Here’s another new song, “Blood-Fires”, written on a toy guitar with only three strings to its neck. It helps to add limitations and restraints on composition. The Presidents Of The USA wrote their hits “Gump” and “Peaches” on a three-string. The artist Matthew Barney tied himself with fishing rope to a gallery wall and hung a canvas on the opposite wall, so that it would take a Sisyphean effort just to draw a single line. Beethoven was so awesome, the only thing left for his songwriting to progress was to take away his ears.
Call it the “Moonshadow Sonata.”
And if I ever lose my ears, I won’t have to hear no more.
The three-note chords are found in the verses. A parallel harmony of fourths in the upper two voices is paired with a suspended bass moving in the same direction, while producing sixth and seventh chords along the way. These quartel harmonies built out of fourths are an old trick I stole from somewhere. I go through phases of different chords. In my angsty teenage years, I favored the diminished but mellowed to a major seventh in my twenties. Now in my “late twenties,” I can’t get enough of fourth chords. Straight up the neck with one finger.
“Blood-Fires” is mostly in E Major, as all the best songs are. E Maj. is always a very white key for me, like pure white ivory bones of a virgin tusk surrounded by a ghostly ectoplasm of even whiter vibration.
Purchase “Blood-Fires” on Bandcamp for one dollar.
