restlessness
copyright after the mourning
music by jesse myers 1999
This instrumental, like several of my other pieces, has gone through more changes to the title than changes to the words or music. As I prepare to release a recording of this piece on the sophomore album, it will finally have a permanent title. This title, "restlessness," will hopefully reflect the way these interacting parts move us, the listeners. This music woke me up in the middle of the night. I could not go back to sleep with all of these melodies battling it out in my head. All the parts were there, and I had to see if they actually fit together. I rolled out of bed and grabbed my guitar. I wrote all the parts down that night and recorded them on my Roland 880 so that I could hear how they fit, and I was so happy with the sound that I did several mixes, just to see what order they would work best in. I have also swapped out the lyrics for it a few times, as I get older and write better songs. On the debut album, "Greatest Hits," I used these elements in a different order for the song, "Void." I originally wrote "Void" about the same time as this music, but did not match them up immediately. In the summer of 2007, I went through all my old songs to strengthen the weaker lyrics, cut out some uninspired stanzas, and scrap the songs that weren't worth saving. During that process, I realized that this music would be a perfect match for that song, now that the lyrics had been overhauled. Of course, I still wanted to do this as an instrumental to highlight all of the individual characters at work in the piece without the distraction of storytelling.
Below, I have included a JPEG of the sheet music I used in the studio.
