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Singled Out: Suhy, Silvergold and Alvaradotells's Malachite Dream

11/18/2015
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Guitarist Ray Suhy from the jazz rock trio Suhy, Silvergold and Alvarado tells us about the song "Malachite Dream" from their brand new album "Tessellations," which was released last Friday. Here is the story:

Shortly after beginning the writing process for "Tessellations", I started humming the main bass line to this tune as I was walking around one day. I sang it into my phone so I wouldn't forget it and when I got home I began to flesh the song out. The bass line ended up being in alternating measures of 5 and 6 and I had no clue what to do with it! I put it on loop on my laptop for what must've been an hour or so just trying to hum different melodies and rhythms and finally the main chord jabs/melody came to me.

Once I figured out the main "A" section of the song, I wanted a run/short melody to contrast it. I played the bass line a few times and just improvised different "B" sections for a while until the ascending Bmaj7 Lydian Augmented run came to me.

After all the heady information in the melody sections of the tune I really wanted to strip things back and make it sparse to start the solos. The bass groove came to me first and then I wrote this cycle of Minor7th chords so the solo would move through some different moods.

I added on the intro after we decided to start the record with this song. Starting the record off with the baseline didn't seem right to me, so I dialed up a bunch of delay and started improvising off of an Ebmaj7#5 chord. I wanted the intro to have an unresolved, ominous feeling to it that set up up the bass line well. Rolando and Alex really played great on this and helped me achieve the kind of dynamics and feeling I was going for on this.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

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