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Factory Seconds

By mike In

I. Clockwork Dance

II. Distant Bells

III. Bad Dude

Factory Seconds was originally intended as a recasting of three pieces of mine. It began with the middle movement, originally written as a wedding present to be played at the ceremony; the bride’s father, a composer himself, suggested I make it part of a larger piece, and I set out to find earlier material of mine to rework. As is often the case, things turned out differently than I had planned, and instead the outer movements ended up being entirely original.

While writing Clockwork Dance, I imagined a huge, horrifically complex machine wearing itself down, grinding itself to pieces.

Distant Bells was written for the aforementioned wedding.

A friend of mine, while sorting through the ring tone options on her new cell phone, noted that one was called Bad Dude. I thought this would be a great name for a piece and tried to find a musical idea worthy of it, which eventually came from the misremembered opening riff to a rock song. I like to call its form (to steal a phrase from a friend) a sort of ‘Theme and Funkatations’.