Matthew Mark Miller – Music

One of the criticisms of my first album, The Blue and the Grey, was that it was too eclectic, incoherent, and inconsistent.  That hit home with me; I’ve never quite known what genre or sound should define my “style.”  Some singer-songwriters are so distinctive that you hear a few chords and go, “Oh, that’s Jack Johnson!  Oh, that’s Dave Matthews!  Oh, that’s Jeff Buckley!”  Not me…

The problem is that I’m sort of an artistic chameleon.  If I listen to a bunch of something, I get a bunch of something in my head, and next thing you know I’m being creative in that vein.  An aside: I do the exact same thing with my writing.

So yeah.  What’s the “Matthew Mark Miller” sound?

My brother says I have a distinctive sound, though he means that in a somewhat derogatory way…”All your songs sound the same…blah blah jazz chord jazz chord.”

Recently, I’ve embraced what may become my “sound,” if only at least for my next album.  That sound is defined by the following:

• Color chords (sixth chords, suspensions, 9th chords, maj7 primarily)
• Groove-driven rhythms
• Melodies emphasized through chord progressions

This takes me at least one step away from songs like Inclined, Bohica, and Luci Loves Me, which feature syncopated, fret-muted progressions with complex breaks.  Below are two examples (again, rough recordings made with a palm recorder in my living room) of progressions which will more likely exemplify my style in the next few.

Prodigal Son

Recorded ‎Tuesday, ‎September ‎05, ‎2006, ‏‎6:50:52 PM.

On Its Head (working title)

Recorded ‎Sunday, ‎January ‎18, ‎2009, ‏‎1:18:28 AM.

Thoughts

I’m struck by the similarity between these two ideas.  Recorded more than two years apart, they represent the same sort of musical thinking…establishing a catchy, harmonizable melody through a chord progression while leveraging colorful, open chords.  Obviously, both of these would need considerable cleaning up before recording, but I like where it’s all going.  Thoughts?

Progressions