Where does Brumbylon Music Come From?

This week’s feature: The Puzzle 

At its inception, this piece of music was an experiment in timing. The initial “lick” began as a 9-beat per measure phrase, which continued throughout the other sections of the song. Musicians regularly use something called a click track when recording. The click track sets the tempo so it’s easier to sync up any additional tracks or digital sounds, or export the song to a different system. We at Brumbylon prefer to use digital percussion tracks instead. They tend to sound better than a click, and informs the direction of the song for a real drummer to create and track the final drums. Programming the percussion for The Puzzle was a bit challenging because of its unconventional 9-beatness (is that a word?)…but we finally figured it out. Ideally, this song would be recorded live with a full band instead of one track at a time.

The Puzzle has all of the sections of a song, but was not really intended to become more than what it is. If you listen carefully, you may notice that one of the guitar tracks contains a wrong note (something that sounds a bit off) which happens in the same place throughout the song, It was never fixed because The Puzzle was conceived as an experiment, one that we liked well enough to keep around. Does it have a future? Who knows.

There is not much that happens in the Brumbylon Cave that we consider to be time wasted. The cave is an experiment chamber, a musical boneyard. We play around with instrumental sections, recording techniques, lyrics, melodies, and countless other ideas that may or may not find their way into the songs that we publish. One never knows what will inspire us to chase the rabbit, or how far down the rabbit hole we will go. Sometimes the rabbit just jumps right in our lap. Such is the wonder of the cave…and the cave rabbit apparently!

Enjoy our little gift to you from Brumbylon – we hope it finds you well and feeds your soul. Stay tuned for next week’s feature when we invite you back INTO THE CAVE!

Where does Brumbylon Music Come From

This week’s feature: 5 – 6 Capo

The name is unfinished like the song…it had a meaning then. Basically, the guitar was only capoed on 5 of the 6 strings (a capo is a device that clamps down the strings to alter the key). It’s even possible that it was in a different tuning, but we’d have to go back and relearn it to find out!

This piece is still in its raw form, and known to us only as 5-6 Capo. First it was composed, and then learned well enough to be recorded (strangely, just because we write it doesn’t mean we can play it). But like many skeletons in the Brumbylon Cave it has yet to see the light of day. The arrangement of the song at this point in its life is more about the sections and how they flow into each other. Lyrics and melody, if they are ever created, may alter that arrangement. Some songs seem to come with a lyrical direction at the same time that the music is being written. Others, like 5-6 Capo, seem to arrive as just music – according to Lisa that means it’s up for grabs! Many Brumbylon songs have grown out of instrumental pieces like 5-6 Capo. Girls in the Trees and Crazy were created in this manner. We like this snippet and think it may evolve into a song at some point. Snippets that don’t become songs are sometimes deconstructed and used for parts!

Enjoy our little gift to you from Brumbylon – we hope it finds you well and feeds your soul. Stay tuned for next week’s feature when we invite you back INTO THE CAVE!