(Composed and performed by Reynold D. Philipsek 2007 copyright Zino-Rephi Music BMI)
There are pieces you write, record, and forget. This is one of them. But listening to it again I remember clearly what I was aiming at. There is another “Sunflower” that I wrote, which is totally different. That one is blues in fact. Yes, I reused a title.
Shifting harmonies and moods. Wistful and nostalgic imagery. That sort of thing.
I remember being quite pleased with the piece at the time but thinking it probably was too sparse and minimalistic for most people. It is a little like the closing credits to a very bittersweet story.
I feel that the basic concept of the subtle shifting tonality is a good way to compress many moods into a short space of time. The piece has a sort of “prayer” or “contemplative” feel to it and by the time I am through describing it here, the description will take more time than listening to this brief and concise piece of music.
This was just a rough demo on a cheap practice guitar but I kept it anyway. The guitar has since fallen apart and was near that condition here. The off-handedness of this version works though. It’s imperfect, similar to the composer/performer.
I have to search through the archives to see if I can find the music for this one as I can’t remember how to play it and it would be interesting to see what I was up to.
The one advantage of having written and recorded a lot of material is that sometimes you can surprise yourself. That is a rare but interesting thing.
It is a difficult thing to try and compress any sort of existential message into a few minutes of music but quite worth the effort even when you don’t quite fully succeed. And if you were reading this while listening the piece has probably been finished for some time by now.
This puts me in mind of an anecdote I included in an email to a good friend of mine (John) recently…
I stole this bit from Abe Lincoln who had hundreds of such “asides”:
“As the preacher said, I apologize for the long sermon but once I get started I am too lazy to stop.”
Lincoln’s wit was every bit as sharp as Mark Twain’s.
Take care.
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