "cool". I really wanted to stay away from the major chord sounds here, so I focused on filling in with minor 6ths, minor7thflat5ths, etc., etc. I've discovered that, if you know the chord shapes, you can select one that has the melody note where you want it, and then listen to see if it works. This is where it pays to have a big vocabulary of chords to pick from. So again, the process was

• Create the melody on the high strings
• Fill in above the melody note with a chord from your chord vocabulary

Once I had the basic tune(s) in my head, I moved on to finishing the song form. This is where I like to fire up my Band In The Box (BIAB) program. Using BIAB, I wrote down the chords for the backing track. BIAB is great for doing this as you can just select a style, and write out the chords, and it does the rest. I find BIAB is EXTREMELY useful for "finishing" a composition. For example, in this case, I had a couple of melodies, etc., in mind. However, it wasn't until I tried to set them down in BIAB that I "discovered" the true form of the song I was writing. For example, if you listen carefully, you'll note there is a measure of 4/4 right in the middle of the 3/4 waltz. I had been playing it that way to make the melody work. However, I didn't fully understand it until I attempted to tell BIAB how to "back me up". That's what I mean by "finishing" a composition.

Band In The Box is VERY intuitive, but it's not always perfect. (What software ever is??!?!) One area I had trouble with was changing tempos and meters on specific bars. BIAB has a very intuitive utility for doing this, but I've found it doesn't always work like you want it to. For example, in the 3/4 waltz, there is that one bar that has 4 counts. What I tried at first, which didn't work, was to create a 4/4 bar on that measure, and then switch back to 3/4 on the next measure. What I had to do instead was, ADD a measure of a single (1) beat between two 3/4 measures, and that worked. I had some similar trouble when switching over to the 4/4 swing section in the middle. I had originally set the entire song style as a waltz (3/4), and then attempted to switch over to a 4/4 swing where I wanted to. That did NOT work. What I had to do instead was, set the style of the ENTIRE song as 4/4, and then set the bars I wanted to be 3/4. I don't understand why it wouldn't work the other way, (which seems more intuitive to me), but it wouldn't. By setting the base style of the song as 3/4, (a waltz), BIAB could NOT figure out how to handle the 4/4 bars when I switched into them. However, starting as a 4/4, and switching into 3/4, (and back again), DID work.

Once I had a backing track built in BIAB, I used a few tricks to bring it to life. For example, I turned off everything but the drums on the bars that lead into the 4/4 swing section. That sounded "cool", and more "realistic". BIAB makes that easy by adding dots, ("."), after the chords in the editor.

Now that I had a backing track, I wanted to do a recording. For this, I relied on the trusty BOSS BR-600 (again!). Step one was, I recorded my BIAB backing track via the line-in into the BR-600, on tracks 5/6. Now I flipped over to track 1 for the guitar input.

At this point, I had to spend some time picking an effect I liked. I had just put new strings on the Gretsch, and I found I was not liking everything I was hearing. The lower A and E strings REALLY resonate on that hollow body. I couldn't seem to get them balanced well with the top 4 strings. (Next up: Experimenting with unmatched string sets on the Gretsch. Stay tuned !!) Anyway, I found an effect I liked, but as you'll notice, I really struggled with overdriving it. If you listen closely, you'll hear that it's really overdriven in a few spots.

To compensate for the overdriving, I decided to add another effect to the sound AFTER I had done the initial bounce of the tracks to make the song. The BR-600 has an effect called, "Classic LP" that sounds like the song is playing on an old analog phonograph. (Retro dude!!) I set up the BR to play the output of my tune through this effect, and re-bounced the song to create the final.

And that's it! For the video, I just used Windoze Movie Maker (again), and selected a few "antiquing" effects to match the audio. I had an idea to do something really cool with the video, (so it wasn't just watching ME sit and play!!). BUT, after spending 5 hours FAILING to get some video editing programs to work, (Adobe AfterEffects, Wax 2.0, Jahshaka), I gave up. (Can anyone recommend any GOOD video editing programs???)

Enjoy!!