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Somnambulistic Arabesque is quite a mouthful of a name. It sounded to Alex Lewis like a meandering sound while he was writing it. Here’s a dive into some of the more technical aspects of this piece.
First off, Mr. Lewis wanted to do something that he’d never done before, and secondly, it had been a while since he had written a piece in a minimalistic style. So, during the beginning of the process for this composition, he decided to do a mode with eighth notes that steps up and down for much of the music. The mode being used for this is called Locrian. The combination of the use of this mode with minimalism is probably what’s giving Mr. Lewis this feeling of meandering, or as the name suggests, sleep walking.
Some more stuff
Somnabulistic Arabesque. The song was playing while Philip was walking down the street. He forgot where he had heard it, but it was constantly playing inside his head, unable to turn it off. What was it about? What was the composer thinking when he wrote it? He had no idea. He tried reading about it on the Houston-Piano website, but there wasn’t anything that provided any clear answers other than some unsatisfying stuff about minimalism and modes. What in the world was this stupid Alex fellow writing?
It really isn’t that great of a song compared to all of the other things Philip had heard, right? His favorite artist had always been Michael Jackson. He remembered times when he drove to his office, bopping to the beat of Billie Jean. And of course, that wasn’t the only music; some of his other favorites were Aerosmith, ACDC, Pink Floyd, the works. But why Somnambulistic Arabesque? Why is it showing up without warning in his head so many times? It really isn’t that interesting when you come down to it.
Philip continued to walk towards the park. He had always had a strange fascination with being in nature. He had no idea why he was in love with nature. Everything indicated that he was much the opposite, always interested in new gadgets. He had worked as a writer for a multinational news company and oftentimes loved to write about cutting edge technology arriving on the scene.
He continued to think about the Arabesque. Could there be any philosophical undertones in it? Is there some kind of deep meaning?
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