"twilight" genre: Minimalist
	lo fi play (dial-up) hi fi play (broadband) download (4.7 MB)	email track to a friend	add to My.MP3
	Darkly pensive, this early improvisation is the only surving recording to capture the brooding and kinetic style of Paul's early 1990's streetperforming era. An undulating melody swoops into elegant, Baroque-like 12-tone flourishes, and back again, captivating the waxing and waning crowds of subterranean urban streets.
	CD: the changelings (debut cd)   Label: middlesex records Credits: (c)Switched at Birth music/written & performed by Paul Mercer
	Story Behind the Song An early piece done entirely line in on a modern German factory violin (Glaesel V133E, 1990) using a Barcus Berry pickup. This piece is a long improvisation recorded in 1995 after nearly a decade of street performing. It ebbs and flows like the pace of the crowds on the underground avenues that inspired it.This is my first recorded solo piece. It can be found on the first Changelings album. It represents a transition for me, from complete improvisation to more recognizable song structures. Before I knew anything about music theory I used a bastard twelve tone system that I made up. I thought of every note's relation to every other as an interval comprised entirely of half-steps. This occasionally led to very unusual scale passages and faux "arpeggios" that became the foundations for my musical style. I knew very little about music at this time other than that I did not know how to stop making it. I sat on a "street" corner in Underground Atlanta for seven years playing anything and everything that came to mind. This was my first real musical schooling - playing a long drifting improvised daydream for four to six hours a day. This piece was created in that very free fashion. You can hear my thoughts and feelings drifting from topic to topic if you listen closely. It is the only recording from that period of my life to survive.

Copyright notice. All material on MP3.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties. You may download this material and make reasonable number of copies of this material only for your own personal use. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s).