During the first lockdown due to the COVID pandemic in the spring and summer of 2020, we were allowed to go outside for an hour of exercise each day. Although I would not call myself a healthy person, I do like to get out for a walk to dust away the cobwebs. These short walks, either by myself or as a family, involved a walk up to the local church or to a local lake/reservoir. These routes got more and more crowded though due to everyone having similar ideas!
The main time I found which was less busy was either early morning or early evening. "And Breathe" was conceived over a couple of walks at either end of the day. I already had a rough sketch in my head after a improvising session of the main theme, however, I was inspired after enjoying the writing process of "Morning Tide's" string section to look at this again. The difference being that "Morning Tide" was a self contained solo piano piece which had strings added. "And Breathe" had a middle section which was written without a melody in mind for the piano part. I envisaged a solo violin or cello playing a part over the top of the piano at this point.
The piece is quite melodic in comparison to the 3 tracks before it on "Third Perspective". Almost whimsical and meandering, which came from my feelings of being outdoors on the limited occasions we could. I didn't want to go as full on with the string parts as I had with "Morning Tide" so it only involved a cello, viola section and a solo violin. During the middle section the strings die away and a solo violin plays a slow but building melody over the piano accompaniment which crescendos to a climax as we return back to the main theme played slightly more intensely and in a more fluid improvisational style.
I always intend for my piano pieces to be able to be performed without other instruments as well and I think this holds up well with "And Breathe". I'm sure it will appear on an EP as a solo piano version at some point.
Reflecting back on such a strange time, I definitely found solace in getting out in the open air and I appreciate these moments more and more these days. I now try to go for a walk almost every day where possible. This is often with my wife Kate on her days off or by myself. I think most of my music that I wrote over 2020 was quite reflective and thoughtful towards the situation. I really like this piece's therapeutic nature.
I probably need to start addressing the artwork and videos more in these blogs but It's hard to find the time to go over them all so I think I will do a longer post covering the artworks for an album and another on videos. The reason I bring this up here is that "And Breathe2 is definitely my favourite video I've created so far. I think the music fits the video really well and the story behind the music feels quite strong. I think the message comes across well.
I don't play this tune as much as I should as I really enjoy listening back to it. This was the follow up to "You'll Never Know" and unfortunately it didn't do as well as I had hoped. However, when people feed back to me about the album, "And Breathe" generally is a favourite of most people which is good to hear. The track is attached to this blog post if you fancy a listen.
Thanks for reading and I hope you had a merry Christmas and let's hope for a better 2023.