My yearly treat

Approximately one year ago, Californian artist Susan Cornelis, who also, through Cafe Crem, has become a dear friend – proposed me to create a soundtrack for her “Soul Sketching” video.

It was a challenge, and great from fun, and from it came the musical piece “Eire” which was composed specifically for her video. a year on, and Susan has created Number 2 in the Soul Sketching series, and once again was kind enough to consider me to create the music. (Guess I did something right the first time!)  I stayed with the Gaelic theme, and used a recorder as a nod to Susan’s Norwegian ancestry. The entire melody popped into my head as I awoke from a dream at 5 a.m. – and much to Miki’s amusement, I dashed into the studio to get the idea down before I forgot it. Like many Celtic pieces, it is a simple tune, the appeal, I hope, being its gentleness. The intro and outro recorder melody is reinforced with an acoustic guitar following along note for note. I hope I have captured the mood Susan wanted.  This kind of interaction – of which I’m fortunate to enjoy with many of my friends in Cafe Crem – is so energising!

© Music: “Misty Mountains” Kev Moore 2009 All Rights Reserved

Ideas Frenzy

You put your left arm in......

One of the things I love about our interaction on the blogosphere, and Cafe Crem and its members in particular, is the way we seem to support and inspire each other. our good friend, the American artist Susan Cornelis, recently posted a piece evoking her youth, and illustrated it with a phrase that just got my creative synapses firing. I decided there and then that I would write a song that incorporated MY perception of HER time, using her phrase as the chorus. I wrote the lyrics straight off without thinking in a stream of consciousness kind of way. I wasn’t going to share any of this until the song was completed, but since starting this Mooremusic blog, I think it would be interesting to share the process with you (however long it takes!)

A Ceiling, incomplete...

Obviously, as my studio is not ready yet (it’s coming along, see pic) I won’t be recording it any time soon, but I thought I’d share the lyric with you. you will see, as I post subsequently about this, that the lyrics may change to fit the tune, or perhaps, the lyrics will dictate the measure of bars. I have no set way of working, So it will be interesting to see where this takes me. Susan’s original lyrics are in red.

Oh my! What would they say
To that Boomer in me, who is ever ready
To get up and go to take that magical mystery tour?
Mom and Grandma, want to come along?

It was the high sixties
Boy, was it hot that day
We slid through the decade
On a doobie and a prayer

Feelin our way
Throwin’ away the rules
Made up new ones as we went along
A whole new constitution in a poem and a song
Ohio, Vietnam, a hundred new ways for us to stick it to the man

Oh my! What would they say
To that Boomer in me, who is ever ready
To get up and go to take that magical mystery tour?
Mom and Grandma, want to come along?

I take those rose coloured glasses from the dresser by the door
Look back with fondness to the freak I was before
Am I the same?, hey you’d better believe it sister
Just older and wiser, if not a little bit bitter

But I hang on to that ethos like a drowning man a straw
Cruise in Janis’s mercedes- Dance to Sly’s four on the floor
But hey Ray, I don’t need no J to recall our optimism from 40 years away
So I’ll pray so hard to whatever God you throw at me,
That all this peace and love will keep recurring throughout history
And all and all thats meant to be will fall and be at one with me
The sense and sensitivity the flower child thats within me…remains

Oh my! What would they say
To that Boomer in me, who is ever ready
To get up and go to take that magical mystery tour?
Mom and Grandma, want to come along?

Lyrics Copyright 2008 Kev Moore & Susan Cornelis