Exploring "Goblins Lurking in the Darkness"

A J Greengrove

Published:

Goblins Lurking in the Darkness: the most blatant dungeon synth parody of this album.

(Note to reader: these are my earlier blogposts heavy in music theory and meandering in thought. I’ll slowly revisit and backlink posts to clarify things.)

This improvisation seems to explore what other voices can do while one voice performs 1-7; 7-1 “pendulum” movement.

To peek into this ‘audio dungeon exploration’ before shopping it in the Bandcamp market (for name your gold coins):

The piece opens with the static bass utilizing a pedal point schema. The 0:4 mark (see player below for playback) sees a 4-3 movement in the upper voice against the 7-1. The 0:6 mark sees a 6-5 movement similarly.

The 0:9 mark is more embellished, but can be reductively said to be a 4-3 movement. In the 0:16 mark, the three voices utilize a simple faux bourdon -technique.

(LilyPond code)
#(ly:set-option 'resolution 200)
\version "2.24.4"
\language "english"
\pointAndClickOff
\header { tagline = "" }
melody = \relative a, { a8 e' a4 gs8 r4. }
\score {
  <<
    \time 4/4
    \new Staff { \clef "bass" \melody }
    \new TabStaff \with {} <<
      \new TabVoice { \melody }
    >>
  >>
}
The piece's motif in musical notation.

Figure 1: “Goblins Lurking in the Darkness” Motif

Perhaps more a question to the reader rather than a statement, can the 0:25 mark be read as an indugio, that is a suspenseful pedal point schema on scale degree 4?

In the 0:43 mark we hear a ponte, that is a pedal point schema on scale degree 5.

Here’s the recording session video of the piece: