Move on

I truly know near diddly squat about music theory. I can read sheet music, I can even sight read sometimes, I write my own music on guitar and piano, but if you were to ask me to break down what I’m playing harmonically or to break down the chord structure you will see a very nervous man. I go purely by ear and instinct, and then I just pick up little bits of music theory knowledge along the way. So, basically, by the time I’m 50 I should at least be able to tell you what a minor third is.

That being said, bits of music can really lodge themselves into my brain. Even dialogue. I can hear a two measure something in passing and almost immediately tell you what it is or what it reminds me of. It’s all just melody and rhythm. So one day I was sitting on the roof top of a gym I used to work at in Lincoln Park when - and I can’t remember how or why - I started listening to “Music for 18 Musicians” by Steve Reich. (Maybe it’s because I had recently fallen in love with John Adams from the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack. Both big fans of superimposing rhythms and layering them in just slightly behind or ahead of another to create a sort of cyclical, repetitive motion. I digress.) There was one particular section in the first five minutes or so that made me sit up straight in my seat. The percussion and the winds were creating these specific rhythms and harmonies that sounded exactly like a certain portion of “Move On” to me. “Move On,” like the pieces by these other two brilliant composers, has a pretty repetitive right hand with just little variations on the rhythm here and there. And that shit makes my brain real happy. So when I got around to creating orchestrations for “Move On” years later, I immediately knew what I wanted to incorporate.

The bassoon has a few sections that I think are pretty much verbatim what is in the sheet music for “18 Musicians.” On top of that, I added marimba, vibraphone, I think xylophone(?), so I could get that really full layered effect that I get from Mr. Reich’s piece.

This is truly one of my favorite pieces of all time. If ever I need an energetic reset, I listen to “Move On.”