A Latin American Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago me and my son were looking for something to watch on TV for the afternoon. As Halloween was on the way we settled the Disney film Coco. A first for him. Despite him initially complaining that it we weren't watching UP for the 16th time, he come away with a new favorite film for the month as well as a thresh set of songs to run around the house singing! I too found myself reminded oh how good the music in that film was. Disney rarely ever miss the mark when it comes to music but I found myself drawn to the Latin American style that I had very little experience in. One of the huge benefits of new Disney films is they tend to animate their instruments accurately meaning I was able to watch all of the interesting chord shapes and progressions that are very unique to this style of music. Thanks to this accessibility and by request of my son, I decided to have a go at learning the films most popular track "Remember Me". The biggest part of taking on this track was learning all the different variations of triads used. A big part of guitar in this style of music is how it reenforces the melody by matching up with it harmonically. Because of this its chord structures are often built with the intention of highlighting the melody within them. They rarely exceed more than 3 notes at a time and often exclude the 5th, substituting it for a sus 2, 11th or whatever the melody calls for. I found it to be a real stretch from what I'm used to but surprisingly manageable. The song is only short so I had it memorized after a few hours. The key now is getting it to slow nicely in the more complicated bits. Overall it has been very useful in expanding my musical knowledge and a nice surprise for the little one. I may even try and make something inspired by this when I have the time.

Beyond this fun little experiment and some other little projects I haven't had a super productive few weeks. Personal life has put the brakes on the Wwise project but I still hope to continue my recording sessions soon. The next step is still a big metal impact home recording session that I plan to make time for soon. Hopefully that will be the subject of my next post.