Day two- and today, the story behind the song "Beyond and Within", from my 2000 album "To the Shores of Heaven".
So when i last left off yesterday, I spoke briefly about my "broken" glissando guitar technique. Fair warning: the following paragraph gets a bit "guitar geeky", but I'll try to keep it quick.
As opposed to a typical "static" YouTube created video, I opted for a performance video for this song, since its performance is something that doesn't fall into the category of "standard guitar technique". As you can see from the video, my right hand is using a knife to bow notes on my guitar, while my left hand is selectively muting strings that i don't want to be heard. This was a technique that i used as background textures, going back to my 1993 debut album ("Tenderness and Fatality") on the songs "Upon the Edge of Industry" and "One Midnight Walk", but this song was the first time I composed an entire piece for "solo knife bowed glissando guitar" (if that's even a proper name to describe the technique). This is where my "wrong" technique comes in to play; The "standard" way of playing glissando guitar involves holding the knife/piece of metal like you would hold a pencil. I held my knife more like a violin bow. And that was one of the advantages of learning the "wrong" way to play glissando guitar: that "wrong" way allowed me to do things that the "correct way" would not have allowed- performing "Beyond and Within" being a good example.
ok- guitar geekery over- probably....
Before going into the "story behind the song", i feel the need to "date" what you're reading. I am writing this in late March of 2020, in the midst of what we're being told is a worldwide pandemic involving COVID-19. There's a lot of fear and confusion right now. And I am doing what I am doing, in writing these stories about my songs, in the high hopes of creating a sense of peace, and uniting people- and hoping that no matter one's political or spiritual beliefs, no matter where they live in the world or how old they are, they can watch the above video, listen to the music and be united in the same thought: "man, that is a really, REALLY WEIRD WAY to play a guitar."
ok- now to the song:
"Beyond and Within" is just about that- the things beyond us, and the things within us. Many years ago, someone said to me "90% of life is internal". As time goes by, i'm of the opinion that person was low-balling the numbers; from what I've seen and experienced, so much more than 90% of life is internal. I've seen it in myself daily- one morning i wake up, it's raining, and my day is ruined because I'd made plans to be outside. Other mornings, I'll wake up, it's raining, I roll with it, and start composing music. Same weather, same person, but different results based on my "internal weather".
And my "internal weather" weighed greatly while composing this song. At the point in time i wrote "Beyond and Within", i had been wrestling with my "muse". In the very late 90's, there seemed to be, in the "ambient/new age musical universe", an influx of both dark ambient albums, and very "sweet and floating" New age albums. I'd had both the "new age" and "dark ambient" tags put on some of my music at that point by some people, and neither one felt suited to me. I wanted to juggle both dark AND light in my music, but that was a difficult tightrope to walk (juggling? tightrope walking? wow- maybe circus life should have been the life for me....)
With this song, in particular, I wanted something that would reflect both the "beyond" and "within"- and both "dark" and "light"; music that would be gentle, but also powerful, that felt "orchestral" in its sound, but was still, at its heart, a guitar. Music that could be comforting, at some spots, and haunting in others. In aiming for all that, I also wanted the overall key signature to not be totally major or minor (for the musically inclined/cursed reading this, the intro, and outro, to the song shifts between D minor and D major, and all points in the rest of the song are similarly "vague", key-signature-wise. But i didn't want to settle on just one feel/key signature for the song, and in that respect, it was a bit like juggling a basketball, a knife, and a package of Double-stuffed Oreos, and waiting to see which one I dropped first.) (with an act like that, i would have made an EXCELLENT circus performer, I'm convinced of it.....)