23 April 2008, #7. "Jack Speer" - 11m45s

I found this improv to be quite meditative for me, and fascinating to listen back, in a completely different way from most of my pieces. You'll soon notice that I repeat the same progression many times. E flat major, B flat major, E flat major, B flat major, E flat major, Bflat, F, C, G, D. I give two bars to each chord. It is a very slow cycle, almost a minute long. I stay diatonic for the first cycle, but then soon my right hand is playing all sorts of wrong-note harmony, and eventually hangs out for a while a full step away from the left. It is dissonant, but completely predictable dissonance, and I find that to be peaceful.

In the eighth minute of music, the progression is finally halted by the right hand, and it smolders a bit – the bass stays on D, and the right hand burbles in E flat. It's a lovely dark feeling that doesn't occur anywhere else in the piece.

And then suddenly the hands come together on a brilliant D major, and the progression restarts, going backwards. D major. G major. C major. F major. B flat major. E flat major... There is one small difference: the B flat and E flat get half as much time as the others (and as in the first half).

It truly feels like a slow unwinding of everything that came in the first seven minutes.

Presumably I could have unwound all the way, and then wound again, then unwound, wound, unwound, forever. Instead, after two reverse progressions, I continue (along the circle of fifths) to A flat, a key that has not been use yet in the piece, and then expand into C major and die.

Both progressions travel along the circle of fifths, but in the opposite directions, and they feel connected but contrasting. At the end of the progressions, when they restart, the first lifts (D to E flat) and the second falls (E flat to D); the former pushes forward while the latter pulls back. These intricacies (of the simplest of progressions) and their psychological implications are fascinating to me, and I could write more but I will leave the rest of the analysis to you if you so choose.

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Recorded on April 23rd, 2008, at Peace Church of the Brethren, in Portland, OR, with a Zoom H4 Digital Recorder. Edited with Audacity music software.