8.11.2019
First of all: I'm aware that it seems a pretty bad idea to analyze the music you wrote by yourself.
Doing so, you risk to be perceived as a musician who is steered „by her head”, rather than by her intuition. Using one's head is not a bad thing at all (I would consider anyone who thinks otherwise – well: headless?!). But an artist is supposed to follow her emotions rather than the „cold” working of her conscious mind. To conform with these expectations, I should keep my mouth shut.
To tell the truth: I don't think so much when playing my guitar or my violin, improvising on an attempt to come up with new ideas. What I do, though, is analyzing my playing afterwards (and writing it down, so I can get back to it later).
Nevertheless: here are some unsorted remarks to Memento:
The last verse of the choir is repeated twice: the introduction (minus the first two phrases of the solo-violin) is a variation, and so are the last few bars from the two guitars.
The first 4-bar pattern, in E-minor, played by the acoustic guitar, has a long breath: it continues until the solo of the distorted lead guitar ends – and it won't come back. The guitar solo prepares some new interpretations of the pure E-minor chord (it goes to B-major/A-minor). The string section picks up on these changes, when finally the basic harmonic structure „gives in”, and follows. From that point, the chords get more and more „complicated”.
At some point, the tempo slows down, with a melody presented by the acoustic guitar (plus bass & drums). In these eight bars, the melodic and harmonic material is introduced for almost all variations until the end.
There is a certain structure of rhythm: the entire section before the solo vocals kick in, is a straight 4/4, but structured as 3+3+2/8. In the first verse, there are some „breaks” in 3+2/8 (just “leaving out” one 3/8). The following passage leads from 3+3+2/8 to 3+3+3/8 (just „adding” one eight). The choir in the finale is a 9/8 (strictly „in time”, by the way – no tempo changes here), although the melody „hides” the simple meter.
Although I have to play to a click (all instruments are played „live”, but one after the other), the tempo is changing all the time. I spent a lot of time to build a „tempo-track” with my recording-software – I believe, this work pays off a great deal, and makes a lot of impact on the „live”-feel of the recording.
