This week has been a good week for writing cadences. A few days ago I finally got past measure six which I've been stuck at for two months.
The music up to measure six felt very natural. Part of what I initially had going on in measure six did too, but I struggled to find notes for the last half that made way for measures seven and eight to round out the phrase. The bass sextouplets on beat two just felt right, but the way I split them among the drums made the rhythm want to end. I figured it should end with the basses and pick up with snare or tenors on beat three as a lead-in to the next measure. However, I never came up with anything that sounded good to me the day later.
Sometimes I'd press on, act as if the measure were fine and try to lay down some more notes. Nothing felt right. A few times I even tried to start from scratch on measure six, but that didn't work either. The basic rhythm of the first two beats of measure six seemed to belong, but something about it needed tweaking.
Since beat two featured bass sextouplets, I changed the beat from three sets of doubles, to two sets of threes. The three doubles -- from bass one to three -- closed out the "scale" and felt like an ending. Splitting the sextouplet in half, onto bass 1 and then 2, lead nicely into two more beats of split up sextouplets. So measure six became a measure filled mostly with bass runs, and in measure seven the snare and tenors pick up the sextouplets and transition into other rhythms.
Having made it past that, I used a measure of rolls to lead into a groove I had come up with last week. It's about the easiest way I know to lead into a groove, and seems a good fit. At least it helps me lay down some notes. And of course, since I'm now at a groove, I can easily add four or eight more measures at a time by extending and varying the groove slightly. Quite nice. Whew.
I know, my last post was about overcoming writer's block, but in this case, I didn't use any of the methods I talked about. Maybe they'll come in handy later. Or better yet, maybe I need to come up with some bullet-points for figuring out why I'm getting stuck in the first place. For measure six, it seems to be that I simply hadn't exhausted the possibilities for the last part of the measure.
Side note: Maybe I should update the audio preview of this cadence. Hmmm.
Have any thoughts or suggestions?
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