N O W P O I N T

It has been a while since I have written a new track.

So , welcome back and I really hope you will enjoy this new creation of mine.

What can I say about this track? Lets start with something else first.

The Hiatus

Over the last few months, I have tried to approach music and writing in a new light. My constant urges to compose and arrange needed to be put to rest for a while. I think this was important for me, as well as for my music.

In the meantime, I wanted to absorb some music, listen to new songs, and try to make a bit of headway into playing something different and genuine.

Before I knew it, months passed.

'S t o r m g l a s s' was released in July 2023, and since then my work life has been constantly throwing challenges and I have tried to adapt my creative learnings to keep pace with it. I spent most of the days staying focused on my job, and then spent the evenings playing a little, listening to jazz, and just trying to absorb as much new material as possible.

Times like these , when things just get busy, there is a lull or just a creative block, a sort of a hanging intermission as some might call it, I try to hone some new skills and practice. The moments of daily life are just blended into one, one in-distinguishable from the other. But there is a certain utility to it, one of the primary reasons, is that this helps in breaking away from the focused effort of writing a full track.

Also the end of the year approached, and Christmas was wonderful. I spent a great deal of time outside, watching the people, the decorations and feeling uplifted by the spirit of Christmas. It was magical, in its own special way. Everywhere in the city, restaurants and pubs were decorated with vibrant and shining colours, glittering and wonderful. It was a cosy and fuzzy feeling.

Winter is difficult in Ireland, and it can be dreary and overcast for days, without a hint of sunlight. So, Christmas time is important to be able to stay in a positive spirit. Also, as the year draws to an end there are reflections and reminisces from the year gone by. It is a great time to take a step back and gather thoughts and make memories.

So, as I have mentioned, I tried to explore a bit of everything else in the meantime, whether it was music, food, festivals or visiting new places and creating some new memories. All in all I tried to keep the exploration free-form and flexible, with loose boundaries.

The Music

I have been trying to learn a bit of jazz and some of the arrangements in 'N o w p o i n t' use some of these new learnings. Specially inversions of minor and major 7th chords.

The track was near completion at the beginning of February. I was surprised when I realised that such a long time had passed already. So this track is as much as a look-back as it is a story of the present. .

Some of the noticeable attributes of this track are as below.

The intro and outro guitars are inspired by some African artists like Mdou Moctar, Vieux Farka Touré. I loved their trill technique and rhythmical sound, so I've tried to incorporate some of those techniques as best as I could.
There is a ample use of delay and other FX like reverb. There is an interesting whammy effect in the Outro inspired by Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine). It's called the Dive-Bomb effect in which a certain note is pitched up or down by a certain amount in a continuous way.
There are multiple layers of guitars and there is only one synth being used throughout the track.
The bass lines in the track are a combination of pitched down FM synth sounds from the Digitone Elektron synth and also pitch shifted guitar sounds from Neural DSP's plugins.

I was satisfied with this track, and I think there were so many pieces of this that were worked on independently at different points in time, that its almost a miracle that it sort of fits together.

Lookback

Songwriting is a journey, and sometimes there are no immediate destinations or arrivals. Some of the points are discoveries along the way and coalesce into a whole as and when their time comes. Also songwriting needs other experiences to feed from. Songs are like stories which needs subjects, flow, interactions, and tensions and resolutions. The more that it can do this the more it can move the audience. But the best way to learn is to watch the flow of normal life and absorbing fully the everyday experience that is around us.

Technically, this was a challenging project, as it has influences from different media and forms. I have tried to use both electronic and acoustic media, which differ in their modes of programming and performance.

It was difficult at times, as I had some ideas from different sessions, which I wanted to use, but they were in a different tempo or key, and I had to re-write those parts in context, without morphing the original idea into something different from the original.

I hope that how it came together is enjoyable and interesting to listen to!

Thank you again for listening, and please do let me know what you think in the comments.