Week 3
Invention 4 (July 17, 2007)

I remember listening to my father’s copy of Switched-On Bach while growing up. I remember gravitating to the d minor Invention, drawn to it’s energy and explosive patterning.

I briefly took piano lessons in order to learn how to play this invention.

I remember, years later, discovering the amen break. It was referenced in an internet forum about chiptune music, and I looked it up. I remember feeling awed by its presence in our aural culture. It was a little moment of performance that had grabbed onto the ears and brains of musicians who helped it evolve and propagate.

It grabbed onto my ears. It wormed its way into my brain. I needed to create with this sample.

There are 15 compositions in 60×365 that feature the amen break prominently. There could have been many more, but I feared it taking over. It wasn’t until 2009 that I was able to exorcise the amen break from my brain. That’s a story for another entry.

Rhythm is my way into music. For some composers it is sound, or timbre, or harmonic progression, or melodic invention. For me, the urge to listen and the urge to compose are rooted in rhythm. Both the amen break and the music of Bach satisfy these urges.

Combining a synthesized rendering of Bach’s d minor Invention with a hyper-sliced rendering of the amen break was inevitable for me. This is how I hear Bach: full of rhythm and grooves and pulsing with life. His music had a powerful influence on me as I was beginning to compose. Invention 4 honors that influence by demonstrating its effect.

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