Martin Lloyd Howard's "Selene" is moonlight in motion!

"Selene" - A quiet masterclass in restraint, resonance, and emotional clarity.

Martin Lloyd Howard is a guitarist and composer from the UK with deep roots in the classical tradition, yet an inquisitive approach to his chosen art form. His music style is a combination of folk, blues, and rock styles in one single entity that makes his own music compositions come out very natural and authentic in texture. Lloyd Howard plays his music using his specially crafted classical guitar that is more than fifty years old. He is equally at home with electric, steel-string acoustic, and slide guitars, as well as other instruments, and is also collaborating with a variety of artists, including Mark Johnson, also known as Midnight River Crew.

“Selene” can convey so well the quiet watchfulness of night itself, shimmering, present, and ever so distant.

It is scored for G minor, with an atypical harmony that sounds wonderfully sparse yet frail at the same time. Howard has an unscriped manner with his phrasing; chords advance more in drifts than progression, pausing in thought ere arriving at full expression. He superimposes a web of melodic lines more delicate than intricate on top of deep-toned bass notes that evoke the drifting passage of clouds across an infra-blue sky. What impresses most is that nothing ever rushes in or becomes too much, so that emotions throng close beneath its surface. Occasional bursts of light prickle through this minor-colored topography, foreshadowing loving feelings that temper at the same time its night-like ambience. “Selene,” in its finish, is poised in such a way that it places its hearer in quiet watchfulness, open to every shadow change beneath moonlight. In its final moments, the music thins to a bright silence, like the moon matted by clouds shifted by wind. The final chords hover between resolution and devastation in a manner that propels one into introspection rather than providing answers.

We got a chance to interview Martin for this song, and we found a lot of unspoken tales! Let's get started:

1. If “Selene” were an artwork, rather than an album, what would you say it portrays?

   
   

   I think it would be a painting or maybe a short video displaying images of a pale moon intermittently obscured by high thin clouds. But that is just my perspective. Another listener may have different ideas.

   
   

2. What kind of feelings and pictures would you like to evoke in the listeners while hearing “Selene”?

   
   

   First and foremost, I want listeners to enjoy the music and be moved by it. Choosing an unusual key for classical guitar (G minor) was the first artistic decision. By its nature I thought the piece would have a slightly distant, ethereal flavour. It was only as the composition progressed that I refined that sense to take in the idea of a moonscape. A lot of people have agreed, but I don’t want to force that reaction onto listeners. There will be other interpretations and they would be equally valid. As I say, the main thing is to enjoy the music.

   
   

3. How does working with artists such as Mark Johnson affect your own compositions?

   
   

   Working with Mark and others has been great, but the main impact on my development has been to improve my skills as a producer, learning how to mould voices and different instruments into a cohesive whole. That is all a bit separate from my compositional process. Having said that, I spend quite a lot of practice time trying out new melodies, chord shapes etc and sometimes they end up being more suited to an ensemble performance rather than a solo guitar piece. When that happens, I typically run the idea past Mark to see if he has any suitable lyrics to make it into a song and we go from there. The latest example is “While I’m Still Counting” available on my Spotify channel.

   
   

4. Did you have a purposeful, free, arhythmic flow in mind for “Selene,” or was it a product of your playing?

   
   

   It’s an interesting question. The piece does have a slightly unusual structure, but it emerged from the compositional process rather being planned in advance. Basically, I started by experimenting with a G minor arpeggio and then “followed my nose” to lay down the opening, rather conversational section which became a scene setter for the more structured second two thirds of the piece. One of the challenges was to find phrases that resolved themselves in the underlying key - in the end, I embraced the idea that an element of unresolved tension was a good thing rather than a bad thing.

   
   

5. In what respects have folk, blues, and rock influenced your view of tone and phrasing?

   
   

   I think it’s mainly about song structure and making it a bit looser than the conventional classical guitar approach. But I don’t always do that: my latest composition, “Reflections” (also on Spotify) is very much in the classical tradition in terms of right hand technique and structure. Sometimes, I introduce an overt blues/rock/folk element into the melody - “Blue Shift” is a good example where I have included the so called “blue note” (a flattened fifth) into the main melodic theme.

   
   

6. What kind of challenges did you experience in crafting the mood of quiet tension for this piece?

   
   

   I don’t think it was a challenge as such. The quality of quiet tension comes mainly from the choice of G minor as the key signature, bringing together the natural questioning tone of a minor key with the particular tone that G minor brings out in instrument which is more attuned to keys like E, A and D.

   
   

7. How do you know when a piece is complete, particularly one which is so atmospheric and open-ended? What advice might you offer young guitarists considering instrumental composition?

   
   

   It’s hard to be precise. I guess you know it when you see it (or hear it)! Other pieces come to a natural conclusion. This one was a bit more difficult and finding the right ending was not easy, but in the end I quite like the kind of unfinished tone that it has. In terms of process, getting to a final form means playing it over and over again as it develops (as my wife can testify!). For young guitarists wanting to try out their compositional skills, I would highlight three things: get your right hand technique right to give you a range of options for striking the strings rather than just strumming (though that has its place); get some theory under your belt eg on chord structures and simple scales, but use it as means to understand how music can work rather than as a straight jacket; and follow Paul Simon’s advice and try out different keys rather than the so called easy ones.

   
   

8. Is there another natural element or mythological character you would like to write about in the next composition?

   
   

   I don’t think I have any mythological creatures in mind! But I do have a piece coming out later this year which is called “Flotsam” to convey a sense of timeless drift. But ultimately the musical idea is the first step: linking it to a title comes later.