Early Levitation (demo)

I've been a bit in the pits lately,^[1] and have been playing a lot of guitar to self-soothe. Much of the time when I'm in this kind of mood I don't come up with anything that gets me excited, but it's important to do this thing that I do to keep myself focused on sound, and on my hands. It's grounding.

Noé suggested to me that I record more of my noodlings in case something pops out at me when I'm feeling more creative, so I've been making recordings with my phone's voice notes app.

Here's one idea that has actually jumped out at me:

It's very simple, but something about it shows a bit of promise to my ears. It's a climbing bass progression, alternating between stable and different flavours of unstable on the last note. Kind of typical in my music, but that isn't a bad thing.

The words are also very simple:

I had something pure,
I could float above the ground
Lately by the shore-
I will understand if you can't make it

Something about sitting on the floor and playing with simple musical ideas feels good to me. When I feel like shit, it's a way to feel close to the earth; to feel a little more stable. It kind of reminds me of being a kid and falling asleep on the creaky wooden floor in our house, watching light pool in the laquer at the bottom of the door.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a fireplace, and when we'd have fires around this time of year, I'd see the flicker of the firelight in that tiny space under the door and I'd feel safe. Maybe that's what I'm trying to reconnect with. I like to think this demo captures a little bit of that firelight.

And there you have it, a smaller, less-serious post for the blog. I want to do more stuff like this and show off some unreleased music, so maybe we'll see some more updates before the year is out! ;)

I hope you're warm and well <3

PS: For the tone nerds: I'm running a strandberg salen jazz nx6 in middle position through an EHX crayon for some crunch, into a Traynor YGL 2 clean channel with the spring verb all the way up. It's not subtle but I think it sounds nice.