In Pieces (as_inpcs.it)

 Completed in early 1997, probably February or March.

I very well could have lost this song forever if somebody hadn’t kept the Hornet Archive online. For some reason I didn’t have it on my hard drive after all these years, and I was not aware of its absence. But when I started this project of revisiting my old songs and writing about them, I poked my nose back into the Hornet Archive and realized that this song was not on my hard drive. So I downloaded it and brought it back.

A better title for this song would have been “Gymnopedies Trance Mix” because that’s basically what it is. Gymnopedies is probably the most famous work by French pianist Erik Satie. I remember hearing my sister play it on the piano in our house - the melody stuck with me so I decided later on to attempt a track based on it. At the time, my sister didn’t live in our house anymore - she had left for college the previous autumn. I couldn’t easily ask her what the song was or where I could find her sheet music because instant communication wasn’t really a thing in the mid 1990’s. I drew purely from memory.

This song is kind of a weak effort by me. The piano never varies from its two-note bassline, and the airy chords never really deviate either. It’s short and not overly noisy though, and the melody is pleasant and calming, so it could be worse. I used non-standard pattern lengths for this one, 96 rows in most patterns - there were lots of triplets and so I figured it was easier to just multiply my patterns by 1.5 so I could do them without awkward note delay effects. I wouldn’t attempt patterns like this until two years later with Pray For Rain, my last song of the 1990’s, and probably my only song that’s truly in a 3/4 time signature (well, mostly).

About the title - I wanted to invoke the idea of emotional distress, and something like “In Pieces” seemed to fit the bill. At the time, I probably believed that I was (mildly) in such distress myself, but all teenagers probably think that to some degree. Emotionally and socially, I was just fine, aside from a massive lack of self-confidence when it came to dating. But I had a good group of friends and was reasonably well-liked at school, so I can’t really say I had any insurmountable social problems.
- arcturus