Too Much
Music of Steve Watt and Neil Ayer

Home Story Music Sounds Pictures Production

The Music :

More information on the music will be here soon.

Steve's nylon string guitar part in "Jupiter's Chariot" is based on magic squares. What is a magic square, you ask?

A magic square is a square array of numbers consisting of the distinct positive integers 1, 2, ..., n^2 arranged such that the sum of the n numbers in any horizontal, vertical, or main diagonal line is always the same number.

In this example, everything adds up to 10. I can't remember which magic square was used, but Steve developed such a square, then laid out the the numbers from left to right, top to bottom and assigned pulses to the result. So in this example the resulting rhythm would be:

1, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1, 2, 3

or

quarter note (1), whole note (4), dotted half (3), half (2), whole (4), etc.

Then he offset the sequence four times to get:

1, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1, 2, 3
3, 1, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1, 2
2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 1
1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4

and played the line one rhythm with his thumb on the 6th string, the line two rhythm with his 1st finger on the 5th string, line 3 2nd finger 4th string, and line 4 3rd finger 3rd string.

So there you go.

More on Magic Squares.

Hey, kids! Did you ever want to play all those wacky polytonal chord voicings like the ones you heard on "Too Much"? Well here they are, written in Steve Watt's own handwriting.

.