CW146

Last week’s song—“Or You Can Make Art,” from Wet Casements (2021)—ends with a solo.

The DX7 cadences on a final tonic, a C major triad, and the chord holds, drones on. An electric guitar comes in, playing rubato.

This solo adds a coda to the song, and because this track is last on Wet Casements, also the album.

The melodic playing—a clean, direct, reverb-heavy Strat with the highs rolled off—uses a C major scale with no Fs. Put another way, it’s C major pentatonic with Bs added. In any case, I was just playing whatever I heard; the palette wasn’t a decision ahead of time.

Today’s focus is the chords, also improvised, that end the solo, the song, and the album.

It was right after I played it that I realized something cool: The first four chords are all the same chord with the top voice dropping a half-step every time in relation to the other notes.

If the chord that follows those four only had a B in the bass instead of a C, the pattern would be unbroken. I like it how it is though. Because it wasn’t contrived, it was alive. I could do whatever happened. 💕