Written and recorded for Marc Weidenbaum’s Disquiet Junto challenge in late February 2014.

The Disquiet Junto is a collective that sound artist and writer MarcWeidenbaum created (and still manages) that offers a new creative recording project challenge to its musician members each week. All musicians who participate are encouraged to upload their pieces to Soundcloud to share with the others. This particular challenge was called “Turn your week’s day planner into music,” which was a lot of fun for mebecause I was on a vacation (or more appropriately a “staycation”) from work for nearly the entire week in my day planner at the time. “Staycation” has a carnival-like sound when the rhythms and melodies mesh together, adding to the feeling of fun we usually experience during a vacation.I can hear my love of Frank Zappa in “Staycation”, particularly in the whimsical melodies.


Here are my original notes to the group for this project, which serves as an explanation of the piece:

Rhythm: I chose the quarter note triplet as the foundation of my piece, mostly because you get six quarter notetriplets per bar in 4/4 (each measure represents 6 hours; 4 measures equals one day). All other rhythms in the piece are divisions of that motif.

Harmony: As a jazz fan, I love playing around with the standard ii-V-I chord sequence. Offering a nod to Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”, my chord progressions follow a series of descending iim7b5 – V7b9 – Imaj7 cadences. Each chord sequence moves downward as more of the day passes, until we reach the fourth and final bar in each progression, where a D7b9 acts as the turnaround or “reset” to the next “day”.

Instrumentation: NI FM8 and Reaktor 5 for most of the harmonic and melodic content, Camel Audio Alchemy for percussion, PreSonus Presence for Rhodes and Grand Piano.

My week transpired as follows:
Day 1 – Feb 13: The last day of work before vacation. I started the piece painfully slow, as I tried to give the feeling of how the last day before a break can often feel endless. The first two bars are at 20 bpm, the third bar at 12 bpm and the fourth bar at 10 bpm. A very snowy day in NY, and I expressed this with small cascading melodies that outline the chord sequence. There is also the chime of a clock signaling the passing of the day.
Move to 90 bpm. (There is a 4 bar drum intro that serves as a positive warm-up to the vacation)

Day 2, Feb 14 through Day 6, Feb 18 – I actually didn’t do very much except spend time with my wife and children who were off from school. The patterns established in Day 2 were repeated through Day 6, occasionally adding new percussion and melodic content-----as identical as the days did seem, there was a slight variety of action throughout. More snow, expressed in the return of the small cascading melodies from Day 1.

Day 7, Feb 19 – A break in the mundane, as it was another snowy day and I went ice-skating at a local holiday resort. This is expressed with the Grand Piano playing a descending chromatic scale over the rest of the arrangement.

(Another 4 bar drum break, this time serving as a bookend to the vacation)

I added a Day 8, Feb 20 – back to work, tempo slows to 2 bars at 33 bpm, and then the final two bars at 21 bpm. Return of the clock chime.