Standard Deviation
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Composition Notes
Will to Power
Degrees of Freedom
A Tense Bow... A Moving Target
The Impudent Piece of Crockery
A Fugue State
Apartment Living
Seven Falls, Eight Rises

 

Will to Power
Foti

Inspired by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. For the uninitiated, 'Der Wille Zur Macht' (The Will To Power) was his answer to the riddle "What is life?".

"And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a sphere that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my "beyond good and evil," without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself - do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? - This world is the will to power - and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power - and nothing besides!" - Nietzsche, The Will To Power, 1067

Given the subject matter, this rhapsody is constantly changing in tempo, meter, key, dynamics, etc. -- in short, it is as unclassifiable as the man who inspired it. I may not agree with all of his notions, but anybody who wrote "Without music, life would be a mistake" is alright by me!

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Degrees of Freedom
Foti

This tune is a departure from our usual compositions with the meter being mostly common time. It features various melodic sections and an unusual arrangement in the way the different instruments are introduced and interact with each other throughout the rhapsodic form, making this piece sound more like ECM label jazz than progressive rock for the most part.

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A Tense Bow... A Moving Target
Foti

"But we [...] free spirits - we have it still, the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the task and, who knows? the target..." - Nietzsche, Beyond Good And Evil, Preface

The title is an obvious tie-in with "The Will to Power", alluding to Nietzsche's Overman - "the bow with great tension" - as the music is mostly comprised of leftover material from it, although it fits the contents perfectly: a three and a half minute rhapsody with a couple of tempo changes, three individual solos, and nine different time signatures.

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The Impudent Piece of Crockery
Kulju

This piece was an attempt to bring the guitar into a more dominant roll and remedy the occasional melodic abyss of our previous effort. The title comes from a line in the animated film "The Sword in the Stone" that gave my wife a good laugh. This piece is for her.

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A Fugue State
Kulju

This piece is characterized by some fairly disparate musical ideas assembled in the least logical fashion; aggressive guitar driven progressions, gentle melodies, blues licks, semi-funky grooves with mean dirty organ, and a quiet but rhythmically unstable fugue-like section.

In addtion to having a section that sounds a bit like a fugue in it, the title comes from an appropriate psychological condition.

From the Mental Health Infosource
"A fugue state is a type of dissociate disorder in which the individual may flee from his or her usual life circumstances, take on a new identity and have no recollection of his or her previous life. Often the new personality is in stark contrast to the original one."

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Apartment Living
Kulju

This piece was written at 5am while the juvenile delinquents living below me were having an all night party and making sure that everyone could hear it. This on an evening where earlier the morons above me decided to do karaoke at 130dB. Hopefully the piece conveys a certain amount of anger.

Musically the piece's first theme is in 9/8 with some dissonant chords stabbing over a pedal tone. The next theme moves to common time and attempts to settle into a more steady grove but is interrupted every two bars by dissonant and rhythmically strange phrases. An atonal guitar solo follows in 7/8 which sounds especially confusing due to the placement of the accents and the relative stability of the preceding section. The song concludes with a repeat of the 2ed and 1st themes.

I've since bought a house...it is quiet here...nice.

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Seven Falls, Eight Rises
Kulju

The title is an English translation of the Japanase proverb "Nana korobi, ya oki".
The theme of determination is appropriate for this 14 minute piece as the last last two thirds of it have been scrapped and completely rewritten 3 times. Thanks to my new computer based home studio, the latest incarnation explores a far more orchestral direction than most of our past work.

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