this week on the path
05/14/06
This week was one filled with music and work and little motivation for much else.
The final drone piece is called ‘Look up’. It’s in it’s 3rd revision and title.
The initial recording of it happened in 2002 at Davak’s house, who co-wrote it with me; and, showed me a really cool midi trick with his computer.
I’ve worked on the new version all week.
The first thing I did was change the key from C# to G with a flat 7; giving the impression that the terse tri-tone had been defeated.
Slowly the piece gravitates to G major.
The piece needed more structure to bring it out of formless murkiness.
I also spent a lot of time working out the logistics to perform it live in 1 take.
Lots of button pushing in this one.
What started out to be 7 minutes with 2 1/2 sections now has 4 sections and runs over 14 minutes.
I’m thinking of producing an edited version for this website that has 2 sections and shortened 4th section. Or doing a through composed version of all 4 sections without any repeats. I charted it out last night on staff paper;
so I could remember the sections for later. I need to do that for everything really. It’s cathartic in a way, but gets tedious because it requires practice, like anything, and takes a long time.
I’m glad this is coming together and that people are enjoying it.
It’s very affirming.
I’ll see about getting it up tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
Stephen A. Thomas