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Who Doesn’t Like Poppy Seed Bread?

Poppy Seed Bread

Poppy Seed Bread isn’t your normal Brothers Burn track.  Starting life as a slower BPM (72) than normal (90-110), the deeper earth-shifting bass line was sparse and ominous, and reminded me of Talking Head’s “Drugs”:

So I leaned into that.  Altered the rhythm to be more sporadic.  Changed it to a minor key, then searched for an instrument that would have a more unsettling vibe.  Settled on a trumpet, drowned in reverb.  Added slightly off-center percussion bits, then a sliced bit of a vocal.  All in all, worked well.  But… Still wasn’t there.

Then I heard about the Locrian scale from Jonathan Armandary (the brains behind Soundtrack Academy and some great Udemy classes).  The Locrian scale is descibed as “dark, unsettling, and unstable”.  Looking at the notes in the tracks, I noticed that just a little nudge here and there would shift Poppy Seed Bread into the Locrian scale.  And I was blown away – The melody now has a darker, more convincing feel, and the highs and lows more pronounced and disturbing.

For The Brothers Burn, that is.

As for the title – Those syllables just dropped in there like they were made for it.  Anything else seems wrong.  So they stay.

Check it out: