Lockdown

While it may seem a bit on the nose to title a piece Lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic, this piece is actually not related whatsoever to those events. I wrote it in 2011, at the beginning of my senior year of high school…after being grounded by my mom for mouthing off, hence the title. But, it has taken on a new life and meaning in this reworked version. In the context of The Human Element, it is about a hero climate activist (the solo tubist) infiltrating and attempting to steal records from a polluting industrial factory in order to expose their evasion of environmental regulations. It’s almost like a secret agent movie. The title, in this context, describes the lockdown of this factory as the security forces attempt to capture this activist. From a musical standpoint, the main guitar riff sounds somewhat like an alarm siren. The more fast, chaotic, and aggressive sections represent skirmishes during the hero’s mission. The sections using more clean guitar are slightly sneaky-sounding, depicting the hero sneaking around the factory. Finally, the clear chord progression and melodic solo writing toward the end of the piece signals a triumph of some kind…I’ll leave it to you to decide who succeeded – the hero, or the villains?