My goal was to create a complete album that both musicians and laymen enjoy alike. While I can’t know that everyone has enjoyed it, i‘ve gotten positive feedback from musicians as well as everyday people, and I am certainly proud of the effort. Though this project was supposed to take 80 hours, I regularly put in 16-hour days all summer long, spending literally many hundreds of hours writing, and producing, and recording the project. I was also excited to involve my other areas of expertise including audio engineering, digital audio production, and graphic design.

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Late in the process of writing the album, I knew I wanted to write a piece that included some particularly distinctive chords. We had begun learning about 7th chords late in the semester, so I began experimenting with some 7th chords, combining different types, with various bass notes to create a different type of chord progression. I kept experimenting with chords until I got a progression I liked. I then analyzed the progression to write it down. This is what the progression looks like, with the bass notes in bold.

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In this post I’ll discuss the music theory behind a particular key change. The song “Wrestle the Reticence” is in G major, but at the end, there is a key change into the key of  A major. However, this transition needed to happen naturally and smoothly so the listener isn’t shocked by the change and actually feels as though the change was necessary.

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Large portions of these posts were written earlier in the summer. As it turns out, I got so caught up in actually creating this project, that I’m just catching up on posting. This project was a labor of love, but my goal was ambitious to say the least. Today, I will be discussing the second song on the album, Wrestle the Reticence. I’ll describe the musical writing process and how it pertains to music theory.

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