I should be doing far more training for a 5km sponsored swim I'm doing at the end of April - but somehow it keeps not happening.
I swim up and down swimming pools. Sometimes for hours at a time. Sometimes I pretend to be a porpoise or other sea mamal. Sometimes I think about chord sequences of jazz standards I'm learning (it's much more interesting than counting). And sometimes, particularly if it's a nice warm indoor pool, I pretend I'm swimming in a warm tropical sea.
I've been mulling over the idea of writing something about the feeling of swimming for a while. I've also been experimenting with translating samba reggae rhythms onto the piano. This started out as an experiment to translate a rhythm I know as Levada. For the groove the LH is taken from the fundo & terceiro patterns - the drums that create a bassline in samba reggae. The RH is plays chords in the clave played on the repinque/baccorinha type drum. As usual - to try and get the groove working I started out slow and picked a couple of chords (in this instance C7, Fmajor7 to play with). Then I started making up and writing down a tune to go over the top, at that same slow speed, keeping the groove going beneath the long notes where I can. After, well, quite a lot of bars of alternating two chords I decided that it might be an idea to take the harmony on a journey somewhere else. So there's a little cycle of Vths sort of "bridge". The "solo" section is just those two chords (C7, Fmajor7) alternating again - which is great because even an improviser of my relative inexperience can just about cope with it without tripping herself up!
So - here it is - it's vaguely latin - and it's, well, it came out a little bit cheesy. But - as I explained on the project page a little cliche is an inevitable part of the learning process. It's difficult to start playing with, extending or breaking the conventions until you have a firm and practical understanding of said conventions.
As always the link is an unlisted you tube link - you're welcome to share it - but I prefer if you can direct people here so that they can see the context in which the piece was written.
It's not the best take...not yet...but I'll keep working on it.
