BITTERSWEET
Tenor Saxophone Solo: Erik Brandell
The main idea to Bittersweet came together over one long practice session, which started with exploratory practice evolving into a deliberate practice session, where the ideas were refined. The motif started with a conventional C6 voicing in open position, by revoicing this into a second inversion C major triad and highlighting the major seventh instead of the sixth as a melodic pivot, the piece began to take shape. From that point, the melody and harmony evolved organically, each element leading to the next. I decided to keep overall form simple, following a classic head–solo–head structure found in jazz compositions. Chordal textures throughout the piece draw on a mixture of drop 2 voicings, string skipped fractal shapes and LCR voicings. The title, Bittersweet, originates from the feeling I had when I wrote it, contrasting tonal and emotional qualities, balancing ambiguity with motion and stillness.
This clip is from another session, when I picked the song back up after some time. Before commiting to the simple form I wanted to experiment with adding another section or perhaps leading the tune in another direction. The clip shows the deliberate practice of a potential chordal break that would eventually lead into a darker, eerie, almost horror like section.
