Part of my current experimentation is attempting to schedule the main components of a musical project according to time constraints. In other words, project management ideas are being applied such that I can turn out a new piece reliebly every 28 days. I know (roughly) what I should be working on at any time in the project in order to meet the “deadline” as various milestones and criteia are in place. This methodical workflow pattern is a work in progress and will be documented at some point.
This blog however, is a continuation of how earworms assist (or otherwise hinder) progress. My latest production has gone through the stages indicated by the previous three posts. It resulted in a strong hook-line being sequenced and semi-produced and this did, indeed, through driving around listening to my test track, instill an earworm.
However, while the choruses were working out fine, the verses, as ever, became a struggle. It seemed that their chord structures wanted to be more sophisticated than normal. Unfortunatly, their more convoluted form changed the nature of the song. Maybe it was necessary; maybe it made for a much stronger piece, but it was no longer a trite catchy bit of pop music. I will return to this song as part of my other, more self-indulgent music project, but it has been disgarded as an earworm and rejected from my manufacturing schedule.
I suppose such a development is an example of variation and selection at work. Having made it through the early stages, subsequent variation pushed it in a different direction. Now, I could have forced the issue and shoehorned the piece into the earworm ideal, but the way that was going didn’t seem quite right and didn’t seem to be promising a suitable earworm: it was threatening deselection, as an earworm, at a later working point and so was deselected before any further effort and time was put into it.
Having other music projects, not just earworm constructs, has given me other development tracks. In this instance the piece cancelled as an earworm has simply been selected for on an alternative developmental track rather than being wasted work. The learning point here is that variants may start off fitting with the selection pressures, but via off and be rejected wholesale further down the development line.
Update
The verse and the chorus of this piece were clashing. The chorus was poppy while the verses were moody. The simple solution seems to be to split them out into two songs and in accordance with my priorities to rewrite the verses to fit the poppy choruses.
I’m finding that having a thematic narrative helps a lot. I’m currently experimenting with having a kind of “elevator pitch” a precis of about two clauses or sentences that sums the thing up. Very much like a TV schedule listing description of a programme.
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