Meditation in E flat majorish...

When you get to the weekend and have to just take some time to reflect... most of it was good, but it was a lot. A WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLE lot...

So, I got to the top of a great mountain, five and six and nine years of work with many others finally bearing big, beautiful fruit, and we all arrived and collapsed, exhausted, at the summit... we see the beauty but there can be no dancing and shouting yet ... thank God we made it and we are all going to get up and celebrate ... tomorrow!

Which brings us to what key this thing is in. There are a BUNCH of church flows when it comes to music, and about seven of them are called the "church modes" of pre-Baroque Europe, each of the modes named for the region from which they came. One of these is Phrygian mode, known from North Africa into Spain, which the Moors from North Africa conquered and controlled for a few hundred years. Phrygian is naturally "minorish," being what we would think of as a natural minor scale with flat second (typical example: play from E to E in a scale on the piano). BUT, there is a "majorish" version -- Phrygian Dominant, in which the third is sharp (play from E to E, with G sharp instead of G). This is the mode that gives Spanish music a lot of its famous character in terms of flamenco and "bullfighting" music.

I use Phrygian and Phrygian Dominant modes for more of a contemplative mood -- there is a big stride piece of jazz I did in B flat Phrygian, but most of the pieces I improvise and compose are slower and more thoughtful in these modes. To me, those two modes have a lot of inherent energy not able to be expressed in "pure" major or minor ... the one is a darker level than a mere minor mode, and the other overflowing with both light and dark. They do not require a lot of moving around the keyboard in rapid movement to express a lot of complex emotion and musical space; in fact, because neither mode is common to our ears in North America, I get more out of Phrygian and Phrygian Dominant at moderate or slow speeds.

I have been doing a BUNCH of work in Phrygian mode this year and will have a whole piece of orchestral music each in Phrygian and Phrygian Dominant as soon as I figure out how to present them as nice videos... I love interdisciplinary storytelling! But not today -- maybe tomorrow, but for today, enjoy this!