The first Variation, Progression, is a development of the opening progression. At it’s core, it simply moves pieces of the chordal progression around, first with the piano and later with a plugin. It is also in 3/4 rather than 9/8 and introduces the use of piano that will be present throughout most of the work. It’s also the first time I use some non-instrument plugins, again informing what is to come in the work. The first one that is the most notable is Krush, a down-sampling plugin that is freaking amazing. The other is Raum, a Native Instrument’s reverb plugin that was free for a brief time and is really high quality.
What I love about this movement is that it really helped me develop a technique for how I moved forward with the writing process in this project. For me, the work lies somewhere between composition and improvisation. It’s been a while since I have posted an improvisation, but I still improvise regularly in liturgies and try to keep improv in my fingers. In this movement, I took the chord form the ending of the previous movement and slowly adjusted the chord one note at a time until it was something different. One fun thing I have learned about improvising is how to mess with time or rather the perception of time. There’s an aspect of misdirection with the noisy synth in the first minute, but that allowed me to shift the chord in the first minute and a half or so. That allowed me to change up how things progress in comparison to the first two movements.