Cavies

Dec 31 2009

Updated Oct 10, 2010 ... Cavies is finished! This historical account is now complete.

Cavies is a cadence we started playing at Sebring High in 1998, transcribed from an excerpt of the 1993 Cavaliers show. It was pretty close to the original cavs clip I downloaded from Gridit's Home Page, but we had to slow it down a bit.

The next year (1999) I revised the piece, adding more notes to the parts that felt too empty for a cadence (show music isn't always chock-full-of-notes). The revision was just awkward in many places, but it was played at Sebring for longer than I anticipated. Four years after I graduated I went to a concert band performance and one of the drummers (I'll call him Jason) told me they were still playing it. I had no idea!

Jason asked me to play along with him on Cavies ... I was good for the first measure or two, but after that I choked. Strange how something I had a hand in creating could leave me so quickly. Guess that's what college does to a man.

He also told me they were still playing a few of my other pieces. Not sure whether to consider that flattering or sad at their lack of better options. Either way, it feels like I was a legend for a time. Surely the other things I've written have died off by now, 6 years later.

In October of 2009 I decided to rewrite most of Cavies, yet again. I figured that my history with the piece would help me turn out a new cadence faster that I could were I to start from scratch. I was wrong.

The first few revisions still suffered from too many notes and phrases that ran on blindly. I axed most of those phrases and addressed cohesiveness between the voices, but hadn't fixed the cohesiveness of the piece as a whole. Eventually I found the need to backtrack even further, ripping out even more of the phrases, in an effort to pull further away from the dead-end roads my high school version went down. It was rough because the flow and placement of the more prominent rhythms was burned into my brain.

The original Cavies show excerpt is fast-paced, has varied rhythms, accelerates and decelerates -- all of which I consider to be beyond the difficulty level I'm going for. That made it impossible to use the original as a source of inspiration.

Another thing that made the original clip a sticking point for me was the issue of copyright. Even though I'd changed quite a few of the phrases, it felt too close. In late Spring of 2010 I figured I should distance myself even further. I wanted to keep a few rhythms as quotes from the original, but decided to rewrite more of the beginning. That task threw me for a loop for several months.

And that brings us to brandy, the alcohol. In late September I got a spark of motivation, and the desire to clear the hurdles I'd been facing with this piece. I wanted to put it to rest for good. With one glass of brandy consumed (two more queued up), and some screamo/hardcore (Thursday and Underoath) playing in the background, I made some great strides. The liquor helped me be less distracted, more free ... I got in the zone. It's cliche, I know, but sometimes the most cliche shit works.

Almost a year later and my revisions are complete. To date, this is the longest I've ever worked on a single piece. That's what I get for having a day-job.