Saligia - The 7 Deadly Sins
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And last in this mini-series of writers as musicians (or vice versa) – me. Late last year I endeavored to set the 7 deadly sins to music, using only piano sounds. The project took about a month and a half to execute. I am a mediocre composer, a lousy pianist, and an execrable sound engineer, so it was a struggle. I’m happy with the result, though. The performances often sound stiff, but that’s intentional. Because of my lack of piano skills, I employed lots of computer quantization, though I did leave some performances untouched; those should be fairly obvious. I like to think of these as mutant player piano pieces. It’s weird to talk about one’s own music, but it’s not like anyone else is going to at this point. Warning: this is not metal – though a metalhead’s sensibility is evident, I think.
“Saligia” is an acronym for the Latin names of the 7 deadly sins. A friend told me she was surprised at how un-dark these pieces are. I don’t necessarily think of the deadly sins as bad things. They’re very human. I simply laid down whatever the words brought to mind. The bass is mostly just two notes. The second one is a flatted second, which opens up many possibilities when paired with the more vanilla arpeggiated figure above. The right side melody toggles between flatted and sharped thirds, too. So many wonderful things can happen when you shift one note.
Gluttony was the worst death in the Brad Pitt movie Seven. At first, I thought I’d go that route, but I found it to be “not me.” Instead, I went with a galumphing feel. I have a soft spot for Tom Waits, The Triplets of Belleville soundtrack, things that sound like old European cabarets. It was important to me in these pieces to have hummable melodies – single notes over solid chords. The bridge quotes from “It Had to Be You,” and the solo coming out of it quotes “Axel F” from Beverly Hills Cop. If you listen closely, you can also catch references to Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and “Moonlight Sonata.”
I’m fascinated by mechanical, geometric stacks of piano lines and chords. Michael Nyman is my biggest influence in this regard. “Greed” is pretty much a direct response to “The Heart Asks Pleasure First” from his soundtrack to The Piano. Moby’s “God Moving over the Face of the Waters” and Orbital’s “Kein Trink Wasser” (which is quite Nyman-influenced, I think) are also inspirations.
The germ of “Sloth” was Aimee Mann’s version of Harry Nilsson’s “One” from the soundtrack to Magnolia. The opening chords came easily, but I didn’t know where to take them. So I wrestled them down into a repeating vamp and stuck a Nine Inch Nails-esque melody on top (i.e., the sharped third). The pre-chorus/chorus was my take on the piano ballads that Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler does so well.
“Wrath” is also heavily influenced by Michael Nyman. The minor third modulations come from listening to black metal, though in retrospect such modulations were also common in ’70s prog rock. The harmony that enters at 2:08 reminds me of the intro to Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” – not an intentional reference, but one I think my subconscious dredged up. Techno fans may recognize the bridge as Detroit techno via Berlin’s Kanzleramt label, with a techno-type buildup and drop. This piece could work in a rock/metal context, I think – something like King Crimson or the NeurIsis sound.
This is my favorite of these pieces, but no one else seems to like it much. I tried to make the simplest melody I could, something somewhat Asian and pentatonic. The extended 9th “riffs” at 1:24 and 2:12 come directly from a childhood love of Andy Summers’ playing in The Police and Chuck Schuldiner’s work in later Death.
“Pride” lent itself to an imperious tango – though I had no idea how to write one. I listened to some tango and found the music theory way beyond me. So I ripped off the riff from Bizet’s Carmen and went from there. The bridge has my take on a Paul McCartney-style bass line, while the funeral march feel of the outro comes from Michael Nyman’s soundtrack to The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the intro melody come back in the outro as octaves. The outro builds up to great pomposity, then gets stripped away until one is left with nothing – that’s how pride works.
