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Backtrack: Invention

Backtrack is a series devoted to backtracking to tell short stories about songs I've written.

This piece is what its name implies: an invention. Most of the traditional stuff I wrote for school I’ve never been too fond of but I think this one is somewhat charming. I’m probably more fond of the patch — a simple blend of a Rhodes Mark I sample and a Triangle wave oscillator. I think I also took the liberty of changing some notes afterwards, some of which may break counterpoint rules. It’s been a few years since I’ve studied counterpoint and while I remember most of the rules off-hand, it can be difficult to identify them on the fly. But here you do have a typical structure, establishing an idea and playing around with it in different ways. There’s a shift to traditional minor at 0:18, and another shift to the dominant at 0:30 with a pedal point, before returning to the original key at the very end.