Reclamation

Reclamation is another one of my older pieces that I wrote in my early teenage days, and it is the sixth track on my album The Human Element. I rediscovered the piece while cleaning out one of my older external hard drives. In its original form, it ran almost eight minutes and was exceedingly repetitive. I realized when I listened again that this was actually the first piece I ever wrote using my guitars and basses and shiny new audio interface. Its original title was Project Z…don’t laugh, I was thirteen! With its new title and reworked riffs and harmonies, Reclamation has become one of my favorite tracks on the album. Thematically, it represents a future time when we have begun to reclaim our habitats and restore balance to the Earth’s biosphere. It’s a fitting track to follow the more pessimistic Sixth Extinction. Musically, this piece is harmonically complex. Because the introductory riff is atonal, not suggesting any particular key area or scalar/modal world, it was a great challenge to devise melodies in the solo tuba. Much of the solo part makes use of diminished arpeggios and slightly altered octatonic scales (at least, that’s how I thought of them while writing). This presents a challenge to the soloist’s ear; it is essential to center each pitch properly.