This came to my attention through my love of music and film, the combination allows for emotion to grow. When I was watching films I noticed that the music was very emotional and I wanted to incorporate this feeling into my own music to also portray emotion over pop chord progressions.

I wanted one of the songs in the ‘Tusk’ set list to sound different from the others, and wanted to portray a much darker tone that would create a presance in the room as we played. I was inspired by the Imperial March and wanted to know why it sounded so dark in the intro section, I found that the chord shift was going out side of the key centre (Gm to Ebm) instead of the 6th chord in the scale being major it changes to minor.

‘The Imperial March’ – Star Wars

I decided to work on a song that would use the same chord trick as the intro section in the Imperial march to try and achieve the same dark feeling as it does, so began writing using the chords (Bm to Gm) to try and develop it further.

I however don’t want to make the song too dark or sad which could result in it being alienated from the rest of the set list, so i am going to look at different dark film music that uses major chords and try to incorporate this into the song to add colour to the song but also to avoid clashes with other songs in the setlist.

One film that came to my attention was Tim Burton’s ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’, the films gothic design, complex characters and fantastic use of harmony, portrays a dark feeling. Paying close attention to ‘This is Halloween’ I found was a very dark piece of music but uses happy major chords (Cm to Bb), It has a dark chord sequence that has some relief from being too dark by using the Cm to Bb trick.

‘This is Halloween’ – ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’

I decided that i would use the chords Bm, Gm, Em for the first two bars of the verse before changing to Bm, A, Em for the second two bars. This is just so that the chords arent too dark and feel foreign compared to the rest of the material, almost as if there was a splash of colour at this point.

I also want to write a song that has a Sci-Fi feel, this is because my bands genre is labbeled as Psychedelic Alternate rock, so i want to be able to portray a sci-fi feeling through my writing. I took great inspiration from ‘The Force Theme’ from star wars as the chord shift (Cm to F) in the intro instantly makes you feel like you are in outer space.

‘The Force Theme’ – ‘Star Wars’

I began playing around with the chords (Gm, C, Eb, Dm) to create a more psychedelic sci -fi feel, however I intend to use this chord shift to open one of the songs in tusks setlist to create the feeling that the song is in outer space.