Darkness

[illusionofjoy]

I was listening to the news on NPR at work this morning when I heard that most of New England had been sans electricity since yesterday evening. Naturally, once I left work for the day, I rang my mother back in upstate New York on my cell to see how she was faring. Apparently the outage had affected Potsdam, a community with a populace of approximately 12,000 for only three hours. Meanwhile, New York City was still in the dark at the time of my call.

Slightly geographically challenged (and still half asleep, since I left work at 6:15AM), my mother seemed surprised that I was calling her. "Isn't the power out in Pittsburgh," she asked me.

"No," I replied, "Pittsburgh is in south-western Pennsylvania; only the northern part of the state was affected by the blackout. Erie doesn't have power, but Philadelphia and Pittsburgh do. Both cities are in the southern part of the state."

The conversation meandered to my job situation, culminating in my mother misunderstanding that I would be putting my resume "on the market" in a couple of weeks and that I would be losing my current job in November instead of vice-versa. I told her that she needed to go back to sleep, and said "goodbye" as I entered the Steel Plaza trolley station.

The great New England power outage could serve as a good metaphor for how my week has been. For most of this week, I've wanted to hop on over to Masochist Monkey Studios and lay down tracks like a manic madman on a mission. However, my hand has usually reached the snooze button before my body could be coaxed into the shower. Yesterday afternoon was the worst, wherein I slept so long that I was in a mad rush to make my train so I wouldn't be late for work.

Perhaps the cosmos was telling me not to bother recording, as the track I wanted to work on has been giving me the fits. I really want something nice and ambient, yet ornately orchestrated, the end result being very lovely yet dramatic. What I had was a mess of noise...or so it seemed to me. On the way back to my apartment this morning, the problem donned on me: time signatures!

The first half of the song is a 4/4 mezzo piano dynamic. The second half is 4/4 as well, but hits on a bright forte (as bright as something starting on a G minor chord can be, mind you). I was playing the song in my head as I walked and decided to drop one of the beats, making it 3/4 instead. Viola! I think I've found the base problem of why the song doesn't sound the way I want it to - not enough contrast. The transition of 4/4 to 3/4 between halves of the song would make the two opposing sections stand out in ways that mere timbres alone couldn't. In theory, anyhow...

Now, I just have to play it to find out if the idea sounds as good outside of my head as it does inside.