This piece is 50% a cheat on '12 things i've composed in 2012' in that it was written in the spring of 2011. It was however arranged in the last 10 days. I'll decide whether or not to count it in my total of 12 when I see where I am at the end of the year!
It's a C major blues - the kind of blues that incorporates a couple of chords from the diatonic cycle of Vths as well as the 'blues' chords of I7, IV7 and V7. It's very short and absolutely something not finished - a work in progress. My brain, or my 'taste' as Ira Glass might put it (see project page) decided that this had to be played in a stride arrangement. Stride is, ahem, slightly above my playing capability right now. The average person's brain, I think, tends to solve the problem of needing to jump the left hand up and down the piano by paying it lots of attention and putting the simpler right hand on autopilot. When you want to take a solo you somehow have to get your brain to be able pay attention to the right hand at the same time - or to put the left hand on autopilot. Or you just have to have internalised the spatial arrangement of the piano to such an extent that you know where every note is from 10 paces with your eyes shut. People have managed it in the past so it can't be completely impossible no matter how daunting it seems. It's almost certainly a matter of patient practice. Hopefully at some point this year I will be able to post it again in a more complete way.
So - at the moment it's just 12 bars - here repeated twice. No middle "solo" section.
This is definitely something that comes straight from the heart of the part of me that is still a clown. If I remember correctly I was experimenting with shifting the melodic pattern across the pulse. The title comes from a phrase anyone who has encountered the self-service check-out in a supermarket will recognise.
As before - this is a unlisted youtube link. If you feel inclined to share it with your friends - please feel free to do so - but I'd appreciate it if you directed them here first so that they can see the context in which it's been written.
No comments:
Post a Comment