The Path: Stories with Strangers - March 21st

"March 21st" is a happy spring song! Well, it's a piece—it has no words, so it's technically not a "song". The springtime image is also a cute little metaphor as well. When I first wrote this piece of music, I thought it had a bright and uplifting mood, which I associated with spring, and all kinds of life blooming and blossoming all around. It happened to be metaphoric because it became my first completed composition—my journey as a composer had just begun to sprout, and was on its way to blossoming.

My brother, the only other musician in the family, had a keyboard in his room that I would always play. When I was in 8th grade, my brother went off to college, and my parents also got me my own keyboard—playing music on my keyboard helped me feel closer to brother. The moment I started "coming up with music on my own" (my 13-year-old way of saying "composing"), I wanted to show my brother immediately. I had been playing a sort of medley of melodies on my new keyboard—something came over me one day and I started playing notes and chords on my own that I'd never heard before but thought they sounded good. One section of that medley stood out to me, so I extracted it and added other parts around it. That section is what is now the "Chorus" section of "March 21st".

I remember feeling so embarrassed by this piece when I was in high school, fearing that people who listened would pick up on the painful simplicity of the chords, predictable structure, and repetitive left hand patterns. During my sophomore year of high school, I remember going into the music room and playing "March 21st" on the piano there. As I finished the piece, a boy I had a bit of a crush on walked in, and asked me what I was playing. I muttered, "I wrote it...". His eyes widened and he replied, "You wrote that?" I had assumed at the time that he had hated it and saw all of its terrible flaws.

Looking back, realizing how much I still enjoy this piece, I am fairly certain that he was impressed, but I didn't have much in terms of self-esteem at the time, so it makes sense that I'd assumed the worst.

What if he had hated it though? So what, I think now. Oh well, you live and you learn. I was very private when it came to authentic expression back then. I could crack jokes and tell stories easily, but a truly earnest attempt at creative expression was difficult at the time, especially in front of other people. I still struggle a bit with singing in front of other people, especially my own songs. It'll get easier with time though!

The process of writing this piece was pretty simple, yet I acknowledge now that what I consider to be simple and intuitive is not often in line what others would. My brother and I spent a lot of time together analyzing music, mostly in terms of structure and chord progressions, so I already had a pretty clear idea of a typical pop song structure, which is what "March 21st" follows:

Intro

Verse 1

Bridge 1

Chorus 1

~ Brief Interlude ~

Verse 2

Bridge 2

Chorus 2

Chorus 3

Chorus 4/5/vamp over chords

Outro

A fancier way to show this:

A B C D E B' C' D' D'' D''' A'

Different letters symbolize separate sections, while the small apostrophe mark means "prime", or a variation of the same section. The "prime" sections in this piece have a lot more added harmonies and faster rhythms.

The Chorus section (D) is the first part that I wrote, and I honestly can't remember the order or exact process for the rest of the piece.

One of my favorite piano pieces to play at the time was called The Rainmaker (or at least that's what the online game where the music played in was called). That piece was in the key of Eb, so I just went with a familiar key. Eb has since become my favorite key! :)

I also really loved (and still love!) syncopation, somewhat inherently, and I stuck it all over the place in this piece. Lots of dotted eighth note rhythms in the right hand against steady eighth notes in the left hand. Syncopation takes a bit of coordination, but is so satisfying and fun to play. I really love the section of the Chorus of "March 21st" where both hands play the same rhythm while coming together—right hand moving down while left hand moves up.

I became fascinated with the concept of seasonal changes, which inspired the next composition...