“Regressiō ad medium” (8:00) [DR13]

Latin: “Regression to the Mean”

A musical representation of recovery from mental disorders that takes an ABA′ form. Originally, this piece had three movements, each lasting exactly two minutes, with the third fading out by the six-minute mark to suggest that the process of recovery never ends. However, the event I wrote this for needed it to loop seamlessly, so I wrote a coda to facilitate this, resulting in four movements:

1. «Συμπτώματα» (Attic Greek: “Symptoms”, romanized: «Symptṓmata») (0:00-2:00)

   • The A section, reflecting everyday lived experience prior to the start of therapy.

2. «Θεραπεία» (Attic Greek: “Therapy”, romanized: «Therapeía») (2:00-4:00)

   • The B section, representing the process of therapy.

3. «Ἀνάστασις» (Attic Greek: “Anastasis”, romanized: «Anástasis») (4:00-6:00)

   • The A′ section, representing a somewhat (but not fully) recovered experience.

4. «Αἰωνία παλιγγενεσία» (Attic Greek: “Eternal Recurrence”, romanized: «Aiōnía palingenesía») (6:00-8:00)

   • The coda, signifying recovery’s continuous, sometimes cyclical nature.

The shifts between movements α, β, and γ are extremely obvious, but the shift between movement γ and δ is more a gradual transition than a sharp dichotomy. Make of that what you will. (I find it especially fitting that ἀνάστασις and παλιγγενεσία are at least plesionyms if not synonyms.)

(The “alternate mixes” folder features a variant specifically made for looping. I also boosted the gain in the quiet parts, since the album mix’s loudness range of over 15 LU risks either the quiet parts being inaudible or the loud ones drowning out people’s conversations. The loop variant tones down the dynamic shifts substantially without eliminating them entirely, resulting in a loudness range of around 6 LU.)

This track also expresses several additional interlinking concepts:

1. I primarily wrote it in Dorian mode, an entirely symmetrical mode of the diatonic major scale (that is, its ascent and descent use the same intervals in the same order). It’s often used both in Gregorian chants and in nature documentaries, as it conveys a sense of awe and hope, but its root chord is also minor. The general mood conveyed here is that things aren’t great now, but there’s a chance they’ll improve.

   This is a deliberate aesthetic choice. A person must be receptive to therapy for it to be helpful. In short, if you refuse to accept that you need help, you won’t get better – and, by corollary, if you refuse to accept your own imperfections, you can’t hope to improve them. If you go to therapy believing it can work, it has a much greater chance of success. If you have to be dragged kicking and screaming, you might as well have stayed home. It’s a weirdly self-fulfilling prophecy.

   In short, I used Dorian mode because it reflects the necessary mindset for successful therapy.

2. The bass line continuously ascends and descends because not every aspect of recovery is a steady progression. It stays flat for several measures at one point in «Θεραπεία», reflecting how progress can often feel as if it’s come to a complete halt. It nonetheless resumes its ascent and descent after that.

3. The use of counterpoint reflects dichotomies between neurodivergent and neurotypical thought and communication. The alternate melody in the A section effectively flips its progession after the first use of counterpoint, only for the response to flip as well.

   Neurodiverse individuals’ nonverbal communication is commonly misread, causing underdiagnosis of mental disorders, problems in the workplace and with relationships, and more. At least part of the issue is that society teaches us to mirror neurotypical body language – an example of masking (concealing our neurodivergence). This, in turn, causes stress, which can turn into its own feedback loop (since the more stressed we are, the worse we are at mirroring), in turn leading to burnout and further complications (including several I already listed at the start of this paragraph).

4. «Συμπτώματα» uses a very simple chord progression, mostly employing variations of A minor, G major, D major, and E major chords. (E major is the only chord in this progression that is non-diatonic to Dorian mode.) «Θεραπεία» deliberately gets more avant-garde and increasingly diverges from the original chord progression, reflecting several ideas:

   1. the ebb and flow of trying to break out of a pattern
   2. how therapies sometimes progress frustratingly slowly, or don’t even seem to be progressing at all
   3. how sometimes the first attempt at a therapy doesn’t even work
5. The steadily increasing complexity and activity in the melody and harmony and the overall intensity of the arrangement represent how thoughts can become more layered and active as therapy proceeds – a common experience for neurodivergent individuals in particular.
6. Just over halfway through «Θεραπεία», most aspects of the arrangement drop out before returning. The idea here is that sometimes it’s necessary to focus on one fundamental idea or behavior rather than try to fix everything at once. This is what ultimately leads to the breakthrough that leads into «Ἀνάστασις».
7. «Θεραπεία» also explores the idea of the extinction burst – that is, that a behavior may temporarily increase in frequency after the reward or reinforcement for that behavior is stopped.

8. «Ἀνάστασις» primarily uses A Mixolydian (which, in terms of mood, effectively lies between A major and A Dorian). It still switches between Mixolydian and Dorian to indicate that, while things have improved, they’re still not perfect. It also uses two different Mixolydian chord progressions, which respectively:

   1. Alter the original Dorian melodies and chords:

      • A minor, D major, E major, G major

      To use the Mixolydian scale, producing:

      • A major, D major, E minor, G major
   2. Apply negative harmony (see explanation below) to the original chords and melodies, producing:
      • A major, E minor, D minor, B minor

      (I’ve given chords the same positions across transformations; italicized chords that are non-diatonic to their respective modes; and printed major chords in bold small caps. I haven’t counted the seventh and ninth chords I used throughout the piece; I’m trying to keep this explanation simple.)

   Negative harmony is complex, but basically, it flips melodies and chords: it turns major chords minor, minor chords major, ascents into descents, and descents into ascents, with the same root if possible⁽¹⁾.

   Mixolydian is Dorian’s negative harmony counterpart; thus, as seen above, the negative harmony chords are all diatonic to A Mixolydian except D minor – the negative harmony counterpart of E major, the original progression’s only chord that’s non-diatonic to A Dorian.

   I liked both Mixolydian progressions well enough, and the two express different enough moods that it felt worthwhile to use both. So I did.

9. Even in the Dorian sections of «Ἀνάστασις», the counterpoint melody now generally runs in the same direction, indicating an improvement in overall communication.
10. The breaks in the melody throughout the song are also deliberate. We all need breaks now and then.

Lastly, some etymological and linguistic trivia:

• Despite having already titled the piece in Latin, I opted for Greek movement titles due to therapy, symptom, and anastasis (meaning a rebirth or recovery from a debilitating condition) already being Greek.
• I briefly considered renaming the song «Ὑποστροφή εἰς μέσον» («Hypostrophḗ eís méson», Attic Greek for “Regression to the Mean”) so it’d be titled in the same language as its movements, but it had already been “Regressiō ad medium” for months by then, so I never considered it very seriously.
• The coda’s title can also be translated “Eternal Rebirth”. More specifically, one meaning of palingenesis (derived from terms literally meaning again-birth) is spiritual rebirth, especially through reincarnation. However, I had in mind another sense of palingenesis that Arthur Schopenhauer would’ve appreciated, namely the infinitely cyclical nature of history. (Schopenhauer wrote that the motto of history should be “Eādem, sed aliter”, a Latin phrase meaning roughly likewise, but differently or the same, but different.)

• The coda was originally called «Αἰωνία περίοδος» (romanized: «Aiōnía períodos»). Περίοδος, yet another word English has pilfered for its own nefarious purposes, is derived from περί- (perí-, around), and ὁδός (hodós, path or journey), so it literally means return trip or road around. Needless to say, I didn’t change the meaning much, but παλιγγενεσία’s specific connotation of historical cycles was too good to pass up.

• I also briefly considered several other names for the coda:

  • „ewige Wiederkunft“, “eternal recurrence” in German (the phrase comes from Friedrich Nietzsche).
  • “Recurrentia aeterna”, “eternal recurrence” in Latin (the origin of both words of the English phrase).
  • «Καιρός ἐστί πλατύς κύκλος» («Kairós estí platýs kýklos»), Attic Greek for “Time is a flat circle” (a True Detective quote summarizing Nietzsche’s concept).

  I ultimately opted for linguistic consistency among movement names, and as much as I love the True Detective quote, it was too long to feel consistent with the other movement names. That said, I think another True Detective quote sums up this piece’s main theme far more succinctly than I have, and for some reason, I felt compelled to translate it to Greek:

  «Πρίν, ἦν μόνος ζόφος. Ἐᾱ́ν μοι ἐρωτᾷς, τό φῶς ἐστί νῑκῶν.» -Ρυστ Κωλ, Ὀρθός ντετέκτιβ

  «Prín, ên mónos zóphos. Eā́n moi erōtaîs, tó fôs estí nīkôn.» –Rust Kōl, Orthós ntetéktib

  “Once, there was only dark. If you ask me, the light‘s winning.” -Rust Cohle, True Detective

  Maybe, in a way, that conflicts with this album’s title. Maybe, every now and then, you can beat the odds.

  Just don’t bet your life savings on it.

Contents · Tracklist · Discography · Portfolio · Contact me · Website index

«Ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς» (3:36) [DR12]

Epic Greek: “Rosy-Fingered Dawn”
Romanized: «Rhododáktylos Eṓs»

Inspired by: Mahavishnu Orchestra, “Dawn” (The Inner Mounting Flame, 1971-08-14)

(John McLaughlin)

From my Rubicon soundtrack commentary:

Inspired by Mahavishnu Orchestra’s “Dawn” and named for an epithet that appears throughout Homer’s works. It’s only partly coincidence that, thanks to Christopher Nolan, Homer is in the popular consciousness again, as he’s never far from the popular consciousness. (I kept thinking scenes from Nolan’s film played like dramatic versions of scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail until about midway through the film, when I realized I’d gotten it backward: Python had mined Homer for comedic inspiration. The biggest giveaway: the Trojan Rabbit.)

This one came together extremely quickly; I think it took me about two hours of work. I considered expanding it further, but ultimately I think it works fine the way it is.

Contents · Tracklist · Discography · Portfolio · Contact me · Website index

«Ἱππῆς ἐπί τῇ αἰγίδι» (6:18) [DR11]

Attic Greek: “Riders on the Storm”
Romanized: «Hippês epí tēî aigídi»

Inspired by: The Doors, “Riders on the Storm” (L.A. Woman, 1971-04-19)

(John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, & Jim Morrison)

A jazz fusion track heavily inspired by the Doors‘ similarly titled song. I don’t actually like Jim Morrison’s unsettling lyrics for it (not at all helped by his whispered vocals underlying the verses, or the fact that he was dead by the time it came out), but Ray Manzarek’s Fender Rhodes work is absolutely exquisite.

Much like its namesake, this keeps switching keys, running through a sequence of E Dorian, A melodic major, D Dorian, and G melodic major in the opening 7/8 section, then E Dorian, A Dorian, E Dorian, G major, and E Dorian in the later 5/8 and 6/8 sections (which hew significantly closer to the Doors’ original chord progression). The Doors’ track is already basically jazz fusion, but I played up the jazz influence further (for instance, their track doesn’t use a saxophone).

This is very much incomplete, hence the fadeout. (I avoid those unless I have a strong artistic reason to use them or intend the track to repeat. Yet currently, this record’s first three tracks fade out – go figure.)

Contents · Tracklist · Discography · Portfolio · Contact me · Website index

«Λᾱ́ζᾱρος ἐκ μηχανῆς» (4:44) [DR10]

Attic Greek: “Lazarus from the Machine”
Romanized: «Lā́zāros ek mēkhanês»

In case anyone was expecting this entire record to be jazz, I threw this curveball: a drone track composed entirely of nightmarish CS-80 voices. From my Rubicon soundtrack commentary:

We originally planned on having no music on “Lazarus ex machina”, but we decided it needed music towards the end of development, and since its layout is so convoluted that I couldn’t fade out the music as players fade out the climactic Ascension theme based on their location, I threw together this deliberately minimalistic drone track in about forty minutes (not an exaggeration).

Utlimately, though, I thought of an approach that would enable us to fade out the music without having to care about the player’s location, so we ultimately reused “Hastur” on this level. I wasn’t really bothered by that, since I wrote this so quickly. For the soundtrack, we still left it in the position of “Lazarus ex machina”, which would otherwise have no track to represent it.

The familiar Latin phrase Deus ex machina (God from the machine) is calqued from the far less familiar Greek phrase ἀπὸ μεχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós); as ex is a cognate of ἐκ (ek), I changed it accordingly. I also reordered the words to fit the more familiar Latin order; both orders are valid in both languages. (Languages with noun cases, like Latin and Greek, usually have more flexible word orders than languages without them, like English.)

The titular Lazarus was a man Jesus resurrected in the New Testament. I’ll spare explaining how this relates to the level, since many people reading this page may not have played Rubicon yet.

The length is very much deliberate. In societies that use or used writing systems based on Chinese (also including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam), the number four is closely associated with death because the characters 四 (four) and 死 (death) have traditionally been homonyms or near-homonyms (sì and sǐ in Mandarin, shi for both in Japanese, sa for both in Sino-Korean, and tứ and tử in Sino-Vietnamese.) This may have resulted in some languages using other terms for the number four; for instance, in modern Japanese, 四 is more often read as よ (yo) or as よん (yon) than as し (shi).

Contents · Tracklist · Discography · Portfolio · Contact me · Website index