26.) Rides November 7, 2013

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Rides is a sixteen bar blues boogaloo, using all three transpositions of the octatonic scale.  I happened to find a version of this bassline while messing around, and I thought it could work nicely in a blues form.  And, the bassline happens to be a palindrome, and therefor a non-retrogradable rhythm.  I originally had the center note as a quarter note, in a 5/4 meter, but decided to add a dot to it, in order to create a phrase that has a prime number of beats.  So this piece utilizes three of Messiaen's techniques: modes of limited transposition, non-retrogradable rhythms, and prime numbers.  And what's best is that it really sounds nothing like Messiaen.  If fact I can feel him shaking his head in disgust.  Great!

It was difficult to compose the melody because the bassline was very damn fun to play on.  I continually found myself improvising for extended periods, while I was trying to get the melody down.  It's just a fun thing to play.   I enjoyed it.