Some music of mine, explained…

“Captiva” was written while I was living in South Florida, and is imaginatively named after Captiva Island in the Gulf of Mexico. The 5/4 bossa-esque G-7 groove was the first part of the tune to take shape, and I came up with a melancholy chord progression that traverses 3 minor keys, a major 3rd apart. I realized I could cover all 12 keys if I repeated this progression descending in minor 3rds, and then the challenge became making a musical statement with this concept. What I hope is a singable melody, ties these key centres together. Bars 19 onwards are added to give us a break from the many modulations preceding them, and the coda is yet another attempt at bringing different key centres together with a singable melody.

This tune is based on an inverted 7/4 clave groove, and its title comes from the band name I gave a quintet who would play into the wee hours around Miami. The South Florida Task Force was a special unit during Reagan’s war on drugs, focused on the influx of narcotics around Miami and the Florida Keys region. Like many US State Departments (think Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) it made for a great band name!

I learnt this 2 bar 7/4 clave from drummer Dafnis Prieto while living in Miami, and tweaked it around a bass line I came up with in D minor. The tune evolved from there into three 7 bar phrases in differing key centers, and I wrote a melody that followed this form. The first and second endings are slightly more conventional, but feature rhythmic hits surrounding a tricky intervallic line that evolves after the second time through the melody.