Devonian

My girlfriend had been saying for some time that "Devonian: The Age of Fishes" would be a good title for a piece of music. After composing the basic melody for this piece, it seemed quite old and fishy, so I used the name.

Devonian

This piece is in the Phrygian mode, which can be found by playing the natural notes from E to E. The trick to composing for modes is to find alternative ways of expressing tension and drama, because they lack the dominant function chords that most western music is based on. Here, I've used tone clusters that contrast with the sparse harmony of the rest of the piece. The hardest part was coming up with a drum part that provided the right amount of structure and syncopation without calling too much attention to itself.

Composing this was pretty quick and easy, as it's a relatively simple piece - it can be played on piano using only the white keys. I tend to be suspicious of pieces like that. I can't help thinking that people have been writing tunes like this for thousands of years, and surely someone has used "E-B,C-F" as a melody before. Then I remind myself that if I really cared about total originality, I would have to do something crazy like throw out all my instruments and design new ones around weird tuning systems. I have to believe that the things coming out of my brain have a certain flavor to them that's original even if the ideas aren't entirely new.