End Scene

This installment marks the end of Volume III, and the last of the Explorations series, a year-long project in which I have written and shared twelve instrumental songs inspired by twelve geographies.

I’ll share details about Volume IV soon. In the meantime, please follow along on Spotify, Apple, or whichever streaming platform you prefer to catch my official releases.

Thank you for being here for the latest installment of this newsletter, and the final piece of Volume III. It’s hard to believe another year of this project has come and gone.

🎵 This month’s piece is in D major.¹

I wanted to write something simple this month, so I stuck to a solo piano piece. Short and sweet. See the footnote for my theory notes.²

bed of pine cones, 35mm

📷 This month’s photos were shot on film.³

It felt appropriate to end this series where it began — in Oregon, my home for the last five years.

I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I love hearing from you.

Thank you for being here.

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Saying Farewell at the Monastery after Hearing the Old Master Lecture on “Return to the Source”

by Gary Snyder⁴

At the last turn in the path
          “goodbye—”
          —bending, bowing,
       (moss and a bit of
          wild
             bird-)
down.

Daitoku-ji Monastery

last turn in the path, 35mm

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Listening to

• All I Need by Black Books (Listen)

  • This track comes from their incredible forthcoming album Eyes On The Mirror, Head In The Clouds (releasing 11/1)

  • 🎧 I put all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist

Reading

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Bookshop)

• H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (Bookshop)

Sharing

• The Deep Life

• Free shipping on all merch! Celebrate the end of Volume III by grabbing yourself a Fog Chaser t-shirt. Use the code OCTOBER_SURPRISE at checkout for free shipping (ends tomorrow).
  

• The last piece of Volume II is now available on streaming platforms:
  

• Next month I’ll send out a recap post that will include every song from Volume III in one convenient place. In the meantime, feel free to explore the archive. Note: Volume II will be going behind a paywall in the coming weeks.
  

• Stay tuned for my next batch of official releases, including a release on 11/7:

1. End Scene in D major / Written, performed, and produced by Fog Chaser

2. Theory notes: For me, putting music theory into practice is really just about adding color, variety, texture, and movement to a piece.

This piece is in D major, but there are a few things happening throughout to give it a little more color. Most notable of these things is borrowing chords from the parallel key, D minor. (Parallel keys are two scales that share the same starting note, or tonic, but have different qualities. D major has two sharp notes: F# and C#. On the other hand, D minor has one flat, Bb). You can interchange chords and notes between keys like this because they are both pulling to the same root, D.

In both keys, the fourth scale note is G. The fourth chord in D minor is a G minor (G-Bb-D). I borrow this chord in my piece a few different times, resolving it to the I chord, D major. Adding a minor IV into a major key piece provides a little hint of something somber.

At a couple of spots in this piece I use a “secondary dominant” (a dominant chord borrowed from a different key, not the parallel key). At the :30 mark, you’ll hear two dominant chords in quick succession: I use the V7/V (an E7, which is the dominant chord of A major) before resolving to the A7, which, for the most part, is where an E7 wants to go. I mean, technically, it just wants to go to an A major, so I’m not sure if it matters that it goes to an A7 instead. I also use flat III and flat VI chords pretty regularly (scale degrees lowered a half step).

During the B part, I sprinkle in something called a line cliché, a technique that involves playing a stepwise, or chromatic, line over a stationary chord. (You’ll notice an example of this around 1:14, and again at 1:49).

Finally, while the song is in 3/4 time, (like a waltz), the B part, which you first hear at about the 1:06 mark, is in 5/4 time, making that section feel similar to the A section but slightly different.

» Questions? Corrections? Let me know in the comments.

3. End Scenes / 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / Oregon, USA

4. From Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985.