The second approach to how we develop our yoga music sequences is to write the music FIRST, and THEN think about which yoga sequences go with the music (see post https://swara.yoga/how-to-write-music-for-yoga-part-1/ to learn more about the reverse order). We would like to illustrate this approach with the creation process of “Breathe”, the first song on the album “Carried by Breeze”.
- Song idea
Musicians have different approaches to writing music. In general, however, the field can be divided into two types: the first type of musician starts with the instrumental part of the music, that is, a melody, chord progression, or rhythm, and then writes the lyrics to a finished instrumental. The second type starts with a lyric and then develops the melodies, chords, etc. around that lyric.
In the case of “Breathe”, the starting point was the chord progression (Dm – Edim – F – Gm – Dm – Edim – F – C), which was created on guitar first:
2. Production of the music, lyrics
This chord progression was the foundation for the song “Breathe”. The concept for “Carried by Breeze” was to create a classical, organic album that contains only classical instruments. Accordingly, we chose a harp for “Breathe”, which plays the basic chords:
To give the album a more organic touch, we had some of the instruments recorded in nature, including the violins:
After that we wrote the lyrics and recorded the vocals.
3. Yoga sequences
We felt that a calm, gentle flow suited the slow, meditative nature of the song. We divided the song into two different sequences, both very gentle, and suitable for the warm-up part of class. See the second sequence here:
The only subsequent change to the music of “Breathe” was the wonderful “violin accents” to provide an acoustic “candy” while the hips pulse rhythmically.
Namaste!
