"Distance"

-01.29.2024-

Although the first tedious post I made here is unlike many of the archived ones, which was basically day-to-day rap-up of a period of time and is more of like the phone-based short notes to focus on some narrow matters, I wasn't really thinking that way to organize the thoughts. In terms of being more reader-friendly, including for my later selves, or simply trying to make up my mind and take a decisive approach, this one is thus titled "distance".

I'll probably tag this post, but please let me relate some facts about "Distance" as a starting point - as I've just promised to narrow it down. "Distance" is an acoustic guitar piece by Gogo Satoshi (Hopefully, not citing properly won't cause any inconvenience). At this particular point, I'm upgrading my studio with new equipment, layout, workflow, etc., and have finished the recording and mixing of my own cover of this piece - at least the audio part. I have intended to record this for a reasonably long while, ever since the day I learned the composer once said the piece should be played while thinking about someone. I was then not yet crushing on any but the impulse to learn and play and record the piece only bulged when I started to fall in sentiments and situationships. It turned out that unrequited love is indeed conducive to interpreting this piece from my perspective - according to my mom, my cover this time starts to carry and deliver some perceivable message in a generally accepted storytelling manner (unlike my "timish" packed one) (Okay, I have to admit the second half of this comment is my interpretation of her words.) 

So what exactly is my message? After, again, debating with myself about whether directly writing down music choices is a sort of betrayal against the purity and sublimeness of music expression, I acknowledged my desire to say these. A bit of defense may be like "I've already given up ranting about it, but just place it here". Anyway, with this piece floating in my fingers, I do have a, if not complete, structured story in mind. To refer to the sections in a more narrative way, I'd like to use the verse and chorus form to "analyze" the piece. Starting from the intro consists of mostly artificial harmonics, I'd say that's the encountering moment of our protagonists A and B. Why harmonics? They are ethereal, pivoting, and refreshing but also insubstantial, intangible, and lingering. The rubato and syncopation within the structured phrases already seem to be hints of the "bad ending" while laying down the amorphous sense. Invited by the series of harmonics, A and B, we are introduced to a slow and rather plain "verse." (or maybe we could call it theme A. Just to differentiate theme A from our protagonist A, let's stick to the idea of verse and chorus.) Although the texture complexity of the piece is boosted by more filling notes and a bit faster tempo in verse 2, our protagonists here do not really know each other but are merely summoned by external affairs, or "businesses. To my point of view, the "climax" of these verses, the repetitive motive "C D E E" in the lead melody accompanied by the counter melody "A Ab G Gb F" in the bass line, is just like two random people happening to work together step by step. It was exactly in the initially opposite movements they start to get know about each other. On the contrary, the later chorus is a process of walking in the same direction. Musically speaking, the chorus consists most significantly of a parallel motive played in double stops. Each of the double stops is distanced by an interval of 6th. The protagonists are just the same - they never set apart but never get closer to each other - until, in one of the double stops, the only note that is not in the key of C appears. The couple of "Ab and F" is still distanced in 6th, but the two are destined to be less consonant, or more dissonant, leading to another opposite motion between the melody "G A B C" and the bass line "E Eb D Db." The the last notes form a Db major 7 chord, the unease built with the 7th note on a perfectly stable triad results in the leaving of one of the protagonists and left the other walking along rest of the melody, alone and lonely. As the piece proceeds into another verse and chorus, this pattern of heating up in working and dissonances, resonating side by side, and finally ending in solo recapitulates. In fact, in my opinion, the last section right after chorus 2 and before the outro, where the melody of the chorus appears without the accompanying 6th note, is an annotation of the detailed push-and-pull between the protagonists. Despite the crescendo and richer and richer texture, the high C is pivoted in this section, continuously signaling decisively. Unfortunately, the bass line hesitates around that low C, regularly touches the perfect octave but nevertheless fallbacks, passing B to Bb. It is precisely how the two interact - a stable one and an undetermined one.

Got to admit that I did read about the piece and watched others' interpretations with similarities as well. But more importantly, I guess it's because this is indeed part of my own story that I'm still coping with (That's why I haven't edited the video to post on other media). And this made my performing emotive enough and delievered the message - hopefully. On top of that, romance is, of course, not the only interpretation here - maybe I'll try another one next time.