In Part 2 (read part 1 here), Natasha talks about using music to heal and elevate and getting serious about her purpose and path.
What’s the breakdown between covers and originals on your record [hopefully out this spring]?
I think I’m shooting for 4 originals and 8 other songs. Out of those 8 other songs there are some jazz standards. One’s “All Matter” by Bilal. There might be Little Dragon…There’s Mingus, there’s Ellington, Joe Henderson…so not even ‘standards standards’ but songs in the jazz family.
As you know I love your song “Stand Still” ~
I was challenged to write a song about beauty. And I did it over this little loop – D minor G minor, D minor G minor, D minor G minor, F major 7, A minor 7. And that repeats. It just came out…our beauty is that we will never be/this will never be right.
What’s your philosophy on life and how does it affect your music?
I’m learning a lot about life right now. Well, we never die. I’m pretty positive about that. Every go around we have, let’s see how much weight we can lift up this time around. You get thrown in this world and all these things make you forget your purpose. Society tries to turn you into a mindless zombie slave, and there’s evil everywhere…like shallow modes, staleness, and depraved humanity on every advertisement, and it’s just the lowest vibration.
My philosophy is: I’m here to heal and I’m here to elevate, and music is the way I’m doing that today, and it’s the way I can get my voice heard, and it’s something I love.
When I first started dedicating my life to music I didn’t realize that I’d have to become a different person. My body is my instrument…I have to take on this responsibility. Austin has made my sense of purpose blossom and I know the path that I’m supposed to go down now.
On Austin Peralta ~
I know the path – I’m very lucky in that he’s showed me. I want to play with the musicians he’s played with in the same venues and cities. I can’t believe it, but I got to play his last show on earth with my idol.
The way that he lived his life, enjoying everything. He loved things so much. Everything is so much more beautiful since he died. It’s crazy that death makes me want to live more. And my dad brought this up the other day…That’s where humanity is at, that we still need people who we love to die to get it, but one day we’re not going to need that.
His death is an enlightenment and it’s changed my philosophy on life and music– I got this tattoo that says ‘the love the music forever,’ because as long as you have the love and the music, which are synonymous, then life is full of purpose and music is full of purpose.
People make music that is not full of heart, it’s full of ego. Even people whose music I enjoy…their process is squelched of passion. I never want to make music for the wrong reason, and I have, because it’s scary to put your soul out there and be vulnerable, but I really want to get into it and die every time. Then rebirth every time. Remind people without having to die for them why we’re alive.
Now I’m really serious about life. I’m not this raging soul, consuming life fast and hard. I used to be kind of like that. But I’m a nurturer. I’m serious. I’ve wasted a lot of time not taking life seriously. It’s a really dark scary place without the love and the music, and without the understanding of infinity and forever.
It’s so exciting that we exist and we can enjoy music. That’s exciting. This is a privilege and a chance and I want to uplift — I really take that very seriously these days. I’m not going to let it fade it away — I’m not going to let Austin fade away.
Thank you Natasha!
Catch Natasha Agrama performing Sunday (January 13th) at Room 5 in LA.
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Yes. Except … (Don’t worry – you got it right. You just didn’t get the way we talk about it right. The following is not about the music, it’s about notation.) When we use roman numerals like that, we use them to refer to the degree of the appropriate major scale. So in Am, the VII is G#. To indicate that we’re a half step lower than that, we put a flat sign ahead of it. So we would call that the bVII – and it’s G major. Because you’ll notice that the 7th degree of the minor scale is a half-step lower than the 7th degree of the major scale. So we call it a flat 7. Now, next, with roman numeral notation, there’s one other thing. When the chord in question is a major chord, we use a capital roman numeral. When it’s minor, we use a lower case one. So this means that, relative to your tonic, it’s pretty easy to refer to any major or minor chord. In Am, you can have a V or a v. In C major you might see a bIII in addition to a iii, and so on. And finally, for reasons that I don’t want you to worry about too much just yet, you often use a major chord on the fifth degree of the minor scale. This can help the sequence to feel minor. So Am you might often see an E major chord – particularly right before an Am chord, but at other times too. Just know that this is a pretty common device, and don’t stress about it until this other stuff is all automatic.