One fine saturday morning (3 am Central European Time to be precise), myself and some of my favorite Kompozarians were having one of many entertaining, motivating and inspiring Kompoz chats, on this particular occassion, the chatters were myself, Lonnie, Jason and Kevin. I was quite tired, but thought it be a waste of time to allow such talented musicians get away from this chat without having produced some music. The guys were probably tired too (it being Friday night in the US), so they did not protest too much when I asked each of them to supply a chord.

Jason's inital Bm was fine, that is always a good start, and then Lonnie jazzed it up a bit with an Am6. The real problem with kompozing this way is - as you may have guessed - when you let a drummer in the chat room. Kevin unceremoniously threw in an F. Ugh. In order to escape from this dead end, we had to call upon Lonnie again, who graciously supplied a G to release us. Phew. At this point I had to go get the guitar, and quickly realised that a well placed Cm6+2 would round off the progression in a very nice way. After some noodling and some elaborate re-coloring and marginalising of the F (it is still there, don't worry Kev, it just sounds more jazzy and is used as a passing chord), we had a tune.

A quick draft was recorded and put up as Saturday Morning. This might had been the end of a very inspiring and fun experiment, but little did we know what Lonnie had up his sleeve...

It turns out that Lonnie in addition to being a monster bass player is not only an excellent singer, but also a gifted lyricist (although he emphatically denies it)! Before we knew it, we had words and beautiful vocal harmonies to go with the tune, all delivered in a very jazzy style. This, in turn, prompted Kevin to dig up every single brush he could find in his house (we had to stop him from getting the toilet brush) and attack his snare drum with a feel that suited the tune perfectly. Jason tried desperately to get chord names out of myself for the guitar part, hmmm but if it was hard to play, it should be hard to learn ;) (or is it because I don't KNOW the names of the chords? More likely, yes)

Meanwhile in North Carolina...

Marty had sneakily - without our knowlegde - oiled up his best saxophone and done several Zen breathing exercises to get his lungs up to speed. One fine night, under the pretense or having to leave the chat room to go and watch some unusually interesting paint dry, he put his plan in action and BAM! we had a saxophone solo which honestly brought tears to my eyes.

The conclusion of all of the above is that collaboration on Kompoz really works. It is one thing to compose something at home and to send it up for contributions. That is also very inspiring and exciting, but to create the tune together with some of the most talented musicians I have ever come across is one notch higher on my scale. The music written here is something I would never in a million years be able to write myself.

Now, if Raf would please enhance the chat room slightly, we will have a triple CD written in there in no-time :)

Thank you Jason, Lonnie, Kevin and Marty for this wonderful journey and for you infinite musicality.

Don't ever stop!

Rock On

B