Critters & Creatures: Graceful Gliders Back Story

Graceful Gliders was the second piece I wrote after the title track. Overall the melody is not particularly interesting or memorable, and the piece never gets that intense. The goal of this one was to convey the calm and peaceful associations that I have from watching water skimmers in the creek at Lair Camp as a child.

When I did some research to learn more about these insects, I discovered that they are predators, and have other traits that would certainly not be seen as calm or peaceful. They also apparently are called water striders—and I don't care! They're water skimmers to me, always have been and always will be!!

The piece's calm nature does not by any means imply that it's easy to play! In fact I'd say that among all these buggy pieces (in some ways actually including C&C, the title track), GG is the most technically challenging. It's in 6/8, and starts on an offbeat, so the downbeat is a bit hidden at first, which always has a cool effect to a first-time listener.

The notes in the accompaniment (which starts in the right hand then eventually moves to the left) are mostly 5ths and 6ths (with an occasional 4th or 7th). Even though water skimmers have six legs, the back two pairs of legs stood out to me. I wanted the shape of my hands and fingers to be like buggy legs, and that was the initial inspiration behind the opening sequence. It doesn't reallllly make sense anatomically, but scientific accuracy was never a goal for me. It's all about me and my feelings, and getting into consistently writing music again.

It was a while after I wrote GG that I realized I had composed a piece of music that captured the innocence of my childhood while simultaneously the feeling, the understanding, the grieving of how I can never go back. Now that my mom is gone, Lair Camp will never be the same. I'll never watch the water skimmers in the creek with the same eyes of a child. Not that I necessarily want to return to my childhood, but there is a level of poignancy when you realize as an adult that there are certain things that you simply cannot return to.