This week I was inspired by a piece by Arvo Pärt titled My Heart's in the Highlands. It's a beautiful repetitive minor thing. So I set out to write something minorish and repetitive that fits the parameters of this project. I used mode two, and first constructed the bassline which is a sixteen beat loop. Over that I created a pattern that was fifteen beats. The piece is sixty measures long, which allows for every combination to happen between these two voices. Measure sixty-one would be the same as measure one, as far as the top and bottom voice are concerned. After laying this out, I created a middle voice that enters in the seventeenth bar and superimposes an even rhythm of one and 3/4 beats. This cycle is not completed by the end of the piece. It would have taken an insane amount of time for them to realign again, so I just left it incomplete.
Most often after I post these pieces, I'll let it go for a few days, then I'll return and have a listen, after the piece has cleared out of me for a while. It's a good way to have an objective perspective on what I'm doing here. I'm really looking forward to doing that with this piece because I think I'll like it at that moment. However, recording it was really not very fun to be honest. I didn't want to practice this piece. It's something that's difficult to focus on, but at the same time really requires intense focus. I'm hoping I'll be happy with it. It's a boring piece. But as John Cage said (I can't remember if he was quoting DT Suzuki here or not...), "If something is boring for ten minutes, try it for twenty. If something is boring for twenty minutes, try it for forty."
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