The Hazel Project

…on the path 5/5/06

Happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone.

A very accomplished 94 yr old man told me 2 weeks ago,”Steve I need to get out and start doing some things, I need to start living!” Within 72 hours of saying that he began having a lot of trouble breathing, unable to get out of bed.

It made me think how our body is always speaking to us and how long we put off listening to it.

When do we learn to keep separate body, mind and spirit; Letting our MIND dictate everything yet paying little attention to the body and spirit part of ourselves?
Or do we learn it all?
Is it just built in?

Eckhart Tolle writes about this at length, basically saying, given over to the mind is essentially what causes suffering because it doesn’t know how to be in the present moment. He believes The mind makes every decision based on past experiences and future desires.

I wondered when my friend gave himself over to his mind.

Several years ago I wrote a piece on the fly, and remember it was a time of Presence for me. An extended period of time lasting 2 0r 3 weeks in fact. I’ll never forget it.
People respond favorably to this piece partly due to the presence and the intention given to it.

Plus everybody likes parallel 5ths!

The human ear likes parallel 5ths because it grounds the music in a sweet spot. So its all release and little tension. Which is probably why people don’t listen to Stravinsky at bedtime.

Today, I became reaquainted with the piece called ‘Season to Season’. Basically a nice chord progression with an analog synth solo playing over it. I’m planning to upload this in the next several days.

Until then, I have the second drone piece available.
This piece has the working title ’sapphire facet #3′,
which needs to be renamed.

This piece was written a few years ago but this version was made
in the Fall of 2005. It’s done in 1 take with no doctoring, or editing; there are some pitch issues I correct on the fly.

There are 2 main sections to the piece.

The sections are made up of three parts and then it repeats.

drone and melody

the second time through the melody I add a “liquid ensemble” sound to create movement. I like how just 2 chords gently nudges the piece along.

then when the melody phrases are finished there is a light ethereal motif that separates the two main sections.

The second section is different in that the melody is played in cut time; this also creates forward motion.

The piece ends with the ethereal motif and drone.

I hope you enjoy this piece called “sapphire facet #3″

Please feel free to suggest a better name.

Thanks for listening.

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 12:38 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.