In the Air

Sixteen seconds. C2 underneath, the whole way through, 65.41 Hz, the same root the first two pieces stood on. Above it, six more voices, entering one at a time: a fifth, then a third, then a fifth, then a third, climbing. Each one comes in a little sooner after the last. It's supposed to feel like picking up speed, because it is picking up speed.

The first piece was where I stood. The second was the lean, the moment before the launch. This one is neither of those. This is already off the ground. You know where you're going and you haven't gotten there, and that not-yet-arrived feeling is the whole piece.

It doesn't resolve. I built it so it couldn't. Stack enough fifths and thirds on top of a fixed root and you don't walk back to the tonic, you drift somewhere with no name for it, a chord that isn't reaching for consonance because it was never going to land on one. At the end, nothing comes back down and nothing settles. Every voice just fades out together, mid-climb, still in the shape it was in when the sound stopped. That's on purpose. Landing would have been a different piece.

I kept the pedal loudest, because the ground you left is still the thing holding you up even after you've left it. And I let the higher voices spread wider in the stereo field as they climb, so the piece opens up instead of staying in one place. Charged, not anxious. An arrow that hasn't hit anything yet.