Desert and Dream

Track #10 on evolution, “Desert and Dream”, was recorded June 12, 2005.

This was the start of my enchantment with Phrygian chords. The main melody in this song is in the E phrygian mode (the C major scale played from E to E). The chord is one I learned from Mark Levine’s Jazz Piano Book. [I would link you directly to Mr. Levine's website, but annoyingly, it's one of those pages that starts playing music as soon as you load it, without asking. For someone like me who's always streaming something over the internet, that's incredibly annoying.]

A phrygian chord is this:

• Take a major key, say C.
• Find the dominant 7th chord, in this case G7.
• Put it over the major 6th of the chord, in this case E.
• You can write it as E phryg or G7/E

“Desert and Dream” is a metaphor; the “desert” was a time of troubles, the “dream” was my music, which kept me going.

I’ve written in this blog before about Dark Side Summer. Well, this song tells a story:

1. Introduction, to 1:20. Statement and restatement of the theme–sadness, loss, emptiness. The eBow counterpoint to the main melody was inspired by Debussy’s La Mer.
2. Suddenly the song shifts to a funk / soul feel. When I play music, a lot of things change. Time doesn’t pass the same way; if my life was a book, it’s like I’m “off the page.”
3. No one can play forever. At 2:26 the desert theme returns, briefly.
4. Now we hear, at 2:32, a jazzy section with a walking bass line.  When I play, I like to challenge myself, and studying jazz composition is a pretty steep hill.  However, I rebel: no clean guitars on this one, a scratchy, distorted sound, indicating the rock influence.
5. End.  A final restatement of the desert; at that time, it was inevitable.  But the music wants to continue . . . .