THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECES ON A NEW KIND OF AIR
To The Living-My jumping off point for this piece was the aira from the goldburg variations. This is my favorite of the goldburg pieces and also the simplest. What I borrowed from it is the way the left hand out lines the chords very slowly one note at a time. For me, to the living is about celebrating and appreciating life even when its hard. It almost feels like traveling in the future 100 years and every one you know is gone and your watching home videos, and all you can think is about how special your life was and how blind you were to its specialness.
A New Kind Of Air-One of the things I like about this piece is the process the melody goes though in constructing it self. It starts with an extremely simple idea and then travels though multiple cycles of of embellishment till the real melody has finally been constructed. This is a very Steve Reich idea, but approached from a different angle (i.e. not using his beats for rest thing). Later in the work there is a section that is an ambient wash of notes. I realized trying to notate something like this is just silly. Its super easy to play but hard to notate, so I didn’t. The piece concludes with a slow restatement of the theme.
The Hope Garden-The name for this piece came from an experience I had in the summer of 2023. Me and my wife were making a new flower bed in our back yard. Were were making it in the shady part of our yard where it would be easier for my wife to maintain it even in the middle of health issues. Even though we had yet to put a single plant in the bed, the feeling of joy and potential over our empty flower bed was palpable. The ending theme was a musical idea that kept popping up as I worked on different pieces and every time I would reject it, but it finally found a home at the end this one.
A Strange Liberty-I wanted this piece to feel like a hymn. The title is taken from a poem I wrote (The companion poetry book to a new kind of air is due out in 2025).
The Longest Night Of The Year- This is an obvious reference to the winter solstice. Which is a symbol of hope and things turning around, even though that particular night is the longest. Musically this piece has no sense of development but just keeps recycling the same idea with slight (almost imperceptible variations). This piece goes along with this poem.
A NEW KIND OF AIR
This is not the project I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make it so I put it off for a year.
Here is the story
Part 1- The last couple of years I have been self producing concerts and presenting works for string quartets with a vocalist (tribunal and eight billion/one). Unfortunately classical music is extremely expensive to produce. My pieces required 5 musicians being paid for 5 hours of rehearsal and performance time. This really adds up and at the end of the day this is a one shot thing, and its super hard to get people to events. I did the math for a recent concert and it cost 46.29 for every min. of preformed music. More and more this was feeling financially unsustainable.
Part 2- My wife has struggled with on going health issues over the last couple of years. It made me ask the question, what type of music would serve her in this season. How could she connect with music in a meaningful way in the midst of challenging circumstances. How can you make music (which is a stimulant) to help calm overstimulation.
Part 3- I have a piano related hand injury that has lasted 3 or 4 years. I can still play the piano but I have to be carefull how much I play and how hard I play. A solution to this very practical problem was to write piano music specially for me to play (I am a composer after all). Knowing my abilities as a player and what causes hand strain, I could make music that was perfectly suited to my situation.
I put all these pieces together, embracing the challenge of the limitations, and wrote the music for a new kind of air. I think I was hesitant about this project at first for several reasons. I’ve realized more and more rhythm is becoming my main organization force in my music. The gas in the tank (for me) that makes the whole thing go is the rhythm. With my string quartet projects I could have five lines of independent rhythm which is pretty much all I would want, but with this project I was limited to two hands (and maybe even more importantly one brain). It was almost like, how do I even make music that’s interesting if I don’t have this. Secondly I am much more of a composer than a piano player and on top of that I’m a piano player who is injured. This put I lot of limits on what the music could be.
Several things surprised me as I worked on this project. I soon discovered hidden pockets in my head where different values were competing with each other. One value being making the best music I could, and the other value being I want to prove that I am good at playing the piano. This really surprised me, that unconsciously I could be making decisions that would be for value 2 and sacrificing value 1, when thats obviously a bad choice. Over and over for this project what served the piece was the simplest of solutions. For example, most of the pieces the left hand part is extremely pared down, often playing very slow half notes. To my logical mind this felt weak but to my listening self its what felt like served the piece the best. The whole project really felt like a practice in musical humility. The second thing I soon realized was all I really had to work with was melody. Which meant the melody had to be so pure and right. There was a lot of struggle getting this right, even though on the surface its not complicated. I recently heard a musican talk about the sweet spot, where the music is both simple and deep and that really sums up what I was going for.
As I evaluate the music now and listen though it, It feels like one huge deep breath. Its music that is introverted, slow to speak, delicate, venerable and extremely non exhibitionary. Its like a moment of pause where you are both remembering the things you should remember and forgetting those you should forget. It feels like music thats almost listening to you.
EIGHT BILLION/ONE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
As I did for my work tribunal, in preparation in writing the lyrics for eight billion/one I created a list of questions on the topic and had participants send me there responses. Here is a sample of those interviews.
Define objective reality
-Something that is true, regardless if it is known or people even believe it is true. It lives Totally independent from interaction or observation and is not defined by any one or any thing else.
-Absolute truth
-expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
-Truths that supercede people's perceptions of them
Define subjective reality
-A way that they world is view through your particular perspective. Because we all have our own
Unique lives we see the same things and experience the same things with drastically different reactions.
Subjective reality leaves the plain of truth and right and wrong and enters the dominion of opinions, taste
and perspectives
-An individual or group’s experience of reality.
-A state of existence that is at the mercy of personal perception and experience
-I would guess that's everything relating to opinions, feelings and everything we can't prove which is everything
Please list things that you believe fall in each of these categories?
Objective: God, Morals, human worth, love temperature, measurement, laws of nature, Harms, needs, concretely observable truths, the experience of emotions
-God and his character setting the moral "way" of the universe
Subjective: art, the flavor of food, being drawn or repelled by certain personalities, at times the application of a moral truth, hot/cold, short/tall, high/low, clean/dirty
-my experience of almost every aspect of the world around me, relationships, emotions, preferences, opinions
-Can really list anything in objective as I can't prove anything. I could list my belief and the things I trust to be objective but in all honesty it could all be fake.
-Everything would fall into subjective. But I think these are honestly very unhelpful definitions and terms really
-Language, personal preferences, cultural judgements, the truth claims made by emotions"
What is an area (or areas) of your life where you feel confused wither it is objective or subjective reality?
How we individually live out “truth” or even the clarity on what truth is. The moral line whether or not theirs a right way to live when
Its not written out or clearly immoral.
-Beauty
-I’m coming to understand that many aspects of my childhood faith, and the faith of much of American Christianity is cultural rather than Biblical. I am trying to separate the two and it can be challenging
-I don't know if I feel confused about whether things are subjective or objective reality very much
-Religion
Are you open to the possibility that ultimately there is no objective reality, Please explain?
-I do not think I am open to this possibility (does that make me close minded?) I don’t think the world would be the
Way it is with out objective reality. If all that is left is subjective all we are left with is every ones option which is the
Same as saying there is no truth, and that feels the same as no meaning. Firstly I don’t think the beings in that world
Could have a capabilities to discover there own meaninglessness, and if they did even care. I find in the human heart,
We all ache for meaning and truth. I think that hunger exists because we have all experiences glimps of things that
Were transcendet. Also if you actually applied and lived out the idea of no objective reality, I believe every thing would
Totally fall apart. You could not longer teach your children not to do something or how to share, the court system would
Become irrelevant and the distinction between sane and insane would have to go away.
-Actually what is presently "observed" by human on earth in time and referred to as reality are but shadows of what is real and "objective", and those realities may themselves be shadows of what might be even more real. For what we know as human will need to be totally transformed from a shadow land to have a presence in the real
-I’m open to it but it would probably make me feel like nothing is worthwhile/significant. You'd have to question the credibility of humans' ability to reason, and of our five senses, and that would make nothing make sense anymore. Also, what would that mean, on a practical level? It's hard to imagine
-I would say no, because that would be a postmodern view of the world meaning truth, is what you make it, and I reject that view. I believe that there is objective truth certainly through the lens of God’s word through Scripture
What is something in your life you know is subjective reality, but it is still hard to believe, act, interpret like it is?
-For me the area of aesthetics I find very hard to remember is not objective. This includes interior design, visual art, and music.
I find my self judging other people like there is an objective truth and they are on the wrong side. I know what is true I know what
Is good and they do not and they are blind for it. I know this is wrong but it is really hard for me to stop.
-The love that someone has for me
-Anything that I strongly prefer in my pursuit of the "best" could fall into this category
-I don't think there are any. I've been thinking about this since childhood and I'm pretty at peace about it
Do you believe an objective reality could be possible in a world that is only material (not spiritual) please explain?
No I do not. I feel like for objective truth to be possible there has to be something over all the exist, there has to be something
That is beyond the limits of perspective (you could call it a super perspective) that can really see something for what it truly is.
So ultamitly what is objective reality is what this something (the thing that is over creation) how it views it, is its true reality
-I can’t even imagine an “only material” world! I guess there would be no humans and no imagination so there would probably ONLY be objective reality in such a world
-No. The nature of objective reality is contingent upon a spiritual state. I don't believe something strictly material is capable of being unchanging and independent of all other things
-Ehhhh I think the world is designed to always have a way in which you can say things aren't true and it's better that way
-I think that would make it more likely to exist. The material world is harder to play definition games with, and it's more objectively verifiable because all beings have it in common. The spiritual world, because we understand it so poorly, can often end up in definition games, which are subjective because language is subjective. AKA: "My negative circumstances are the work of demons." That claim can be understood to be objectively true or false only if you clearly define the term "demons." OR, if the circumstance was objectively the speaker's fault, the claim could still subjectively be true for one person, who simply defines "demons" as "the personification of the spiritual consequences of sin," while being subjectively false for another person, who defines "demons" in a hyper-specific way.
What reinforces your current beliefs (experiences, ideas, etc) on the existence (or non existence) of the objective reality?
-My Christan faith reinforces my belief of an objective reality. Ultimity being a Christian means I believe in God, I believe
He see the truth and I recognize that I don’t. I just see a tiny fraction of reality from my perspective. So it makes sense to
Listen to the person who you believe has the answers when it becomes clear to you that you don’t and never will.
-Existence, experience, faith
-I am in a physical body and so things that are also physically observed easily feel like they would fall into objective reality. If we were living in something similar to the matrix then everything that we can physically see and touch would not exist and not be real objects, but I think they would still fall under objective reality to us, since to all of us we can see and feel them and would not be aware that it was not real
-The way you can't disprove very vague and ethereal theories that would suggest you are already in them
-I think, probably, at the core of my belief in objective reality is my belief that if a person is measurably harmed by someone's behavior, that person has an objective responsibility to cease, make right, and prevent that behavior, regardless of how that person perceives their harm.
-The beauty, variety, and intricacy of creation leads me to believe in the objective reality of a creator God.
-A Tesla car has thousands of parts that were designed by creators on purpose to work together for this thing (the car) to work. Humans are a million times more complicated and it is unfathomable to me that we aren’t designed by a Creator
Do you believe our five sense are experiencing objective or subjective reality, Please explain?
-Yes and no. I do believe the physical reality is real. When we touch the table we really are touching something that exist. But
I believe we can’t help superimpose over the objective reality our personal subjective reality. The other filter that we experience
Life through is the limitations of our senses. Other animals experience color sights sounds differently because there sense
Can be more devoloped. So that takes you back to the question who is right, If I see the flower as red and some one else
(A person or animal) sees it as blue, who as the authority to judge between the two.
-Both. Life can only be experienced as one whole, which is too integrated to differentiate one type of reality from the other
-Yes, but we experience subjective feeling about reality. Clearly apples are eatable, that’s objective reality, but they may not taste delicious to everyone. A person may say “apples are not eatable” because that person hates the taste or texture, but that is not reality, it is the person’s opinion
-Subjective. Not everyone maybe feelings the same things or at the same level
-I guess on a technical level, they subjectively interpret an objective reality. Because theoretically, we all have acess to the same sensory data, but it seems unlikely to me that we all interpret it the same (eg. I have aphantasia, so I imagine I don't experience visual input as objectively as others do).
-Largely subjective though They can totally come into alignment with a piece of truth but not entirely