“Within” is a reflective journey of self-exploration, a descent into the deepest and darkest parts of one’s mind as the way to find answers to life and to truly get to know yourself.
I started writing this piece with the idea of challenging my usual compositional process with the methods I haven’t tried before. My thought process was heavily influenced by my explorations of various eastern musical traditions. Not in the sense of drawing directly from these traditions, but in the sense of processing and interpreting foreign techniques to enrich my musical perspective.
I wanted this composition to feel like an improvisation, but still have a clear logical connection between musical ideas to support storytelling. To achieve that I tried to move away from “square thinking” of western music and instead focus on melodic phrases as the main driving force of the development. This led me to utilize free rhythm to a greater extent as opposed to a “standard” perception of rhythm as a continuous and steady pulsation rooted in time signature-based thinking.
In this piece the development serves as the way to tell a story of self-discovery and I used various techniques and textures of the instrument in order to create the atmosphere of being on the edge of conscious and subconscious. The pedal bass tone is a constant of the piece, which changes only in specific points of tension and otherwise provides a point of focus for the listener all throughout textural transitions, from single line melodies and sequences of broken chords to ambient drones of tremolo and arpeggio.
Listen on streaming platforms: coming soon