2. LEWIS SAUL: In the Vicinity of WA (1:47)

In February of 2000, I was deep into an uncomfortable period of writer's block and was watching Kurosawa films day and night.

I had learned that WA is the Japanese character for "harmony."

[It also means "Japan," but its original Chinese meaning was derogatory. See this excellent Wikipedia article.]

I noticed this "wa" -- both in the director's name and in his art. As this "harmony" helped get me back to writing music again, I felt "in the vicinity of..."

I put out a CD of 18 of my compositions, entitled IN THE VICINITY OF WA -- all performed and sequenced by myself. The only equipment I used to make this CD was an Alesis QS8 synthesizer, an AWE64Gold Creative soundcard. Everything was sequenced using Cakewalk.

For each track, I have noted when it was composed, and what equipment was used.

ITVOW is cyclical -- à la Finnegans Wake. You could start with Track 12 and as long as you continued in order, moving from 19 to 1 and up to 11 -- you would complete a 60:22 cycle of the music in as valid an order as any other. Hopefully I succeeded in my programming of these little mini-cycles in there -- they're pretty easy to spot -- you can see how I broke it down between the longer pieces, shorter pieces -- the "jazz" pieces, the "orchestral" pieces, the "electronic" pieces, etc.

I will be posting the tracks in random order on this blog. Another kind of cycle.

This is the title track, a quick ditty.

In the Vicinity of WA (1:47)