The Saga is a concept piece that Peter Curtiss and I wrote in 1983. It was Peter’s original idea, as he had a number of snippets of piano ideas floating around his 19 year-old brain that all seemed to want to form a coherent whole. So for a few weeks we focused on doing that, adding parts here, subtracting others there. When we were done, the overall form was exactly what you hear in this arrangement. Of course, back then it was arranged for one piano and one guitar, but the structure was exactly the same. When we played out, it would open a two-song set – The Saga followed by Blue Curtains & Ice. I have no idea how we remembered the whole thing, but we could play it without any written music back then. Just Peter with his Yamaha CP-30 and Korg Poly800, and me with my Ibanez Roadstar Strat copy, a FlanJam flanger and an analog delay. The guitar still exists. The analog delay still exists but doesn’t work. The Flanjam died in a basement flood thirty years ago, peace be upon it. Peter’s keyboards have since been supplanted by all sorts of latest technology from Yamaha …although he did recently hunt down a used CP-30 for nostalgia’s sake.
Over the years I have become mildly obsessed with the idea that this is actually an overture to a larger work. Thus the full, latter-day subtitle: “A Groove-y Overture”. I started writing the songs for the larger work a few years ago, but time is at a premium these days, and it’s going to be a long-term kinda project. Now that Peter and I are actively creating music together again, perhaps we can put our heads together. Until then, the overture finally exists in arranged form.
The recording came together off and on over 15 months, beginning in late 2022. Peter kicked things off with a piano track to outline the structure. I then spent a fair amount of time honing tempo changes and adding a reference guitar part. Peter then worked on various piano tracks, and I started working on guitar and bass parts. It was a lot of work, so we set it aside a few times to let ideas simmer as we worked on other songs. By fall, I had accumulated a bunch of arrangement ideas and began working out parts for various sections. We set it aside again late in the year to work on the Christmas song that we released, Promise Me (You’ll Be Home for Christmas). After the new year, we re-focused our attention on this. Peter added the organs; I worked on the orchestration. And, well, it’s finally done.
Peter did the pianos, organs and the violins. I did the guitars, basses, percussion, sound effects, orchestral arrangement and the mix.
Enjoy.
The Saga, Part 1: A Groove-y Overture