Hello and welcome to a quiet and hopefully calming installment of Notes Unfolding. There’s not much to today’s music. Two things kept coming to mind.
The first is how a musical phrase can be recontextualized with effects on mood. When I was playing around with “Left” I kept varying the chords that follow those recurring lead-in notes to great effects on the feeling of the music. Eventually I narrowed it down to the ones you'll hear. While the mood doesn't change much throughout, I think the chords occurring at the end the piece offer some extra bit of context, perhaps some sense of hope, if you like. It’s interesting how even a slight variation (and often because it's such a slight variation) can have an effect on the feeling for the listener, even for the person writing the music. I’d imagine that more studious composers than myself can foresee the changes in mood that might result from such variations, and plan accordingly, but for me it’s a lot of trial and error.
On the flip side - and this is the other thing I kept thinking about when playing around with “Left” - the mood the musician brings to their playing really does matter. I don’t think I could have recorded this piece of music the way I wanted without a calm state of mind (and frankly I don’t think I got all the way there). But what’s more interesting to me is that I think I could perform this piece twice, identically, in two different states of mind, with results that may only be detectable from quite deep states of listening. Barely perceptible differences in the length of pauses or loudness, for example.
Well, that’s what was on my brain this time. I'll leave the rest to your own ears, mind, and mood.
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