Music for 3 AM Insomnia
This week’s Disquiet Junto assignment was to write music for 3 AM during a bout of insomnia.
I wake up at 3 AM several nights a week – before electric lights, it was actually common to go to sleep shortly after sundown, wake up in the wee small hours of the morning, and then fall asleep again until the sun rose.
This piece’s ABA form happens to mimic that structure, but only through happy accident.
The A section hears a C5 drone in the accordion, and the electric piano plays a series of stack intervals. First, stacked 5ths, then stacked minor 6ths, then stacked major 6ths.
During the B section, the accordion drone moves up to an Eb, and the electric piano works through the intervals again, this time sounding three- and four-note chords. The sequence happened to work out to include a G augmented that resolves to an F# major 7th, which adds a hint of functional harmony to this piece.
The A section returns again, with the accordion drone up another minor third, on Gb.
WInding around throughout the track are a recording of crickets from my window, the hum from inside my refrigerator, and a tuba severely pitch-shifted up.
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More on this 350th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Selected Insomniac Works / The Assignment: Make very quiet music for very late at night for very fragile psyches) at:
disquiet.com/0350/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…ed-insomniac-works/
nate trier 