Memorializing loved ones with Name Music pieces
In 2020-2021 I composed Name Music pieces for many of the loved ones we’ve lost — aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, parents of friends, nephews and nieces of friends. This has helped me to grieve for them, this focusing in on the qualities they brought to life, and translating those qualities to musical expression. Yes I’m still using the letters-to-pitches mapping system I devised back in 2000 to inspire the beginning of the melody, but I’ve also been modifying the “rules” as often as I feel drawn to doing, in order to make a melody flow better and be easier to play. Mostly this means using the pitch in a different octave so that it is closer to the other pitches, so I can some of the string crossings (big leaps in melody) and have more step-wise, easy melody. In “Abra” for example, the R is the pitch of E, in the second octave above middle C, (the open E string), but the other pitches are on the low G string, below middle C! So I moved the E down an octave so it is on the D strin