Thoughts/Feelings/Actions
for solo guitar (1997)

Listen to an excerpt (96K MP3)

9 minutes

These three character pieces were commissioned by Karin Schaupp, Australia’s most outstanding young guitarist, for inclusion in her solo recital at the Darwin International Guitar Festival in 1997. Karin asked me to write one piece based on tremolo technique, another in a melancholic, sentimental mood and a third in a pseudo-jazz style. Unlike most tremolo pieces where the melody is sounded in the bass part, in Thoughts I have incorporated the theme within the texture of the tremolo itself. It is also unusual in that it is written in the transposed locrian mode (on b) which sounds a diminished fifth above the final. While Thoughts is meditative, Feelings brings these thoughts on to an emotive level and Actions projects them into physical existence as toe tapping music.