Chord Movements: I’ve been writing a lot of chordal music for guitar and trying to find interesting and new movements between different voicings. I had started thinking to use widely spread drop 2 - double drop 3 voicings (e.g. for C Major 7:- G (6th String) E (5th String) C (Third String) B (First String). So I started by writing passages derived from these type of voicings. I found this sometimes to be too many notes and have been looking for ways to reduce the number of notes. I’m liking to try and see which notes I can remove that don’t change the tonality or function of the chords e.g. if it’s Am7 you might not need all the 4 notes, it could even be the 3rd or the 7th you don’t need depending on what came before the chord. So I’m trying to listen a lot more to the implied tonality and harmony from each chord. It can just take a very small movement within a sequence of chords to change the tonality or key of the phrase. Guitarists like Bill Frisell, Mike Walker and Jim Hall seem to be amazing at this type of thing.

Zooming in and out: Trying to write around 12 pieces at once for the Silent Movie that tie together in someway is quite challenging. I find it’s been helpful to regularly zoom out when writing. Zooming out to the full phrase that the part I’m writing is part of or to the entirety of the piece or zooming out further to see how the piece fits in to the film relative to the storyline and the other pieces. I tried to colour code common threads between pieces when writing them out to stop myself getting dizzy with trying to work it out!

Not Overwriting: I’m trying to write a bit differently this time and leave space for improvisation. It’s tempting when at home to write a lot of fancy stuff or lots of notes but in writing for Jazz musicians space seems important as Jazz musicians create a lot of ideas and music spontaneously. Leaving space to listen to the sounds and groove so the musicians can add what they hear and bring themselves to the music.