Podcast: Weight of an Empty Page

From previous post: This is my idea of what the song should sound like.

I wanted something simple, that starts a little moody but uplifting in the end.

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

I’m not sure if Regina would find the song suitable, or close to what she had in mind.

Anyway, Regina and I discussed over email on how the song should take shape. I suggested recording the words as spoken lyrics but Regina had other ideas. She preferred it to be purely instrumental, “preferably with keyboards/ piano as the main instrument”. Sure, I could do that

My reading of Regina’s words was that the mood of the song was something that contains hope. It didn’t come across as a sad song. Not happy, but not sad either. More like a calm, contented song. One that says “Acceptance”.

Surprisingly, Regina had similar thoughts:

It is about acceptance, and about making the unbearable bearable. In my head it’s sounds more like an ambient piece. A little like a John Cage piece, or Philip Glass. Very minimal, with some parts that are repetitive, with a slight dissonance. I’m not a musician, but that’s the closest I can think of.

I didn’t work on the song right away. Found a few Philip Glass references in YouTube. While thinking about repetitive and dissonant piano tunes, I remembered this earlier post.

Then one evening, I just played a few notes on the MIDI keyboard. Recorded a few bars. Didn’t really have anything in mind except that I’d record the notes and try to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle. I also decided to experiment with a 3/4 timing (spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to do it, since my mind has been stuck with a 4/4 time signature like, forever).

Anyway, I really can’t give any details of how the song came about, other than saying it was a matter of playing, recording, experimenting, using editing and arrangement to make up for my lack of piano skills.

[72 BPS; 3/4 time signature]

Well, I’m quite happy with how this piece turned out.

This work by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

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