Love and War / World on Fire (part 1)

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the fourth track, Love and War / World on Fire.

You may be able to tell when you listen: the third song (Let It Burn) and this song are very closely related.  Actually, when you put the two of them together, you begin to see the outline of the original composition.

-1-

Love and War is the first part of the song, that plush, cinematic synth intro.  It’s about my wife, really.  Gentle as she is, it may surprise you to learn her favorite television series of all time is Band of Brothers.

No surprise, really.  Even though my wife and I are only two years apart in age, my father is a Vietnam veteran . . . and hers is a World War II veteran.

But more than that.  This move of ours to Virginia is a tough time.  I’m finding it hard to keep going.  Music inspires me, and pulls me out of the worst periods.  For Hannah, the story of Major Winters and Easy Company is inspirational.

My take on it in this composition (which is much shortened from the original) is that war, one of the ugliest things human beings can do, can set the stage for its exact opposite: the greatest heights a human can rise to.

And in parallel: this move, one of the worst times of my life, has actually seen me gain all sorts of abilities I didn’t know I had (like being able to put in a hardwood floor almost flawlessly).

-2-

World on Fire is the second part of the song, a rocking piece at 152 bpm with that wild, driving guitar line I came up with.  In the background, you can still hear the synth from the first part.  When I hear that sound, it appears in my mind like a shimmering curtain of fire — maybe a rapidly flickering aurora borealis, or even a rolling prairie fire.

The basis for this part is the struggle humans have against their worst natures.  I see it every day, from the broad, nasty strokes painted on the world news, to the fine, aimless doodles of the petty conflicts I see at school every day.  People like causing trouble.  Maybe the Shadows were right.

-3-

I discussed Let It Burn previously.  These three parts were composed together, but in the end, they fell into a natural grouping of (3, (1,2)).  Every time the transition point came up, it seemed like one of the songs ended, and another began.

I realized the tempo change wouldn’t fit — I was trying a clever shift from 92 bpm 16th note feel to 152 bpm eighth note feel, what I call a beat ratio shift of 23:19 (don’t ask).  I’ve only got that sort of shift to work once before, in Hypothermia / The Illusion of Warmth (from La vie sous la mer).  Simpler shifts on this album worked fine — Vale Avis Tenebrica pulls off a 2:3:2 (straight 8th, swing 8th, straight 8th), but that’s close enough to a standard compositional element it’s really not an exception.

Next

I’ve focused on the actual composition of the previous four songs.  The next one, In Memory of Dorothy Blair, has a long story behind it, which I’ll start after the Tuesday upload.