Some more blues

Today I've been working on what I think will be the "A" section. First I used the five notes (see post below) to create a bassline, that would also correspond to my rhythmic scheme. I tried not to imply any particular key or chord progression:



From the same notes, I also constructed a chord voicing which I then hooked up with the bassline to form an accompaniment figure. For variation, I moved the voicing up and down using parallel motion. I still wasn't thinking about tonality - just melody and sound.





Knowing that the "A" sections would be 12 bars, I decided to actually use a regular blues progression, even though I had no obvious key center. I thought perhaps that could be a cool thing, to just imply the blues a little bit (and by that also referring to the large form). In any case, it would at least give me some variation. So I simply transposed the bassline up a fourth in the 5th bar, to get a subdominant feel - and then back to the "tonic", and so on.

On top of that I needed a melody. I wanted to use the same material, but in order to get some tension against the bassnotes (instead of doublings), I transposed the five notes to a different key. With that I came up with a simple little motif - a riff, really - that sounded very "old school". I thought it would make a nice contrast to the modern, almost atonal accompaniment. Also, it had a 16th-note, double-time swing feel, which could be interesting against the 7/8 meter:



We'll see how it works...